I see a lot of posts like this one that question why someone wants to use Smart Switches with smart bulbs. The short answer is color and color temperature.
With that out of the way, what are the best switches knowing that I’ll just be bypassing the power and using them just as a switch to trigger HA? Should I be worried about lag?
I was looking at the TP-Link switches but am open to any switch that will work with with HA and do what I want.
EDIT: I should mention that this is a large setup. about 175 smart bulbs in a home with 8 bed, 9 bath and typical shared room locations. Not sure if that changes the situation.
Generally what you want is to setup say shelly or other relays behind the switches you like the design with in a decoupled mode, this will allow the physical switch to control the on off state of the light but not disable power to the smart lighting that needs it.
I’m not sure if there is a smart switch that has the option to be setup in decoupled mode directly other than the remote style ones.
This is one of the videos that can explain setup options:
I second the recommendation of Shelly devices installed behind whatever switch you like. Mine have been rock solid. Though they are wifi, so if you have as many as it sounds, you’ll definitely want to invest in a quality wifi infrastructure such as Ubiquiti.
One benefit of the Shelly approach is that it would be relatively simple (i.e., configuration, not hardware change) to restore any desired switch to it’s normal “control the power” function if/when desired… such as when you decide to sell the house.
(Also - spend the few extra bucks and get the UL certified Shelly’s.)
Thanks for the video, I’ll watch it and report back. If I start with smart bulbs and go later to the smart switch option, will I have any issues? I’m thinking that some bulbs blink when you first plug them in for example or have delays when they are powered off. Perhaps I won’t have that issue?
As long as you leave the switch on until you setup a decoupled setup you have less issues, some smart bulbs after being off for a set time will go back into paring mode.
The Shelly device looks great. I assume if I have a 4 way box for 4 switches that I can have a “Shelly 4” that will allow me to manage all these from that single box vs 4x1 switches?
They also seem to have a 3 way that will work with a 3 way setup for a set of lights?
I use several setups in my home.
I have the Zemismart ZMR4 scene switch in my bedroom as I can take the remote to bed. I have a mix of standard bulbs and smart bulbs there. Behind the battery operated scene switch I’ve wired up a smart switch module that sits in the wall. I’ve programmed the scene switch to turn of the smart bulbs at the bulb, not the switch and the regular bulbs are turned off at the switch module.
This, for me is the best of both worlds as you can actually cut the power to the smart bulbs as well in case you need to work on the lights without having to go to the fuse box. I believe that’s a requirement in some countries as well and I personally wouldn’t want someone that would buy my place in the future to think he’s turned off the lights (via the scene switch) thinking he’s safe to work on the lights only to be zapped as the circuits for the smart bulbs are still powered. Yes I know, you should always switch off the mains to work on this stuff, but not everybody does that and whilst I’m aware of the situation, a future owner might not be as conscious about this.
It is the more expensive of the options though as you are doubling up on cost for the scene switch and the switch module.
In other areas of the house (predominantly where I don’t have smart bulbs) I use smart wall switches directly wired to the lights.
In yet other parts, I use those same smart wall switches as a scene switch. Basically those aren’t wired to anything aside from Live and Neutral to power the device and I automate the function of the switches to trigger smart bulbs. The downside of this that there’s always audible relay clicking even though they don’t actually do anything as nothing is wired to them.
But I’ve run into a bit of a conondrum myself as to what the best approach is for those places where I have a smart wall switch that needs to operate both smart as well as regular bulbs.
If I hardwire the smart wall switch to the circuit with the smart bulbs, I’m basically cutting them out of my Zigbee mesh every time I turn them off at the switch rather than at the bulb. So I was wondering if anyone knows the impact of doing it this way? Does it have a huge detrimental effect on the Mesh??
I have a house that is basically made out of front of house and back of house seperated by a 10m corridor. My smart bulbs in that hallway (IKEA Tradfri’s) serve as repeaters and I’m thinking they’re almost solely responsible for carrying the zigbee mesh from my router to the other side of the house so not sure if that’s advisable.
If I don’t wire the smart bulbs to the smart wall switch, instead using the smart switch as a scene switch for that circuit, I won’t be able to cut the actual power to the bulbs anymore as I would have hardwired that circuit to always have power, creating the aforementioned risk.
I definitely don’t want to triple up by having AND a smart wall switch AND a smart module AND smart bulbs for 1 light circuit to eliminate that risk.
If I don’t wire up the smart bulbs to the smart switch, I could just wire an old dumb mech that I could seat behind the smart switch to turn off the power to the circuit instead, but that’s far from practical either. May as well turn the lights of at the fuse box at that point.
