just had a brief look, they do look nice. they are a bit pricey though. do you use any of these? do they have decoupled mode?
there are switches that will keep the relay on and the buttons can be set to do some other actions, usually turning on the lights
- no neutral
I was going to say, good luck. Then I looked at a Sonoff Zigbee module that I recently received has no neutral into the module:
-
decoupled_mode, so I can combine it with a smart bulb
Why? A smart bulb needs to be powered at all times. Smart bulbs are generally dumb. Use a dumb bulb and a smart switch. -
up to 2 gangs
Again, why? You want to control two devices from one switch? -
it needs to fit in the EU electrical housing
The Sonoff and other switch modules like the Shelly are small. The Sonoff module that I am looking at is remarkably small. -
Ideally, it should be EU certified for insurance peace of mind in case of a fire.
No clues here.
Never heard of “decoupled mode”. What, exactly are you trying to do? (Hint, you can’t control a smart bulb from a smart switch).
mine is the same indeed
but this would only work as a smart switch right? when the physical switch will be turned off, the light will be cut off electricity i think…
because with a dumb bulb, I won’t be able to controll the brightness, temperature, colors
yes, in the living room I have two lamps and one switch.
the light bulb is always powered on, and the physical switch can be bound to the light.
From what I gather the switched hot line is the typical Eu wiring. (My drawing on the left).
Tell that to my dumb lights, brightness is controlled by a Zigbee dimmer.
Do you really want to control the color of the lights?. OK, here’s an unorthodox solution, and by far the more expensive one, but if you must have colors, then you have to use a smart bulb:
As stated before, a smart bulb has to be powered full-time. The switch can be any smart dimmer switch, and on any line/neutral pair, but with nothing connected to the load wire.* All you are doing here is to send Zigbee data to Home Assistant.
- Some dimmer switches will not work without a load.
I avoid batteries too whenever possible and try to use rechargeable batteries when I have to use batteries, but there is a pollution you have missed and that is the pollution of our radio frequencies.
The 2.4GHz frequency is really polluted with way too many devices just spamming information in protocols with huge overheads.
WiFi is such a protocol, so use wired connections whenever possible, like with power and use slim protocols whenever you need to have wireless communication.
The only type that I currently have in home is this one:
https://www.niko.eu/en/products/switching-material-and-socket-outlets/wireless-solutions/niko-dimmer-switch-enocean-productmodel-niko-785fb59a-c90e-5349-a30b-35fc36009b20
Since it doesn’t need power it’s perfect to use in decoupled mode. I have one to control the radio etc.
It’s not really zigbee, but compatible with zigbee2mqtt (but not yet with the HASS internal zigbee stack)
According to the zigbee2mqtt website, their switches can be used in decoupled mode. (but I cannot confirm this, since I don’t have these at home)
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Never heard of a FCCI 
I know RCD/RCCB which are mandatory in a couple of countries like spain and germany AFAIK. Countries like South Africa or in some parts of the USA they often have GFCI’s on each outlet.
In such a scenario all Neutrals share the same bus bar and are tied together after the RCD 
I have like 100 esphome nodes with wifi and about 3 esphome nodes with ethernet. The available is exactly the same. No difference what so ever 
You know I use the native api from esphome which is even superior to mqtt which was invented for limited network bandwidth. 
- Much more efficient: ESPHome encodes all messages in a highly optimized format with protocol buffers - for example binary sensor state messages are about 1/10 of the size.
And this “slim” protocol is used on our high speed networks we have today! WIFI connections can easily outperform older ethernet (802.3u, 802.3a) nowadays and reach a couple Gbit/s (802.11ac, 802.11ax) 
. Obviously a ESP doesn’t even need anything close to 1Mbit/s (that’s 0.001Gbit/s) so maybe think twice before hitting the keys 
If you have any proof of all of what you are trying to tell us feel free to link it - otherwise please just stop spreading misinformation - the internet has already enough of it 
The problem is that it is still based on WiFi and TCP/IP
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And why is that a problem in your opinion? Isn’t it actually an advantage?
The WiFi handshake is takes too long and too much power to do. On top of that do WiFi not support idle connections well.
TCP/IP has a lot of layers that are really not needed either, because it needs to support routing and other features, which is why Espressif have come up with ESP-Now.
So the the media to communicate on is inefficient, but then the standard how devices to communicate together over that media is just totally missing, which is why a tasmota, ESPHome and a Tuya can not talk together with out each having their integration installed in HA.
A little side note is that WiFi is often also used for jobs, that require Hugh bandwidth, like moving files between devices, which can delay or prevent IoT device from working properly, because IoT devices typically require low response times.
You could of course then make two WiFi networks on different channels to solve this specific problem, but that would probably be expensive, especially compared to a ZigBee network that would do the same.
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You can try convincing me of your flat earth theory but without any references (hyperlinks) it just sounds very made up to me
This problem weirdly doesn’t exist. 
Nothing expensive just cheap off the shelf wifi stuff. Rock solid without any quriks on a round earth 
And what I really wonder - why are there so many - even very extensive - troubleshooting guides for zigbee but not for wifi?
Might be that zigbee uses the same shared ISM radio bands like WIFI but with the downside of being low power/bandwidth and subsequently “loosing” any air time battle against every cheap ordinary wifi gear out there if the environment would be really congested?
Again: Never ever had (over 5 years running esphome, today over 100 nodes and cheap $10 used wifi AP’s for the last decade) experienced any degradation of service - on the other hand delayed/prevented/limited function of zigbee devices is a very big topic in this forum
Last thread with zigbee in the title from 30 minutes ago 
Not really a good example, usecase there is without the very highly recommended extension cable.
I just searched zigbee and that was the latest thread - didn’t even bother to read it up
But the thing is virtually no one has problems with their wifi infrastructure disintegrating like many zigbee users report on a daily basis.
Thing is WIFI is rock solid and the higher power is a bonus as it will WIN
Just one of the many traps/failures you can easily experience (and waste time with) when opting in for that superior “slim protocol” devices 
Funny though the author of the thread has 40 zigbee devices and it looks like only two bugging out - classic zigbee experience from what I read and not exactly sure if the “highly recommended extension cable” will fix that just like that
I think that saying “virtually no one has problems with their wifi infrastructure” is a big understatement. Poor wifi is a very common problem in many households today. Lack of coverage in certain areas, 2,4 GHz devices that struggle connecting to a mixed 2,4/5GHz network etc. etc. Both protocols have their upsides and downsides.
Guys, let’s hold the debate of what is better protocol / better switch for a moment.
Have we helped the OP by proposing zigbee options? Have we exhaust all our recommendations?
I think OP had a good thought about his request - he / she listed his boundary conditions. Could we start from there?
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