What WiFi light switches should I choose?

Hardware
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I’m currently building a house. I plan to buy smart switches for all my smart switches (65+ switches) and have the electrician install them. I hope to make the right decision once and not have to re-do my switches in the future.

A few musts:

  • I want WiFi switches. I haven’t had the best luck with Z-Wave or Zigbee and I will have a UniFi Wifi setup in my new house, so I don’t have concerns about overloading or connectivity.
  • I’ll need some single-pole, some 3-way, and some dimmer switches. I’d prefer for these to all be the same brand of switch, or at least look the same/similar.
  • Due to the WAF, they need to be good looking switches. Clean and modern.
  • I’m fine with TASMOTA or ESPHome, but I am not going to solder on 65+ light switches. I might be willing to open the switches and install the software if the switch has jumpers.

Currently, I’m leaning towards Kasa/TP-Link switches. They look good, work locally without the cloud, and are relatively inexpensive (~$15). But, they only support local polling, so switch state updates can take awhile, and I’m a little concerned about future HA updates causing problems since it seems the integration isn’t worked on a lot. I would block the TP-Link switches from the internet, so they won’t ever get an update that could mess anything up.

A few people have told me no to use TP-Link, so I figured I’d see what else is out there.
What recommendations do you guys have?

If it matters, I’m located in the US.

1 Like
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What about Shelly 1 behind your existing switches ? They can be used as is, or flashed with Tasmota or ESPHome without soldering.

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In some instances, blocking a wifi device from the internet causes it to go into an endless loop of rebooting after not being able to contact a cloud server, I do not know of tplink is in that boat. I would also be one of those people saying not to use tplink for other reasons.

I also would not use zigbee for anything, and while I am not opposed to z-wave, the only switches that look worth buying are the Inovelli Red series.

For 3 way switching, you have the switch separate from the relay on all switches except the one connected to the lights, then they send a “toggle” update to the other ones, this works well for Shelly and ESPHome, possibly on Kasa as well. In a dual or even triple gang setup controlling 3-way switching of other locations, you can use a Shelly i3. I am doing this now and it works great, except for the distance from the access point which can occasionally cause some lag. You need a neutral wire to every switch box.

I am using a few Shelly relays connected to dumb switches, then you can use whatever switch design you like, or even use a rocker toggle or push button design. I prefer switches that are pretty much flat against the wall, since my height is just perfect for my elbows to hit a regular toggle switch that sticks out… but the wife HATES the flat switches, so the fully automated ones that she will never touch anyway get to be flat, as do the dimmers, but everything else is old school toggle.

For dimmer use, as well as “high priority” lighting, I am only using Lutron since reliability is second to none, and having a wifi device reboot for some reason and kill a light or refuse to turn it on, even if it happens once in 5 years, is not acceptable in certain locations.

If I were building a new house and NOT using centralized low voltage lighting, I would be using a mix of Shelly and Lutron RA2 Select or RadioRA2. Shelly 1PM has power monitoring which can be extremely useful, and are quite inexpensive. Lutron is $$$ but fit and finish is high end, and they are bulletproof reliable.

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I use the zigbee variant of these wifi switches. They work reliably, and they can be used with or without a neutral wire (just make sure to know what you need before ordering).

I have no experiene with the wifi variant, but since they are capable of running tasmota (and likely even ESPHome…?), it should be easy to integrate them into Home Asssistant.

5

What did you go with and do you like it? I also want ~65 smart switches. WiFi makes me cringe because of the number of devices it would put on the network. My biggest requirements is “fail operational” so if wireless isn’t working, the switch still needs to work when my wife hits the switch. Have been thinking Caseta but 65 switches @ $60 is a big investment

6

I went with a mix of Shelly, Caseta, and Nanoleaf. The Nanoleaf replaces the lighting systems in 2 rooms, and are controlled by a switch on a Shelly and a Pico remote. Caseta dimmers are used for 4 rooms (5 lighting systems), Shelly switches used for 2. Some Shelly devices I have for other uses have not been completely reliable, and will lose their network connection or occasionally become unstable, but the ones I have been using for lighting connected to a physical switch have so far done a great job.

Everything else has a dumb switch. I may add 1 or 2 more smart switches down the line for the garage lighting, which is a little complex and never turned on/off by anyone except me, would be nice to save some watts with automation.

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I am using ATHOM Pre Flashed Tasmota. They are very cool.

1 Like
9

I went with Kasa TP-Link and love them. The only downside is that they are local polling, so when turned on/off at the switch it may take 3-5 seconds for HA to update. But I don’t have any automations that make that an issue. If I need local push at some location I may use a different switch.

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I tried the TP link switches… They work, but one of them is tripping the ArcFault breaker… Which is AWEFUL…

So I’m going to try Tasmota switches…

11

I’d yank that from your wall quickly. It trips that break for one reason only, it’s improperly installed or has a legit short internally. Fire risk.

12

I did yank the switches… And the problem continued.

The problem turned out to be something else…

This is a new house, so I called the electrician and he already knew what the problem was… I have a Navien tankless water heater it was on the same circuit as the lights (why the electrician wired it this way is a mystery) and the “arc” that ignites the gas is the root problem. So he added another circuit and problem is fixed.

I decided to switch to the Tasmota MartinJerry switches and they work great and I don’t have to worry that TPLINK will update their firmware and break the integration.