I’ve got about 60 Zigbee devices, with a good number of them being smart bulbs / spots.
To control them I’m currently using hue dimmer switches mounted on these plates, which let me access the physical switch behind if needed.
I’ve found that Zigbee devices running on battery just aren’t reliable, and those switches are probably the worst thing I’ve ever bought so I want to replace them with something wired. I have smart bulbs and spots everywhere so I need switches that support decoupled mode, so I can bind the switch to a light directly while leaving the relay always on.
It’s rare but every once in a while a bulb drops off and needs to be power cycled, so it’d need to have some way of forcing the relay on or off from the switch, regardless of the mode. Maybe with a long press or something like that.
The only switch I could find with a decoupled mode is the Aqara H1, I bought one and wired it in before I realized it’s not supported by ZHA, so no decoupled mode on that one yet. The manual also doesn’t suggest there’s any way to force the relay on or off using the switch, so no way to cycle the bulbs if it ever came to that.
Does anyone know of other brands / models that might operate in decouple mode but still be overriden locally, and would ideally be supported in ZHA ? I could re-migrate to Z2M if I had to, but that’s a lot of work …
I’m also not completely opposed to migrating over to Z-Wave if there’s a good option there, but that’s a lot of bulbs.
To complicate the matter I’m in Europe, so US switches like Inovelli sadly aren’t compatible.
Thanks
Also really interested in this. Especially one that has a mechanical way to switch between both. The reason I want to have a fallback, is for the case Homeassistant dropped out for some reason and I need to operate the lights for some reason. Aqara only allows changing the coupled mode via software, which I feel is a way more difficult way to do this actually.
Exactly, unfortunately it looks like it doesn’t exist. My hope at this point is for the esp32 h2 to come out, some day, and for enthusiasts to start making their own stuff with it esphome style.
Would be great for this
Yes it looks great, but as I mentioned in my original post that’s out because it’s US only. Even if I could get my hands on one it wouldn’t fit the boxes, and I belive it won’t like the 240 50hz either.
I do wish they’d make a European / rest of the world version
I just installed some Aqara H1 switches, without much knowledge about power stuff. I had hoped I could still use the switches if HA goes down, even if I’d set it to decoupled mode. It’s unfortunate that it seems it can’t be forced to relay mode in such a case.
But, I stopped Zigbee2MQTT in Home Assistant and then pressed the Aqara button for five seconds and now it seems I can control the relay without Zigbee… It keeps blinking as if it’s in pairing mode, but works normally as a relay.
Some difficulties getting it to work with Zigbee2MQTT again after I start it, but got that to work again.
So it seems it CAN be changed from decoupled mode to relay mode if losing access to the Zigbee controller?
Yes you reset the switch, which made it default back to coupled mode. It’s my backup plan too, awful user experience since you then have to reconfigure it manually but it’s an option.
I’m half hoping someone realizes how awful these choices are and launch something better for Europe, but I may give up and just buy a lot of these Aqara H1 switches.
I’m also considering giving up on Zigbee, getting an electrician in to install some neutral wires and just going espnow for everything. Seems like programming it myself might be the only way to get stuff to behave sensibly, and there’s some cool esp based bulbs and switches (like the non pro nspanel) that may work well for this but that’s a huge money and time sink. Maybe though
Sadly the D1 also does not support binding, so it’s the same problem.
I ended up going with Shelly L1, not Zigbee but I flash them with ESPHome and then program them to toggle the lights through home assistant in normal use.
Then if home assistant is not connected, they electrically toggle the light instead, completely seamless.
I’m going to try to flash some bulbs next and see if I can get ESPNow communication between the bulbs and the switch as a cherry on top, but even if I can’t it already works really well regardless of HA’s state, I recommend considering it
I’m looking at this and the way i understand is that if the esp devices are nearby to the esp node (1 esp wall switch for multiple esphome lights)
So you should still be able to control the lights from the switch even when the wifi router is offline?
That’s right, espnow is a way for esp based devices to communicate without needing to be connected to a wifi network, just like Zigbee binding.
So in theory if you can flash your switch and bulb with esphome (or something else that supports espnow) you’ll have the options to toggle the bulb(s) through espnow, and electrically as well in case needed, ideal
If you mean the Aqara T2 unfortunately not, it doesn’t do binding. And it requires a neutral, so even if I decided to forget about binding I wouldn’t be able to wire it anyway
I’m in the same boat as you - looking for a zigbee wall switch that supports decoupled mode and can also directly bind to zigbee bulbs. I’m also willing to go the Shelly/ESPHome route if I have to. Did you ever try out ESPNow between the bulbs and the switch?
I think it’s only tested on esp32 but presumably it works on both, since it just uses the wifi module. I’m not the dev so I could be wrong, that’s a question for them
