Switch with no neutral wire

Hi

Last year I gave up with my idea of building a smart lightning solution at home as there were lots of limitations. I have g9 bulbs, and my switch has no neutral wire.

I don’t want to replace the fittings or the wiring so the two options I had was to install a smart switch with no neutral wiring, or buy a g9-gu10 adapter and install smart bulbs (there are no smart g9 bulbs)

There was almost no smart switches with no neutral wire, and the bulb adapter didn’t work at all so I had little options to choose.

Has anything changed since then? Is there any good solution that might work for what I want?

Thanks

There are a couple new players in the ‘this old house with no neutral’ world. However if you can afford it go with the standby: lutron caseta. Nothing I have of all my HA devices has been as reliable as the switches, dimmers and hub in caseta family.

The Shelly 1L works without neutral wire:

I haven’t tried this one jet but severely other products from Shelly.

Also love the fact, that you can flash and manage them through ESPHome without the need for MQTT.

You don’t have to though, they work out of the box with the Shelly integration and no need for cloud.

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for ‘no neutral’ switches I would strongly suggest a Dimmer Bypass. If you go down the path of Shelly 1L switches as referenced by @seanomat - Shelly also sell a Dimmer Bypass

The reason for a dimmer bypass when you have LED lights or low watt lights on the switch with no neutral… Without a dimmer bypass the light may flicker as a switch without Neutral never really turns off but rather ‘dims’ the power to < 10watts or so to keep power to the switch/relay which can be enough to flicker a LED light but not power the light.

I learnt this the hard way… I bought a double Tuya Zigbee no neutral switch with plate and had an electrician install it. The electrician installed it on a circuit with an existing LED replacement florescent tube that uses less than 10watts when ON and when OFF it strobed/flickered.

When i asked him what to do; he suggested replacing the entire light fitting which i did for almost $400 including labour (as i wasnt too attached to the florescent tube enclosure) which fixed the issue as the track lights i replaced it with used enough power to prevent flickering - 20watts of power.

In hindsight - he could have suggested a <$20 dimmer bypass to prevent the strobing

Are you sure about this?

I was a fan of Shelly until my units started to drop off my wifi network and power cycle the attached device withOUT input. I was lucky to be able to convert 7 of 8 Shelly US plugs to tasmota and they are working without these problems. Wifi networks, as can zigbee and zwave, can have compatibility issues that can really bite you. Do a lot of testing before committing.

Bulb compatibility and having to wire in a bypass capacitor are again why I recommend Lutron Caseta. They publish a list of LED and other bulbs that work with their units and I have yet to need a bypass cap with their dimmers and switches.

I have Insteon for a ton of switches, diimmers, water sensors, etc.in my house. Most reliable thing I have in HA. They have a no neutral option not, but I haven’t tried it as I do not have a need. Based on my experience though I would surprised if it wasn’t top notch.

I sense the Insteon folks similar to the Lutron folks have some people that have done a good job of bridging the ‘old school’ electrical environment with a solid automation platform. I think there are some zwave and zigbee vendors that have some engineers of similar ilk. A good and rare group of people, especially for those with older homes and electrical systems.

Thanks all. Yeah, Lurton caseta was one of the ones I looked at but I couldn’t see anybody selling this in the uk. Are any of you from the uk? Any advise about where to buy it?

Thanks

ouch, apologies! idiots such as i in usa still don’t have switches on our outlets and ASSume the whole world drives on the right side of road and uses 120 volt single phase… i think i looked a while back and lutron does not have a uk offering, darn!

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In the process of getting rid of all the Tuya based switches I stumbled over these:

ZigBee Wall Touch Smart Light Switch With Neutral/No Neutral, No Capacitor

I ordered one 1-Gang, one 2-Gang and one 3-Gang switch a while ago to test them. They instantly connect to Zigbee2MQTT and show up in HA without further configuration needed.

No need to wire in a bypass capacitor and no flickering whatsoever. They just work great out of the box and are officially supported.

The only downside is that these switches don’t work as routers but they work as end devices only.

fwiw, I also use those same switches in the US version and they do work well. Very tight fit in the electrical box is the main problem.

Not sure if this Iolloi dimmer would be any good to you.
I can’t say how reliable it is as I don’t have it yet-hoping it drops in price! But it seems to receive good reviews.

Check out Inovelli’s line of dimmers. They are z-wave and feature rich. They are getting stock back in August. My home is full of them!