I’m setting up with HA and zigbee smart bulbs. I’ve got a few automations already set up, such as turning on a bunch of lights in the morning and turning most of them off again at night.
All these lights still have physical switches. I don’t want to take those switches out for lots of reasons, and putting smart switches there seems like overkill when the bulbs are already smart. What are people doing with their physical light switches to ensure that they don’t get flipped?
Ideas I’ve had:
- some kind of physical plastic covering that fits snugly around it. I’d probably do this if I had a 3d printer, but I don’t. Maybe someone sells a thing like this? More just a reminder not to touch them.
- Carefully paint the switches a different color (perhaps the HA color scheme?). Again, basically just a reminder. This especially makes sense with a few multi-switch plates where some of the connected lights are automated and some are intentionally left manual.
- Entirely replace the plate with a smart switch? Besides incurring a nontrivial cost and being a bunch of work to install, this won’t even help me with the aforementioned multiswitch plates. I don’t want all my lights automated.
Other ideas?
Downside of switches though is that they often require a neutral wire. If all you have is “Hot”, “Not” and ground, your kinda dead in the water. Rewiring an old house can get pricey.
There are a variety of Zigbee switches and relay dukes that support “no neutral” wiring. SONOFF and Aqara both make them, there are even a few generic/Tuya ones I’ve seen.
They often don’t function as Zigbee routers, only end devices though despite being mains powered.
There are a bunch that don’t, I’m discovering.
It actually took me about 5 years to realize you don’t even need a smart wall switch, you just need a smart relay behind it.
I’m looking at Shelly and sonoff relays for my entire house. The single channel, one-way relays are like $15.