Questions about "Light Switch" platform

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I have a question about the “light switch” platform that was introduced in 0.83.3: can I use this to “dumb down” some of my existing dimmer switches, turning them into simple on/off “lights”?

The reason I ask, in case anyone is interested: I have Insteon dimmers (controlled by an ISY) throughout my house, but I’ve gradually been installing Hue bulbs as well, for the ability to shift the light color temperature. This gives me the ability to control the lights from a switch as normal, but HASS can manage color temperature when the switches are on. The only caveat is that I can’t dim the lights from the switch, because Hue bulbs really don’t like that. I’m also controlling these via Siri (through the Homekit component), but things get weird when I try to control an entire room containing both the Hue bulbs and the switches. For example, if I have four bulbs and one switch in my office, and I tell Siri to “dim the office to 50%”, it will attempt to dim both the bulbs AND the dimmer switches to 50%, which is great if you wanted strobe lights in the office, but I usually don’t.

So I’m wondering, if I create “light switch” devices for each of these dimmer switches, will they appear as simple “on/off” lights in HASS and Homekit? If so, I imagine that I could hide the “real” dimmer switches from Homekit, and leave only the “light switch” devices and Hue bulbs, and hopefully Homekit is smart enough not to try to dim a “light” that doesn’t support dimming.

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I think the concept of light switch was introduced as a convenient method to easily group together all lights, whether they can be dimmed or not. Previously, a light that could not be dimmed had to to defined as a switch component. Now you have the option of defining it as a light component based on the switch platform.

light:
  - platform: switch
    name: Christmas Tree Lights
    entity_id: switch.christmas_tree_lights

I haven’t tried it yet but I believe the answer is yes to the first part but a firm ‘I don’t know’ for the second part. :slight_smile: I guess it all depends on if the developers, who are responsible for the HomeKit integration, got the memo about the new-fangled “switch that is actually a light”. My guess it will probably work correctly but that’s yet another thing I need to try.