Unfortunately my house being around 20 years old, means there is no Neutral wire at the switch, only live so the majority of them will not work.
I know that some must exist that work without it but just cannot seem to find them.
Did anyone here go through the same and maybe assist in my search? Thanks
When I first started I went the same route and used a livovo switch. But there’s a catch as a small current has to pass thru the switch and this is enough to make led bulbs to flash from time to time. It was spooky on my living room :-). To solve this you have to install a small capacitor between the wires of the bulb.
That’s pretty nice, didn’t find these, will need to look into it (also need 2 and 3 gang versions, which I couldn’t find so far) but the other switches that I need to install in-between the light and the switch are a no go due to the whole physical switch is off then no light via wifi either.
Also found this livolo switch which apparently uses zigbee https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32919238619.html No neutral wire required and in theory I should be able to somehow add it to my smartthings hub
I just ordered the SONOFF T4EU1C. Do they allow flashing with Tasmota, hopefully with the DIY mode, or will they work with reliably with HA as they are?
The picture at the top shows a N terminal but you are correct, it states in the description that no neutral wire needed. The hub is expensive. Do they work with the SONOFF hub?
There are non. The T4 only has 1 channel.
I am going to try the RF route too. Didn’t suggest it earlier because I wasn’t sure if it will work. I have ordered mine and waiting for delivery
I believe it should and also I don’t think you need the broadlink hub. As I understand it, if you are using the sonoff basic rf as a switch, it will give status feedback to HA and allows you to control it via app, HA and everything.
The RF switch is just a remote for the sonoff basic rf. it gives an additional method to control the switch. I need this because (just like sd_dracula) I have some family members / guess that will turn off the physical switch and disable the sonoff basic.
Sonoff basic rf should give feedback to HA with or without the rf switch. I will confirm this when my units arrive
I don’t know about the switches you’re talking about but I can tell you my Broadlink is cool but anything I control with it–unless the device has its own way of talking to HA–has no way to provide status information.
IR Example: My TV is not smart. Broadlink can turn it on, control channels, but HA doesn’t know if the TV is on. If I turn the TV on from HA, great, HA would know it just sent the ON signal. But what if someone turns off the TV with the actual TV remote or the button on the TV itself? HA doesn’t know that and would still show ON. I actually don’t have my TV in HA because of this and use the Broadlink for a phone remote I built in a PHP webpage (lets me hit icons for channels so I can put on Bravo for my wife by tapping an icon on my phone instead of having to remember it’s channel 56-4 or whatever, or so my 5 year old can say “hey google turn on the tv” or “put on pbs”).
RF Example: Basically the same as the IR example. I have RF remotes that came with ceiling fans, but otherwise the fans aren’t smart. I was hoping the Broadlink device could “hear” when a user turns on their ceiling fan at night, so I could pass status information back to HA but the Broadlink devices aren’t listening to RF constantly. It’s still a great device because I can use it to send a “turn off all ceiling fans” at 8am command without knowing if the fans are on or off, which is really the only problem I was trying to solve. It does hurt my soul that I don’t have this status information in HA though. All bedrooms are close enough that one Broadlink can reach each bedroom’s fan with RF.
That is what I expected. Although if you use RF to switch a SONOFF with Tasmota like Anand suggested, it could then send mqtt status to HA but then why not just have a WiFi switch like the new T4EU1C if it will take Tasmota or work directly in Lan mode with HA.
