I googled a bit and found plenty, better let’s say too much information. Hence, I want to ask more high level to gather information to decide which direction I want to head.
Let’s explain my current situation: We bought an old house (100 years, extended and renovated in the seventies) with really dated electricity and let’s say interesting choices in positioning of light switches. All walls are solid brick walls.
I am capable of doing some electricity works. Adding a neutral wire, or changing switches is no issue if necessary.
Currently I use my home assistant installation for following tasks:
heating radiator TRVs from Danfoss Ally (the oil heating is 20 years old and stupid as a brick. Just one outdoor temp sensor and that’s all) with Zigbee2MQTT and the Sonoff ZigBee 3.0 dongle.
some temp/humidity sensors around and in the house. Want to add a weather station soon, mainly to monitor precipitation.
monitoring our well’s water level with an own built ESP32 based sensor with EspHome
Now to the lighting:
First, I want to make all the classically switched lights smart, but I would prefer not to use smart light bulbs. Not being allowed to use the existing light switch is just calling for troubles. I thought about Shelly, but am open to other solutions as well. I am just a bit concerned about temperature issues placing the Shellys behind the switches in brick walls. There is no ventilation.
Second, I also want to add some additional light switches, without the need to chisel some new installation into the walls. I thought about mounting some ZigBee buttons close to the doors, where there is no light switch and integrating them with MQTT.
Is this a solid way to go, or would you suggest otherwise?
Haven’t deployed the in-wall Shellys yet but I‘d assume they are built to work without ventilation.
For Zigbee light switches you have plenty vendors to choose from. (I personally like the Hue dimmer switches for lights, curtains & blinds but Moes is also fine.)
They go behind your existing light switch and make them smart. What is nice is they come in 1,2,3, or 4 gang, so you only need one unit per group of light switches. They do have a soft click and about 1/4 or 1/2 second delay when using the switch. I have a neutral line, which is makes it easy. They do make non-neutral versions but never used. Work great with Z2M. These supposedly work with 3-way wiring, but I think I need to rewire for that. Need to look at the moes, because I think I read they handle 3-way better. I have a lot of 3/4 way switches.
While my place is ‘young’ compared to your grey lady, I have explored several routes (read : money pits ) for lighting and outlet control. I have a ‘neutral free’ ‘shallow box’ environment.
I started with Lutron Caseta switches, plugs and Pro hub attached to Home Assistant, HomeKit and Google Home. This continues to be the most reliable system. So far all of the stuff below, while functional to a fair extent, sits at various levels below the ‘significant others’ ‘acceptance level’.
I’ve tried Shelly’s.
I’ve tried Hue dimmer and Friends of Hue, at least the Lutron Aurora, wireless switches and dimmers. I read some about Hue’s new in wall switch, but did not try it. It seems to have some limits, but something to review perhaps.
Various other zigbee wireless switches, Ikea, Sonoff, Aqara.
I’ve tried zigbee neutral free, the new Sonoff ZZBMINI-L, switch with momentary wall switch.
I’ve tried Tasmota/EspHOME devices.
The one wireless wall dimmer I have yet to try is the RunLessWire devices. They have some interesting devices beyond their Friends of Hue dimmer. The dimmer is what I may try next. The questions I have however are about banking on a small company for a ‘100 year’ solution and price of their devices, not that Caseta is ‘cheap’.
thanks for the tip. I stumbled over them in another post, if I remember correctly.
May I ask you (or any other reader) for your confirmation I got this conceptually right?
For the first room I want to adopt is the hallway, which has one light in the first floor and two ligths in the ground floor.
There is one switch on in the ground floor and a second one on a stupid place in the first floor. They are connected bey 3 wire (what we call Wechselschalter in German) and only switch the one light in the first floor.
There are also the two other lights with have their own switches in the ground floor.
For what I want is to switch this three lights when I switch one of the four switches. This would mean I have to buy 3 times the 1 gang switch module.
The first switch module would be connected behind the 2 switches which are wired in 3-way.
The second switch module would be connected behind its switch.
The same for the third…
I checked the Z2M devices page.
To get what I want, I have to set all involved switch modules switch_type to toggle.
Then I configure HA to send out a toggle MQTT message to the other two switch modules to toggle state. Right?
Finally I could add additional MQTT buttons / switches to the game to toggle all involved switch modules.
