Don’t they all?
It’s just a matter of connecting it differently.
Instead of using the switching side of the switch to the light, use the incoming wire (bypassing the switch) to the light.
I have done that on one switch and it works fine.
Yes, this would work for any Zigbee smart switch (at least that I know of). This is also what I mentioned in my original post (see below). In my scenario however, I would like not to rely on wiring. Controlling this on the firmware/software side would allow me to reset the device in case of trouble, also it would allow me to have different behavior for different devices. A non-smart bulb or ceiling fan for example, would probably not benefit from being wired this way.
Please see my first post
I realized my first post might not have been clear enough, so I’ve edited it to add a fourth parameter.
I know that any smart switch and smart bulb could be wired in a way that the light is always on, but this is not what I’m looking for. I want to be able to decouple the switch like this or this.
Thank you for listing this hard to find Australia certified smart home equipment. I’ll probably enquire with the company but do you know if the stitchy switch does support during coupled mode?
Quick question,
Once decoupling mode is enabled for the xiaomi switch for example
Can you still toggle the switch button to turn on/off the smart bulb or only thru homeassistant?
Nevermind, just read about it in github
Seems like tasmota decoupling is better since i can customize additional action for each button press
Thank you for your reply, must have missed it. I have looked into Tasmota as well but if I recall correctly it requires a Wifi device (or at elast a Wifi/Zigbee hybrid) and I really prefer to use Zigbee. If I wouldn’t have that particular requirement I would probably have many more options to choose from.
I’m looking for the same thing. Did you ever have any luck finding one?
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If you use the SONOFF ZBMINI-L (Amazon.com) and bypass the switch so it’s always on, it would essentially act as a sensor for whenever somebody interacts with the switch. And since you’re bypassing it anyways, you may be able to use the ZBMINI (the one that requires a neutral wire) but you’d have to be careful not to hook it up backwards.
The device presents a switch entity in HA which toggles whenever the physical switch is toggled. You now have a wall switch that when toggled, doesn’t turn the power off to your lights, and causes a state change you can react to in HA to control your smart lights.
Not yet @datbilling , I have however recently acquired the Ubisys S1 and will investigate whether or not it will fulfill the requirements from my first post. I will let everyone here know after my testing is done.
I am not sure I understand exactly how you mean @higbyk , so please correct me if I misinterpret your suggested solution, but I would like to refer to my intial post (see the fourth requirement). I do not want the lights to be always powered in the sense that I can’t reset the smart switches if there is a configuration issue or my Home Assistant setup fails.
For me personally this is a very bad idea, because in case of any unplanned event that would mean you would have live lights and other powered devices that you can’t turn off in any other way than meddling with the fuse box.
A lot of people here have suggested bypassing the switch when wiring the light so I will once and for all explain what I want:
I want the smart switch to not toggle the physical relay when the light switch is pressed. Instead I just want it to send the event over Zigbee so that I can act on it. This means that if anything goes wrong I can still reset the smart switch and have it start toggling the physical relay again.
Please let me know if my explanation doesn’t make sense and I will try to clarify it further.
If it’s a bulb then you can just unscrew it?
First of all, thank you and everyone who tries to help me find a solution. I really have come to appreciate this helpful community.
That being said, I’m sorry, but I’m not going to get into a lengthy discussion/argument regarding why I beliveve redundancy or planning for unforseen consequences is a good thing. If my HA setup crashes, there is a bug, hardware fail or any of a thousand unknown things that go wrong I do not want to be running around my house unscrewing and screwing in bulbs every time I want to turn my lights on or off.
Further, this is one of the requirements I have for my setup. It doesn’t mean it’s the best solution (although we could very well argue whether or not always-on devices that rely on a single software dependency to turn on or off is a good idea). I know you could potentially get around this requirement any number of ways.
This is something that might not currently be available in currently released products even though it seems quite a few people here and around the world are looking and asking for it. “Let me control the settings for the smart switch so I can decide when I want the relay to be enabled or not.” I don’t feel like it’s too much to ask, and this thread was started to investigate whether or not anyone knew of any devices that support this, not to find manual ways to create semi-smart homes.
I appreciate everyone that tries to help out, but if there is further need for exchange about bypassing switches with wiring please create a separate thread. If possible I would like to keep this thread related to the main subject so that others who have the same requirements can find it.
Again, I say this with all gratitude and respect for other peoples opinions.
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As far as I’m aware, there is currently no zigbee switch that will allow for an optional decoupled/always-on mode.
I agree, having an optional decoupled mode with automatic failback to manual mode just makes sense. It’s a great solution to the problem of smart lights vs smart switches.
I, like you, avoided a hardwired option for the last year because I was concerned about the reliability of a DIY system. However, I’ve had no issues with HomeAssistant/Zigbee for the last 2 years, so I’ve compromised and gone for the solution I recommended to you. My Home Approval Factor has gone up significantly! When a better solution does come out, I’ll just reuse these on my “dumb” lights in the basement.
I’m confident that eventually a manufacturer will support it, but most likely we’ll have to wait for ESPHome to support the upcoming ESP32-H2 (which supports zigbee/thread). See this thread for updates on that.
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Now that I’m in the same boat, I’d like to reactivate this thread to ask if anyone knows of any ZigBee relays that have decoupled mode by now? I need the exact same functionality as @mikaelhertzman, but haven’t been able to find anything either.
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If you are looking for the relay part only, and not the full switch you could look at Unisys relay that offer this feature. It’s expensive but offer the best ZigBee experience possible.
Good luck 
Are you referring to Ubisys? Just wanted to be sure there is not another option I missed.
I have actually recently purchased a Ubisys S1 and as soon as I figure out the wiring I will be testing the “decoupled” mode.
Do you have experience with this switch?
Yes Ubisys, ofc, auto-correct got me.
I’ve tried it in one room as I’ve not moved already, and was able to activate the decoupled mode by using the ZHA Toolkit integration available in HACS.
With a bit of search and help of the Zigbe2Mqtt doc to get the right endpoint to switch, it’s not that hard.
It was responding very well and served as a great router node in the network.
But I had to remove it as none of my backbox were big enough to close with the S1 inside.
That’s great news!
I realize this is a huge ask, but would you be able to give out some pointers on how you configured decoupled mode using ZHA and perhaps even how you wired the S1? (Screen captures, instructions, anything that would help the people in this thread.) I read the Ubisys manual like 20 times but I never got it to work with the “signal” cable (the white one on the left) without tripping my circuit breakers.
I feel like this is the closest we are going to get to a solution today. Might be that more suppliers go down the Ubisys route, but currently for european users this is probably it.
I could try to gather the informations I had during this test setup. But as I said, I removed it from my switch.
It was a test setup on a two way switch without neutral (I had to jump one from the plug below…)
Anyway, please be careful and don’t play with high voltage if you are not familiar with it, just for safety reasons. I think you could ask an electrician some help to figure one wiring out and then you could reproduce in other room
Or you could post photos of your wiring so we could try to figure out 