I have searched all over for this but I am not sure if I am asking the right question so its hard to find.
I have a friend who has control4 and he was showing me the other day that the switches that he has do not have to control the load that they are connected to. Essentially, the switch is a separate device than the controller behind it. This allows him to take worthless light switches and turn them into very useful switches.
I am curious if there are any switches that HA can use that can do this. I have a few light switches in my house that are absolutely useless and/or only get used in conjunction with another switch. I’d love to be able to use a those switches to control another load somewhere else and have the connected load be controlled by an adjacent button. Not sure if this is possible!
Add any smart switch to an existing spot and just don’t connect a load. (Just power and neutral). Then you can automate based on the state change of the switch.
There are sonoff and Shelly products that will change state base on the change of a normal switch. Wire the sonoff to the switch and don’t connect the load to the sonoff and you can again automate base on state change.
In theory this works, but I won’t guarantee all switches will work in this way. I have seen my Insteon dimmers act oddly when no load it applied (because the light fixture hadn’t been hooked up yet).
A Z-Wave dimmer I just picked (Inovelli Dimmer Red) up had instructions on how to change the settings to do exactly that kind of bypass. I believe the switch version of that has that option as well. They are definately out there, you would have to check the manual for any switch you are interested in to find out for sure.
This gets into a more advanced topic. But I used ESPHome to program a Shelly 1 to control the Hue lights in a chandelier with the standard light switch while leaving the relay powered at all times.
I loike the look of those inovelli’s simple and you can play with the LED colors to mean different things. I will have to check them out.
If I were to bypass the load by not connecting it, could I connect it to the adjacent switch instead to power it? Its two lights outside my home that I always turn on together, so I actually want them to just be connected vs two different switches.
Lets see if I can understand your goal. I think you want to do the following:
- Switch #1: bypass and remove so the smart light light is constantly powered.
- Switch #2: replace with smart switch, so there is only one switch to control both lights.
If this is the case, then yes that should work. If you want both lights to turn on when the switch is physically pressed up once, then you just set an automation that turns on the second light when the switch is turned on.
If you want to control each light separately, that can be done as well. You would need to setup your Inovelli dimmer / switch for controlling scenes, which is a little bit tricky, but worth the effort. Then you can use single tap to control one light and a double tap to control the second light.
I have 5 Insteon switches I use this way with no issue. Three are used as part of a three way switch configuration. One switch controls load + the second switch and the second switch controls the first switch. The other two control smart outlets. The work great for me.
Most smart switches will work this way and can make the house much more functional. I am amazed how many builders put the switch to control an outlet right next to each other rather than controlling the outlet on the other side of the room.
I’m right there with you. We moved into our house new but did not design it. It’s absurd the decisions they make on some of the switches. Sometimes I understand what they were going for but other times it just makes no sense.
Any way you can explain the wiring of your set up? I really want to work this out and make sure I don’t burn my house down
I can only explain what I do with Insteon. The Insteon switches all have three wires, power, neutral and load. If you want to control the load then the load connects to the downstream dumb device ( like a standard socket or fan). To change this where a smart switch controls a smart outlet, I connect the hot wire to the power and the neutral to the neutral and I cap off the load wire. I also connect the original dumb device to the same input as the power therefor making the dumb device always hot and not controlled by the switch. I then install a smart outlet wherever I want the smart switch to control it. I link the two so that the smart outlet responds to the smart switch.
If I want a three way switch, I have one switch which connects the hot wire to the power and neutral to neutral as above and I use the load wire to connect to the dumb device I want to control. This is a standard setup. The first smart switch now controls the dumb device. I then install a second smart switch where I want the second control to be. Usually this is replacing an existing three way switch setup (more about that in a minute.) I only use the power and neutral wires in that second smart switch and configure the second switch to control the first smart switch. This way the second switch turns on the first switch which turns on the load.
If you are replacing an existing three way switch setup you have to set up the second smart switch a certain way. The second smart switch will no longer control the load as the original dumb switch did. It controls the first smart switch which controls the load. So, you have to connect the hot input wire to load wire of the dumb device you want to control (i.e. a ceiling light or outlet) this way any time the first smart switch is on, the load is on. Hopefully that is clear.
Looking at your original request to have two loads controlled by one switch here is how I would do it with Insteon.
- Replace both of the current dumb swiches with smart switchs where each one controls the device the original dumb switches controlled. Nothing special here.
- Link both switches to each other so that they can each turn the other one on/off (or dim if appropriate).
This allows you to turn on/off either switch and both lights go on/off.