I’m definitely not going to triple up by adding a smart module to the situation not only for cost reasons, but also because I simply don’t have the space to put a module behind the smart wall switch
Anyone with any recommendations for that last scenario?
My recommendation for all your scenarios is to look up switches with decoupled mode (either in this forum or google).
Most Aqara switches have this feature and there might be other manufacturers which offer the same functionality.
To make this work in all scenarios (and avoid the unnecessary relay clicks), you simply wire them to the bulbs like a normal switch, then set them to decoupled mode. They will then function just like your scene switches.
If you ever need to cut the actual power to the switch, all you need to to is click a button* in HA to disable decoupled mode and they will work like normal switches, triggering the relay and cutting off power to the bulbs.
*If you’re using Z2MQTT, decoupled mode is a normal switch entity. If you’re using ZHA, you need to send a cluster command manually to toggle it unfortunately.
This is the first I’ve heard of decoupled switches, very interesting! Thx for bringing that to my attention @ShadowFist!
And yes that would have been perfect were it not for 2 things:
Aqara don’t really offer anything other than the square EU 86x86 form factor. Since I’m in Australia where we have rectangular shape switches, that would mean I’d have a lot of plaster work in my future
i’ve just bought about 25 of these and have installed all but 2 at the moment
Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, they don’t support decoupled mode
My problem is exacerbated by the fact that my buttons have LED indicators and I’ve linked up multiple switches that control the same light to accurately reflect the on/off status.
That means that i’m SOL whatever I end up doing:
either I wire the smart bulbs to the switch and run the risk of a degraded mesh at times whilst also having to workaround the issue that I can’t control the bulbs until I’ve turned on the wall switch (which has dashboard implications)
or I wire to the switch but somehow (through automation for example) make sure that those always stay on. The downside of this being that the LEDs on the switch won’t accurately reflect state of the bulbs when the bulbs are off but the switch is still on
or I bypass the switch, hardwire the smart bulbs and use the corresponding buttons as scene switch which I’m not keen on for the reasons I mentioned previously. It’s also annoying for a different reason: if those bulbs ever become unresponsive, it becomes a nightmare to try and reset them
But it looks like that last option will have to be the lesser of the evils I’m afraid.
Yeah man, that sucks. If I were in your shoes I’d burn my house down, claim the insurance money & move to a different country. Ideally one with 86x86 switches
None of the tuya zigbee wall switches do in general.
Can you open it up and check the chip on the pcb?
There’s a custom zigbee firmware here where you can enable decouple/multi press and other features assuming yours have the same chip
That would be the easiest option bypassing the switch, but then you’d have to hit the breakers if something goes wrong with the lights. Can you bind the switches to the bulb?
Ah damnit @ferbulous, why’d you go and have to do that
Now you’ve got me drooling at the thought of being able to upgrade these
I’m not really seeing how to open up the cover on these without breaking the plastic
But even if I could and I turn out to have the right chip, soldering is an absolute nogo for me. I’ve tried in the past and I mess up everything I touch. Stresses me out beyond measure. Any chance you could use these clip-on type connectors to flash? Really keen on this now even if it means taking out all my swittches from the walls again
I suppose you can’t determine the chip from just the model number? Z2M identifies these as TS0014 for the 4gang version, TS0013 for the 3gang and soforth.
Regarding binding, haven’t tried directly binding yet. I just bundle the bulbs up in a group in Z2M and control them that way through HA. What would binding accomplish in such a scenario?
Some details on teardown steps with the wifi version which should be the same with zigbee version
Looking at the description, it’s likely using ZTU which is not JN5169 chip
On the plus side, you can still swap the chip because it’s not integrated to the board
Basically you can still control the lights from the switch even if your HA/coordinator is down
Lol at “The switch is very easy to open”. I probably could get to it given his description, but with all the things that need to happen next, which is just too daunting a task for me, I’m not even going to start by opening it up. I would never be able to solder that chip on there in the way the video does so unless someone in Australia is happy to be paid for the pleasure of these stress levels (at least stress for me, probably a piece of cake for a skilled ‘solderer’ - if that’s even a word ), I’m very very regretfully going to have to give this one a miss.
Already have too many projects on the go as is and this one would be very time consuming for me. Wifey is already annoyed that the house has been a mess whilst the switches were being put in
I haven’t had one outage on HA/Z2M in what is probably about a year since having transitioned from Hubitat to Home Assistant, so not really too concerned with that.
Hope I’m not jinxing it by saying this
The only thing I’ve had is a power outage a couple of times and you’re not controlling anything then anyway. I’ll keep it in mind though.
Thx for making me dream @ferbulous. You never know, if I ever come across a soldering expert, I might start doing this as the amount of work involved will be the same then as it is now as almost all my switches are already installed.
