Summary: I want smart bulbs to be always on keeping traditional switches (the ones I already have, “non smart” physical switches), but be controlled by the switches and resilient to HA failures.
I’m trying to set up my smarthome using HA and I’m finding a few problems to fulfil my needs. I would it to, at least, support these:
- Be resilient to HA / coordinator being down for the basics (basically lights). If HA goes down, at least, I would like to be able to turn lights on/off and open/close shutters (this should be no problem). If a new update comes and screws everything, or if the coordinator just “dies”, I want to be able to illuminate my house.
- I would like to have smart bulbs to be able to change temperature and color of the bulbs.
- I would like to be able to use regular physical switches so that I (and/or my wife ) can choose from different models or leave the current switches.
For those needs I’m testing the Aqara relay (LLKZMK11LM) behind a switch to power a smart bulb (Ikea Trådfri) using Zigbee2Mqtt. But I’m finding a problems to configure to fulfil my needs.
It would be like this:
Physical switch --> Aqara relay (On/off) --> Ikea smart bulb
With this, I can turn on/off the bulb at any moment, both physically and remotely via HA. But I find a few problems:
1.- If I turn off the switch, I can’t set the light temperature / brightness until I turn on the light, and then wait to change it. Furthermore, the bulb is a router and could cause network mesh problems when going off.
2.- If I turn off the bulb, then pressing the switch just does “nothing” visible. I could fix this through an automation, I guess. And if the switch goes off when the bulb was off, through HA I could re-set to on. It would add a bit of a delay, but not much, I guess. But the bulb would go physically off for a moment, not desirable.
Then…, how could I configure to properly manage physical switches and smart lights together with the better of both worlds? (basically being able to work with HA broken / powered off).
I think the solution would be to use relays “bound” to the bulbs. But, at least, the Aqara LLKZMK11LM aren’t able to do that. Some remotes are able to do that, but I don’t want Zigbee remotes to control the lights of the house, but physical switches.