In common with a lot of people in the UK my house uses two wires for the lighting. Essentially the wires are from power to the light. I’m currently mostly using LightWave equipment which copes with this by essentially allowing a small amount of power through (which lights up LEDs if you don’t get the right ones).
My question is has anybody found any other devices that can be used in this manner. It feels like something others could do, and haven’t. I have wondered if switches like the Sonoff touch might send an on and off even if you don’t wire in the light. You could then automate this through HA to turn the light on and off with a separate sonoff basic or something by the light bulb. Challenge with this is it means if your HA server goes bad my wife will not be able to turn on / off the lights and that will end badly
Reason for starting to swap out the LW switches is that I have had a number of the sockets die on me, one was even so hot it was smoking. I’ve lost confidence in the sockets and if I’m moving away then I might as well do it as a whole…
Anyone got any thoughts? BTW no way to get a neutral through to the switch the conduit used is tiny and would not take another wire, even if I could get to any of it…
One solution is to use something like a sonoff basic fitted by the light itself (in the ceiling or inside the light fitting). Since you have your positive and negative needed to power the sonoff there. Then disconnect the wiring to the switch and route these wires to the sonoff GPIO pins.
So that when you use the light switch it triggers the GPIO pins which can be programmed to toggle the light. That way even if your wifi or HA server goes down you can still control the light separately while still maintaining control from HA.
Hi, Like you, I faced the same issue, I started off using Sonoff Basic, and a little soldering skills to allow external switch, but thankfully Sonoff have recently released a new device (Sonoff Mini) which already has connections for external switch. I place these above the ceiling rose (above the bulb, in the floor boards) which allows for 3 way switching and multiple bulbs, etc. I made a YouTube video a while ago (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM03KvdP-uA) for the Sonoff Basic, which I have now replaced with a Sonoff Mini, much easier.
Hi All, that sounds logical to me, thanks so much for the feedback. I had actually already bought a Sonoff mini when I saw one a week or so ago, just to play with. Means I have one to play with, along with the reflashing thing.
I can’t really use the whole thing in the loft though as I don’t have access to most of the wiring which means that what I can get at in the ceiling rose is just live in from the switch and a wire to a neural somewhere. I can put a remotely operated switch on this, I just can’t use the wire from the switch to trigger the sonof. I can though put the mini at the switch end and use that to just to change state with the switch, using automation to trigger the actual light.
Actually now I am wondering about this. My issue is that the lighting rose is under floorboards in the loft. I pulled a single cable from there to a place that I could put the connections. so I could disconnect the switch wires in the rose and then run an extra wire out.
Damn it, the weekend is over and now I have to wait till next weekend to give it a go
