I have been trying to do research and trying to get the best smart wall switches. Z-wave and Zigbee are too expensive so I am stuck with getting wifi switches but can anyone suggest which ones work? I was looking into buying Treatlife switches and doing the chip swap to run Tasmota or ESPHome but i have heard development has stalled on Tasmota. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
I just updated my tasmota devices with the firmware that was released today, so it does not look like its stalled to me.
I use the SONOFF Basic if I want an ON/OFF (no dimming)
my Office one
as they are Smart Dum switches I don’t update their a firmware
don’t break what’s not broken
Don’t buy wifi switches you will regret it.
Yes zigbee ones are more expensive but they usually don’t need capacitor and wifi does.
Wifi switches are unstable, they frequently disconnect and it’s hard to reconnect them. Maybe they work with some expensive network equipment like unifi.
I tried tuya, sonof, flashed sonoff with tasmita. All the same thing.
The more expensive stuff is not too expensive. It is worth the money. In a span of 10 years it is actually cheaper, as you will not have to exchange it 
Less troubles, more reliability and so on. Think twice, calculate cost over lifespan.
I have seen this text a few times before and it is just not correct.
The difference between a ZigBee, zwave and WiFi device comes down to the radio chip and nothing more.
Some devices might use capacitors, but that is design decision on the electrical setup and it is not directly linked to the RF choice.
Besides that the WiFi is usually worse than the ZigBee and zwave ones.
ZigBee and zwave devices uses a standard protocol that is designed to control such devices, so integration and interoperability is somewhat ensured.
WiFi has no such protocols and each manufactor have to come up with a solution to this problem, which means a requirement for many different integrations and issue when some of them alter their solution without warning.
Maybe you are right but in my experience every wifi switch needed capacitor. Maybe newer ones doesn’t. I tried tuya, sonoff and sonoff with tasmota and they all needed capacitor to work with led bulbs.
On the contrary all zigbee switches that o have works without capacitor on different led bulbs.
WiFi and ZigBee use the same frequency.
All that is different is the protocol used.
Many manufacturers of RF chips have a ZigBee and WiFi version of the same chip that is directly interchangeable.
It only the software code that needs to be changed.
The thing is that I didn’t change bulbs. Just switches. I couldnt find single led bulb that works with wifi switches without capacitor.
I think that the reason behind this is that wifi just needs more power than zigbee for comunication. But I’m not sure about that.
You sockets have enough power to burn both WiFi and ZigBee chips to crisp.
The only reason I can come up with is that many of the WiFi switches are tuya switches, which are made by a huge number of different manufacturers, but on the same reference design.
That definitely is true. Thats also, why battery powered wifi devices eat batteries way faster, than zigbee or zwave.
But my zigbee switches are based on tuya chip AFAIK. And as i said. They operate led bulbs with out capacitor. That’s my experience with it
And maybe tuya have made a reference design for their ZigBee switch without capacitors and then most manufacturers use that.
It is incredible how similar those Chinese products are inside shell.
There seems to very very very little product development in those firms. It is just copy and sell.
I’m trying to understand… Could you help share a link or photo or make/model of this thing? How is this capacitor connected to your setup?
I have a feeling that, over the last day or so, we are not talking about the same “capacitor” here… maybe?
Well i cant because im on vacation. Try google tuya wifi light switch capacitor.
You can connect it in the wire junkcion box or on the light itself. As I know the main purpose of it to hold small amout of current between switch and bulb. Without it your bulbs will be always on or switch itsself will not work.
In neutral wire electrical setup capacitor are not needed, so they say. I don’t have that setup so I don’t know.
OK. So is the yellow thing what we are talking about here?
(Ref: I grabbed this pic via google image search… they are from aliexpress so no link - not planning to “endorse” any commercial link for the purpose of this discussion.)
Sidebar - would this yellow capacitor thing ever gets hot?
And, you are saying you have a zigbee wall switch that would work with no neutral setup? Would be interesting to learn which zigbee wall switch you are using. I might be in the market for a couple.
Yes that’s yellow thing is capacitor. I don’t know does capacitor gets hot. I have it in some bulbs for more than a year and it’s working. They hold really small amount of current.
Yeah I have bseed and moes zigbee wall switches. They do not need capacitor and works without neutral wire.
Moes is more expensive as it has neutral wire connection but it can work without neutral wire.
For my instalation bseed works best because it is very sensitive to touch.
Capacitors does not really get hot at all, but capacitors are one of the electrical components that often break first, so capacitors are in many cases the reason for a device limited life time.
I agree that a design without capacitors is better because it usually live longer, but the design is not limited to a certain type of RF module.
I have over 20 wifi swithces, devices…and not one of them ever disconnects. They did at first, but it turned out that i’ve had to tweak wifi settings a bit, now they are rock solid. My router is asus rt-ax88u, not some 15€ cheap crap one.
As already said, it’s all in the network equipment, wifi and zigbee run on same frequency, with same radio chips, just software (protocol) is different (FW).
Regarding that capacitor: this device eliminates noise, so it means you have devices, which cause noise when running. These things happen when you buy cheap lights/lamps/consumables. They tend to be noisy, especially chinese led lamps. I’ve had an example that my ethernet-over-powerline adatper lost connection because of chinese lamp noise when running. Buy “too expensive” stuff and you’ll never need that capacitor.
Here we have a saying: “i’m not so rich that i’d buy cheap stuff”…
So, conclusion is: (as already written) “too expensive” equipment is only correct one to buy. It’s not too expensive any more after few years.
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But you are speaking about 20 wifi devices. I didn’t experienced any problems running 20 wifi devices. Try running 50+ devices. I have 5 routers at home of which 2 of them are local wifi routers.
In the end we are just trying to run a smart home not money pit. And there always will be more expensive devices to buy.