The best way to have smart lighting (share your thoughts!)

Hello guys,

Since I’ve started with all this home automation stuff I’ve always wondered the same: how to create the best (available) lighting setup.

I bought a Philips Hue pack and totally hated that when turning off the wall switch I couldn’t control the lights anymore. You know, sometimes it’s just easier and quicker to hit that switch instead of turn them on by your phone, your watch or even your voice.

So I bought a few Aqara Wall Switches (Zigbee). That way I was able to control the lights from HA, my phone, my watch or my voice and also directly from the wall! A great and seamless experience. But this setup had some limitations as I couldn’t tweak the temperature to follow circadian rhythm… something I really want to (see diagram below)




I could control my lights from wherever I wanted but as they were just normal lights temperature, colours or effects were out in the equation.

The I added some smart bulbs, a few are Yeelight and a few Domitech (Z-wave bulbs). This way I could control both the power on/off state and also colour, temperature or other characteristics the bulb could have (see diagram below)




BUT this is not perfect, for example the Yeelight bulbs take a little bit to turn on when using the wall switch… it’s like 0.5 seconds but it feels weird. Also you are not able to control them (change colour, effect, temp, brightness) until they connect to the wifi. As for the Z-wave light, these turn on almost immediately but when you cut electricity on a Z-wave bulb HA shows like it’s turned on, when you turn on electricity again sometimes the bulb will turn off. In general weird behaviour.

So far Yeelight shows best behaviour, but they are a bit on the poor side when referring to lumens so I feel like they’re better suited for accent light (coming to my way it’s the new Philips ceiling lamp, btw!)

I would love to hear your thoughts, just please have in mind that I do really need to have physical control by using a smart wall switch for guest-proof and non-geeky-proof people around the house!

PD: I know this is currently not a “project” but 1) I don’t think there’s a better place to post it and 2) it might become a project?

Personally, I intended to do it all with z-wave all round originally, but hue is far better IMO, so now all my new stuff is hue, and that’s all I’ll be buying for lighting in the future.

Switch wise, what I’m doing is taking off the old switch, wiring it together in a terminal block to be permanently on, covering with a blanking plate and sticking a hue tap to the blanking plate. This way there is still a ‘manual switch’ where you (or your guest) expects it to be, with the added bonuses of them being 4 switches in one, but also you can take them off the bracket and move them around if you want.

The plan is always (eventually) that you wouldn’t need switches at all and it would all be intuitive, but sometimes there just needs to be a switch, so a hue tap on a blanking plate works well.

I actually have my living room on z-wave with no manual switch at all, so it’s either shout at the echo, get my phone out or switch the circuit breaker off! I haven’t needed the last option yet, and I’m hoping to make it completely intuitive with automations, but for bedrooms and bathrooms, unless you have sensors everywhere and awesome flawless automations, I think a couple of switches are necessary.

If I won a chunk of cash tomorrow and spent if kitting out a new house, I’d use hue bulbs everywhere, with sensors, automations and everything, and just have a couple of hue taps dotted round for ‘fail-safe’ situations.

i use a direction that lots off people dislike:

HA --> light

if HA should fail me i can use a remote, but thats normally unused.
i try to avoid the need to use mobile, pc, switches, voice as much as i can.

there is 1 moment in the day i use a switch on the wallpanel or my voice, and that when i go to bed.
during the day lights are controlled by motion, by time and by daylight.

i think the best way to have smart lightning is when you dont need to think a second about the light. no need for switches, or any kind of personal action.
whats the use of HA if it is just another way to control the lights? it gets downgraded to a advanced remote.

i think the power of something like HA is when it does what i want without any action from my side.

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Functionality-wise, having smart bulbs is the best. And you can remove the wall switch and put a Xiaomi Akara sticky switch (the one that has no wires) over the “hole”. An alternative is to can hack the button or the door sensor, connect two wires and to the normal wall switch and put it behind the switch (the mains to the light should no longer be connected to the switch!).

Unfortunately, I don’t like the idea that if my router gets messed up or my ISP needs to spend some time troubleshooting the fiber wire for two hours (has happened before), or my raspberry pi goes down, I will not be able to turn the ceiling lights on…

My suggestion is to use smart bulbs on wall and table lamps (and maybe some non-critical ceiling lights), and smart switches for the ceiling lights.

your isp should never have anything to do with your lights.
lights are local
if my rpi goes down it will automaticly restart. if not i have a backup sd card and a backup rpi.
and if thats not working i have a remote :wink:

My current router is from my ISP (planing to change that in the future) and the lights I have are wifi (yeelight), so they connect to it…

What happens if you sit on the couch and read a book? Does your light stay on? or do you have to wave your hand periodically?. How do you control it?

in that case no matter what you use as automation your router will Always be a critical point.
so a then it would be smart to implement a second router (with just intranet function) into your network.
normally its powered off, but if HA sees that your router isnt available then you let HA powerup your backup router.

