I am planning my new home and am experimenting with Zigbee switches and lights. I am planning to have 24V DC in every room for lighting and want to have my lights as reliable as possible, so everything must be local, light switches should work even with my Zigbee coordinator being down and nothing should depend on 230/110V AC. Most of my lights will be LED strips controlled by Zigbee LED controllers and I am using Zigbee2MQTT with a Sonoff ZBDongle-E.
So my light switches should have Zigbee binding to their respective LED controllers but no matter what I tried I did not manage to sucessfully bind any switches to any lamps. I tried Ikea Rodret switches and a Tuya 4-button remote control with Tuya LED controllers, Ikea Tradfri bulbs and Philips Hue bulbs. I tried binding switches to bulbs in Z2M, I tried putting lights in a group, I tried Touchlink, I tried setting switches and bulbs in binding mode but I never managed to successfully bind anything to anything.
Does anybody have any tips for me what configuration or hardware I could try? I would like to stay on Z2M and I would prefer to not use 230V wall switches. Any combination of battery or 24V powered wall switches and 24V LED controllers that are proven to bind with each other directly would be very helpful. In theory all Zigbee 3.0 compliant devices should work but if someone has experience with this that would save me a lot of buying and trying.
It is a regular house but off-grid with solar and batteries, so energy efficiency is paramount. My thought was the exact opposite: Instead of spreading many AC-DC converters throughout the house I want to have one big converter which is much more efficient and run cables in each room. All LED controllers I have seen take 24V DC input anyway.
Copper isn’t cheap these days and long cable runs at low voltage mean voltage drops that are unacceptable. Ohms’ law applies. Inverse squared, not linear.
There is a reason why mains power is at far higher voltages and alternating current, over a century since electricity was first harnessed.
Do the costing for low voltage equipment before you start. Include cable and connectors. You will be shocked.
I am still researching this myself (I don’t have a working setup).
My understanding is lights / LED controllers need to support specific parts of the Zigbee protocol, specifically:
Zigbee groups.
Optionally: Zigbee (group) scenes.
If lights support Zigbee groups, they will respond to any command send to the group; it doesn’t matter if the command comes from the Hub/Coordinator or another device.
Hence the “brains” of the setup is actually going to be in the switches / dimmers you use, they need to understand that when placed into a group they should send group commands to:
Turn lights on/off.
Send brightness/dimming command.
Activate scenes (Optional)
In both Zigbee2MQTT and ZHA you can define Zigbee groups (I am not sure if ZHA supports Zigbee Scenes) so you should be able to test your lights / LED controllers to verify the first part, if that works you are going to need to figure out what your switches/dimmers are doing.
If you do make any progress on this, I would love to see an update on what you have discovered.
Thank you. You are right, all the DC cabling won’t be cheap. I will draw up a cost estimate for the additional cost. On the other hand 20 power supplies for lighting aren’t exactly cheap either if you don’t want cheap, uncertified components that can be a fire hazard.
The voltage drop for 2A (48W LED lighting is a lot) over 20 meters is 0.57V with 2.5mm² cables which is acceptable. I need to take a look at the efficiency of large DC converters under very small loads/idle.
For my setup long-term efficiency is more important than initial cost.
Thank you, this is about the same I was able to find out. I have an Aquara H2 switch coming because for my tests until now I only had my Ikea switches and a Tuya remote. I will come back here if I can find out anything.
I find it extremely surprising that Zigbee binding does not seem to be on people’s minds. Does everyone rely on their hub/HA always working and accept that they need to use flashlights if they don’t? Or do they use mains switches in bypass mode?
I would be surprised if switches and bulbs from different manufactures actually work together.
There are so many walled gardens in the automation space I wouldn’t be surprised if most people are forced to use HA since the direct path just doesn’t work.
AFAIC Zigbee binding is part of the Zigbee 3.0 standard which has been around for almost 10 years. I have read reports of Ikea Tradfri bulbs working with Friends Of Hue remotes but I had no luck with Ikea switches and Hue bulbs.
My Aquara switch just arrived so I will be able to do some more testing.
Yeah, I guess my requirements are somewhat unusual. So unusual that ChatGPT recommended to basically go just wire everything with KNX .
Aftermath: I abandoned the idea using Zigbee binding altogether. I am now using a few “room hubs” which are ESPHome devices connected to my home server over Ethernet. Switches are connected to GPIOs of these hubs either directly, via optocouplers or I2C multiplexer boards. Lights are connected over RS485 to either WLED controllers (for addressable LED strips) or to off-the-shelf DMX controllers (for PWM LED strips). I am still figuring out how to integrate sensors and smart plugs but I will put a lot of CAT7 ethernet cables throughout the house which can also be used for wired protocols like UART, Modbus, CAN, etc…
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