Zigbee light switch with decoupled mode?

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 :+1:

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 :+1:

Or you could post photos of your wiring so we could try to figure out :roll_eyes:

I have some questions about your requirements - I’ve run into so many people looking for a decoupled solution that I’m reaching out to Sonoff to see if they can upgrade the firmware to support this.

I understand that you’d like to be able to turn the decoupled mode on/off programmatically, but on what conditions should this happen automatically as a failsafe? Should it start controlling the relay if the ZigBee controller becomes unavailable? ZigBee communicates relatively infrequently, so it may take up to a minute for the switch to even realize the controller is down.

Also what should happen in this case:

  • The controller becomes unavailable and the switch reverts to “coupled mode”
  • The physical switch is toggled, turning the power off to the light
  • The controller becomes available again

Clearly if the switch reverts back to “decoupled mode” without turning the relay back on, it’s effectively useless. But if it turns the relay back on when it switches to “decoupled mode” you now have lights turning on unexpectedly whenever the controller is briefly unavailable. And if it awaits a toggle (virtual or physical) before switching back to “decoupled mode” then you lose virtual control of the light while awaiting interaction with the switch.

What are your thoughts on this?

Personally I think the best solution is to create a ZigBee binding between the switch and the light and leave it always powered on, but still report the state of the switch in HomeAssistant. This would work just like the Ikea remotes for their lights - it wouldn’t depend on the controller continuing to function, but would communicate directly with the light.

However, this only works if the device is always powered - it’s not a failback to relay control as you require. So I’m curious what your use cases are and how your ideal setup would work.

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Well, thank you for your efforts! For me, the use case is very simple. I want decoupled mode to be on all the time by default. In the rare case that I need to turn it off so that the switch cuts power to the connected device, I would manually enable that option. No automation of any kind is required.

The only scenario (that I can think of) where decoupled mode should be off is when the connected ZigBee device disappears completely from the network and needs to be repaired, rebooted, or reset. This is usually done by turning the power to the device on and off in a certain pattern (depending on the manufacturer).

However, this is such a rare occurrence that it’s absolutely no problem to manually disable decoupled mode and then re-enable it. This could be done via software, but I would also be fine with disassembling the switch to push a physical button, for example. It’s more of a safety feature that you rarely need, but WHEN you do, it’s essential. For example, in my setup, I would have to cut the power to all the lights, remove the entire switch (including the socket), run the wires into a regular switch, perform the reboot process, and then reinstall everything, which is quite a hassle. The reason for this is that I can’t reach the connected device because it is installed in a very high ceiling.

But that’s just my opinion.

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That’s great, I encourage you to try to get any supplier to make this happen. I have actually previously been in contact with Sonoff to try to make them add this feature for their Zigbee devices but so far no luck. Perhaps if more of us contact them they will add it!

Regarding my “requirements” I really don’t need any automatic fallback to default mode. If there was a switch press combination, like hold for 3 seconds or press 5 times, to change back to default mode that would help but is not required. In case of emergency I would probably use MQTT or some other way to reset the devices anyway.

+1 for binding. However, decoupling would be nice as well as you have more options to interact with the bulb / light. I am also Right now relying on Shellies in detached mode and would very much like to get rid of them :upside_down_face:

I know I’m late to the game guys but just a thought here… haven’t even looked to see if it exists yet but what if…

I’m assuming you want to not bypass the switch so you can cut power to the smart light/bulb/device, if there’s a dual relay device you could map the switch input to the first relay and then leave it bypassed but run the wiring through the second that can be activated from HA or wherever

Edit:
Something like this: Zooz 700 Series Z-Wave Plus Double Relay https://a.co/d/7yZzoSV

Yeah this is what I’ve done using a 2gang in wall relay for a single light and a 4gang for two. Also has advantage that the power to the bulb can be switched off when you want to change it. Better than hardwiring the bulb.

I’m looking for the same solution as OP, but haven’t found any yet.

A ’ plan B’ solution I have in mind (but not tested as I don;t have any zigbee relays yet) is as follows:

  1. Normal zigbee relay works as intended (i.e. kills the power to the lights when light switch is pressed)
  2. Event triggers a HA automation that (after a few seconds) switches the relay back to on with smart lights in the ‘off’ state)

I imagine this would accomplish the same as OP wants, with the only drawback that when the light switch is pressed, all the smart lights stop acting as zigbee routers for a few seconds, which may kill the zigbee network.

Am I missing somehting, or could this work? And can someone who has zigbee relays installed maybe test how this works in practice?

I have one zigbbe switch that has decoupled mode. It’s WS-EUK01. I bought it by accident from some local guy who obviously bought switch without knowing what to do with it.
Usually those switches are sold by aquara brand and cost over 30 €.

We touched on this earlier in this thread (please refer to quote below). It is a bit odd however that Aqara offers wall switches with support for decoupled mode (like the WS-EUK01) but not built-in/embedded onces (e.g. Aqara T1).

Thank you for your tip however! I am sure the product you own would be a great option for anyone replacing their physical switches however. Have you tried out the decoupled mode? Does it work as you would expect it to?

This is an interesting thought! It might be possible to accomplish this. Have you had the chance to try it yet?

On the top of my mind there are two things that might be an issue with your suggested work-around (but I would very much like to be proven wrong):

  • Most smart lights (at least the ones I use) light up when powered. I don’t know if this will cause the light to turn on fully and then go into an off state. Might cause some blinking if that’s the case. :slight_smile:
  • Depending on how this is configured it might generate a lot of communication and interdependent logic. When turning off all lights for example Home Assistant will have to trigger x automations (x being the amount of lights you have) and then send double that amount in commands over the Zigbee network (one for the smart relay to turn on again and one for the light to turn on in an off state).

I might be missing something but I would like to hear more about how this works out if you decide to try it out!

I didn’t saw that we spoke about this earlier in this thread, maybe in some other. But never the less…in ha this switch is rated as xiaomi but I believe its aquara switch. Check online with a model.
I knew I saw somewhere decoupled mode so I went to check on it. I totally forgot about it and then I found it on one of my switches. It can work in relay mode, as a standard switch. When you turn it on/off it turns lights on/off. When you switch it to decoupled mode you cant turn light on or off by pressing the switch. This is what decopled mode should do?

This is actually a pretty nifty work-around, thank you! Only drawback I guess would be if people have double-button switches or the need to control two or more devices “individually” or in groups(since this would mean using both outputs for the lights).

If the Ubisys products won’t work I might look into this option, as long as there are affordable Zigbee alternatives (this seems to be Zwave). Thank you again for your suggestion!

I really love the enthusiasm and the shared interests in here! Thank you all for engaging! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

I am sorry for taking so long to update you regarding my experience with the Ubisys S1. I’ve just managed to successfully install a few other brands of smart switches and dimmers for my “dumb” lights so now I feel a renewed sense of confidence for playing around with the Ubisys switch. (It is way too pricey to risk short circuiting). Hopefully I will have time to get around to it next week.

I’m thinking it might be nice to compile a list here with the different work-arounds, solutions and possibly working products identified in this thread and mark that as a solution. What do you think?

If you agree I might try to do put together a list after my tests are done.

Well, I have Hue lights, directly bound to HA (no hue bridge), and they have an option to set start-up state to “off”.

So in that case, the only zigbee traffic would be the single command to merely turn the switch on again, right?

So, this seems like a viable work around maybe. Anyone has an opportunity to test this?