@anilet the lights in the livingroom dont depend on motion. that wouldnt be smart.
i also often see that people try to switch off lights as much as possible. trying to use automation to save power.
i dont think thats a smart thing. if you implemented LED you probably will need many years before you can get the money from automating back with powersavings. (for sure when you have a wife like mine, who Always switched off lights behind me even if i wanted it to stay on :wink: )
automation is about comfort not about saving. and if its done right it will save some on some places and cost some more on other places. giving you more comfort for the same price in the end.

there are automations that can save money though. 1 hour saved in a year from smart heating brings more then switching off lights to much.

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what I hate of the HUE system is that when there is a power cut, and then back on, all lights go ON and stay so, until someone turns them OFF

you want this everywhere?

Otherwise you can put HUE when you want the effect above, in all others ZWAVE or ZIGBEE wall switches (and normal bulbs)

It happens the same with Yeelight, so I have an automation in case I’m not at home and one of the lights is turned on, I turn off all the lights.

Wow thanks a lot for the replies!

I agree that tracking motion could be interesting (something like http://xandem.com more precisely, not the current motion sensors) but sadly it’s not quite there yet. Also even with that you sometimes just want to turn the lights on/off with the wall switch. Voice is great but not suitable in some situations.

I think I ideally want regulable temp bulbs on all the ceiling + smart wall switches. Then the accent lights could be triggered by scenes or motion

It is not about saving money, when you get used to the lights turning on and off by itself, you want it everywhere, not just in some rooms.
I am forever trying different things like FIND, Ble-Trackers, multiple motion sensors and even the new Radar Motion sensors..

For me smart lightning is about to set the right lightning for the right time/conditions. It’s much more than turning of lights when you leave home.

If you use HUE, I think a great way to have a fast and responsive way to turn on your lights is to let the hue bridge handle the turn on/off.

What hass should do is to modify scenes:

  • The LUX is high, no light needed. Hass modifies the standard scene for room x.
  • It’s gettig a little bit darker, hass modifies the standard scene and set the light brightness accordingly when you turn on the light manually.
  • It’s too dark in a room, hass triggers the a table light (or another light) automatically if you’re home.
  • Night light…

This is what smart lightning is for me. The lightnig is adapted to the circumstances. It gives you the right amount of light you want when you need it, and automatically turns on a light if it’s to dark somewhere.

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You could easily write some logic that takes care of that. For example if I’m not home and a light turns on, hass turns it off and gives me a notification.

I don’t think it’s that easy sadly, I mean… the problem is the different scenarios that could happen and that you need to be ready for.

For example, LUX is not always a good way to decide if you want the lights on/off. You could have closed the blinds because you don’t want the daylight coming through the window so you don’t actually want to turn on the lights

Also turning on lights just because you are at home it’s just a waste of electricity if you are not in that room, so they could be trigger by motion and then turned off manually/voice so you don’t have to be waving your hand around to keep them on.

As far as I know you can set if you want to remember its previous state or turn them always on (at least on Yeelight)

You can do it with a bit of logic rules. For automated trigging the light, it needs more work.

For manual turning of the light, it’s pretty straight forward. You push a button and the light is set accordingly to the room circumstances.

Yes, you could use motion sensor or beacons to detect wich room you are in to turn on the main lightning. My example was more of turning on a candle light, I don’t like it to be too dark even if I’m not in the room.
It’s note about saving money, more about setting the mood of the room.

And it was just an example of how you could use it. ymmw.

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Yeah! absolutely. I have been thinking a lot about automatic lighting and when it seems I’ve got everything covered a new scenario comes up to my mind haha

I think for now my best option based on my current usage and the people I live with is to have smart wall-switches and then dumb or smart ceiling bulbs depending if I want to tweak temperature/color. Then turn it on when motion is detected between X time (I could use LUX on rooms that makes sense for me) and turn them off by voice or using the wall switch.

If I go beyond that not sure how it would work.

Again, if you guys want let’s just continue the discussion and start thinking on ideas and stuff we can try to push forward the smart lighting!

That’s absolutely a way of doing it. I use mainly smart wall switches to turn on my lights, automated lightning is more of experimental for me.

But using smart wall switches, the wall switch can turn on a scene that can be modified by hass. This is how I do today and it’s pretty straight forward. Use that with time-conditions and it works for night lightning too.