Hello everyone! I am current re-doing my smart home and this time planning first rather than cobbling together everything which is the current state of affairs. I will be using Home Assistant to control it all, but still need physical switches for visitors and WAF.
To clear one item up first:
I understand the differences between smart switches, and bulbs. I know that they both have their fit, but what I am looking for is suggestions for scenarios when you need both.
Use case scenario: In my theater, I want the ability to use a physical switch to control the lighting. However, I still want to be able to control brightness and temperature and thus require a smart bulb.
So, what smart switch and smart bulb combos are you using with home assistant?
You dont actually need the physical switch to turn off power to the bulbs, it can simply force them to be off or on. I however do not do this as I only use smart bulbs for niche uses like color coded alerts, as I have an extremely high sensitivity to the PWM frequency the bulbs use to control their brightness, and I do NOT like it.
There are several options. You can use a Shelly relay with the switch in “detached” mode, and still maintain your regular style light switch, but behind the scenes the switch will not control power to the bulbs, but send a signal to HA to turn the bulbs on and off. Since it is still a relay, you still can power the bulbs off completely by turning the relay off, but the switch connected does not activate the relay directly.
The remotes are for direct control of the automation system, like turning on several non-interconnected systems at the same time, or controlling dimmer levels for a specific “scene”.
In addition to the Pico remotes, and the other Caseta wall switches in a few locations, the only other smart switches are a few Shelly relays and scene controllers behind old school switches. I would already be using more Caseta switches but the wife does not like the button style, and wants to maintain as much of the regular switches as possible, so I am really only using them where a dimmer is required or where the light is automated and she will never have to touch it.
For smart bulbs I am only using Philips Wiz bulbs, since they have local integration with instant cloud-free response, but they still need a phone app for initial setup.