I forgot to mention I live in Austria / Europe. Hence, I seem to be out of luck with the Lutron Caseta solution. At least they are not mentioned in the german amazon.de.
The RunLessWire solution looks also really interesting. But a bit pricey though.
I assume I would choose the Philips Hue version and integrate with Z2M.
May I ask, what had been the hickups the other solutions fell below the SO AL?
Lost connections?
Unreliable switches?
You might explore the new z-wave stuff, like the Caseta stuff it runs sub gigahertz so can get thru those thick walls better. Inovelli has some interesting stuff, but not sure if they have EU products. Aeotec, also some neat stuff. Both neutral optional. I have been away from the z-wave stuff for a pretty long time, but they seems to have recovered from their closed ways and have some innovative companies and products : https://z-wavealliance.org/
If the Home Automation industry give a ugly award each year, I am sure the Hue switch has won hands down. It works, but yuck. That is why the RunLessWire dimmer looked interesting. Yes bummer on the lack of Caseta support in EU, because another nice part of its system are the very nice looking and functional Pico remotes. If there is a polar opposite to the Hue switches, it is the Pico.
I’ve been pretty lucky with the wireless spectrum, a good Mikrotik mesh wifi has been a great based and no conflicts with zigbee or bluetooth devices.
The worst fail was with Shelly plugs randomly powering off, I think there was a bug in their wifi firmware for about six months. But this put a pretty bad taste in my mouth for them, combined with their support forums being on Facebook . That is unfortunate, because I think they do some decent engineering.
Again been lucky on the mechanical front, no fails there, but no kids
I try to go with vetted products that are in walls or permanently wired, only magic smoke has been due to my stupid wiring mistakes.
I also have the Casetta (in the US). They are non-neutral, which means current always going through lights and expensive. They do work well and now much easier to add to homeassistant.
Regarding zigbee (I am just learning this, so could be wrong). For non-3way, you would want a 1-gang at every switch (unless have two switches in the same box, then can use a 2-gang to save some money). Zigbee is nice because I think you can join multiple lights/switches to a group and zigbee takes care of syncing them–so will still work when homeassistant is down.
I need to learn about the 3way. You may be able to keep the dumb 3way switch away from the load wire, thus saving a device. But not 100% sure. In the US, I think it requires re-writing the travelers. I keep meaning to figure this out, but life gets in the way. You may not be able to put a zigbee device at the 3-way switch, because it always needs power. If the other switch removes the power, it will not function.
I hope to figure this out soon, or maybe an expert will chime in.
Casetta will not work with 3-way. You need to bypass the 3 way switch (directions are included in the package if I remember). Then put a Pico remote where you want 3-way control.
I think the Caseta ‘Pro’ wall switch might have more 3-way options, but it requires a neutral. And even more expensive.
@jazzyisj just pointed me to this post at the Inovelli web site announcing work on a zigbee wall switch. All I can say from reading what they hope to accomplish in terms of options and functions is WOW! I hope they are able to get it UL certified, into production and available for purchase before the end of time… @EspWhaleSong I’m again not sure of Inovelli works in the EU market. But if so, do give this company a look, some pretty good thinking and engineering appears to be going on there.
I’ve had two old houses here in the States (one built in 1886 and the other built in 1916), lathe and plaster walls, so a bit less trouble putting in new work. Redid the electrical so that there are neutrals in every switch location and got rid of some charming aluminum wire in the process (as well as tube and wrap in the attic).
Long story short: I used Honeywell, Zooz, and GE Z-Wave units on mine. I don’t know how available those where you are.
AFAIK the difference to the ZigBee smart light switches suggested by jaaem is mainly that Shelly relies on WiFi instead of ZigBee. This would pollute my IP address space a bit, but would be no big issue.
Like jaaem mentioned, this sounds very compelling:
In hindsight, this is what we should have done before moving in as well. But we had been under severe time pressure and it hadn’t been a real option.
It’s really depends. Online I can get everything, but local it’s a different story. It’s not bad, but German brands are much more available, but also really expensive.
I think I will stay with ZigBee for now, as it seems to work reliable currently. Only interferrence with Bluetooth is annoying sometimes. Looking at my Magic Mouse currently… But since switching to the Sonoff 3.0 dongle I can’t remember to have had problems anymore.
