I love these remotes because you don’t have to guess what the buttons are for. And I was able to set some automations that all the members of my household understand.
single press ON => ON
double press ON => Relax (some level of bright)
tripple press ON => Read (some level of really bright)
long press ON => Progressively brighten (steps)
single press OFF => OFF
double press OFF => Dimmed (some level of dim)
tripple press OFF => Nightlight (some level of really dim)
long press ON => Progressively dim (steps)
the down side, there are been so many issues with them, and I find them to not always be reliable.
Example:
However everyone in my family sort of understands it’s finicky, and we can just keep pressing the button until it kind of works.
I would love a really good/reliable battery powered dimmer switch to replace these. I currently have 5 of them in my house… I’m okay to be patient and progressively replace them. I also would prefer some whose battery levels are somewhat reliable.
I’ve always found them totally reliable. The only family/visitor issues are that you need an initial press to wake them up if they haven’t been used for a while - and that’s by design, nothing to do with battery levels. I don’t think there’s a way round that for a battery-operated device.
Have you tried binding them directly to the light(s)? That way you don’t need any automations and they will still work even if HA is down.
Otherwise, if they only “kind of” work I’d be looking at the quality of the Zigbee network. More routers?
It’s not quite one to one when it comes to the light… for example… in my bedroom I have 2 lightstrips (phillips), one dresser lamp (phillips bulb) and closet light (ikea). the dimmer remote’s role is just to turn these 3 on and off and dim etc. Hmm so you can bind one remote to multiple lights? that’s an interesting propsition…
other battery devices and sensors behave a tad bit better when it comes to battery. granted these devices are not triggered by a button press but I rarely face any issues with the motion sensors for example. even humidity sensors seem to behave better as well…
and finally Re: Network, i’m only highlighting the dimmer switches here, and they all seem to find a repeater close by. The way my network is, I put a zigbee smart plug in each room and then they tend to be the repeaters so that other battery devices don’t play that role.