You are right with that for sure. Didn’t think about this! Thanks for pointing this out.
I just took a look into the manifold box (is it called like that?) above the second 3 way light switch and I have all the wires I need for the 1 gang switch module to be placed there.
Regarding Casetta and also Shally non neutral solutions: I really don’t like the idea to add additional consumers parallel to low power LED lights to make them work! That’s really absurd. Better to add this one wire and call it a day.
@dproffer The Inovelli switch really sounds interesting. But skimming over their really good product development information updates, this sound’s to arrive earliest this coming autumn/winter. I think this is too long to wait for.
Currently it really looks like I will settle with the ZigBee switch modules @jaaem mentioned.
They fit into my current setup, are easy to install and are open to introduce motion detection and other stuff over MQTT.
This will my lighting pilot project.
Thanks for all your input so far!
Yes, Z-Wave seems to be a bit better in radio terms. But I think the greater range of choice had been the reason to go the ZigBee route initially. Maybe this changes, but for now I will stay in ZigBee land.
Yes, it’s an urgent need designers enter this area as well. Looking at software frontends, it’s only the last decade it got pretty. Now everybody expects it to have nice user interfaces. Home Automation (at least the affordable one) is still in its infant’s shoes.
I have a FritzBox mesh here. It’s a german product, very popular here. It run’s 5 Ghz and 2.4 Ghz which is really fine. But as @jaaem mentioned, staying on ZigBee should make grouping without HA possible. I have to look into this, but this really would be a benefit.
This sounds bad. But also like it’s in their past. FB support for sure is a bummer! But obviously it works. People seem to appreciate it.
I also will never understand why many people prefer discord and FB over a forum like this here in HA. All the historical information is lost. It’s not searchable and only discord and FB benefit from the data.
No kids as well. But a dog. But Light switches are for sure above his destruction horizon!
Vetted would be really nice, but there isn’t much here in Austria which isn’t blowing the budget.
It looks like KNX bus is THE standard here in german speaking area (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). It’s 30 years old, everything wired with low voltage (it’s for sure a reliability benefit, but hard to introduce in old buildings) and all communication is unencrypted. They have some security measurements though. No idea how good this is really. But there are only a hand full providers, the pricing is what we call Apothekerpreise which means pharmacy leveled priced…
Hey !
Just wanted to set some things about KNX straight here:
there is encrypted KNX (on IP and the twisted pair cable), but its fairly new and devices are just hitting the market.
Imho if some intruder gets access to your TP cables you have bigger worries than if the communication to turn on and off lights can be altered
you are very right that it is hard to introduce into old buildings
there are > 400 manufacturers - imho thats a lot
its really very solid with its decentralized design, but only usable for its dedicated purpose - at 9,6 kbps nothing but control signals can be transferred over this, no audio, video or live power data (like 1-second resolution; 1 minute would be ok probably)
expensive probably true - depends on what you are comparing against. (for cheaper / priceworthy devices maybe look at MDT, Ling&Janke or ABB)
It’s so easy to lose overview… Didn’t want to spread misinformation. Obviously I stopped my research before looking up manufacturers, as it wouldn’t have fit my needs.
Just also wanted to point out, there is also a wireless protocol KNX RF introduced. I assume it’s also not much available for it.
I just saw your github. Obviously you are really into KNX
Are you also related to the winery?
This would give a solid base for further discussions!
Neutral or not, ALL wired smart switches have some constant power draw.
I looked at this a while back. Caseta, zigbee, zwave were all well under 0.5 watts. The wifi switches were topping out around 1.5 watts.
Comparing the power cost difference from worst to best performer, it may take decades to recover the cost of pulling that wire. Likely lifetimes if not a DIY job.
Some loads are not friendly to the no-neutral solutions and there are other reasons to pull a neutral. Power savings would not be near the top of the list, even at EU rates.
) for lighting and outlet control. I have a ‘neutral free’ ‘shallow box’ environment.
yes, this is why I asked before!
ugly award each year, I am sure the Hue switch has won hands down. It works, but yuck. That is why the RunLessWire dimmer looked interesting. Yes bummer on the lack of Caseta support in EU, because another nice part of its system are the very nice looking and functional Pico remotes. If there is a polar opposite to the Hue switches, it is the Pico.
. That is unfortunate, because I think they do some decent engineering.
!
