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?

  • archomrade [he/him]English
    1·
    8 months ago

    There are, but frankly it’s more expensive that way. You basically need an LCD display to make color selection feel useful.

    If you have the money to go this route, I recommend having a single smart panel that controls groups of devices throughout the house

    • klangcola@reddthat.comEnglish
      2·
      8 months ago

      Color temperature is actually quite OK with simple remotes. Like the IKEA remote control used left and right arrows to change between stark white, warm yellow and happy medium.

      Problem is non-smart bulbs with smart wall-switch can’t change color temperature. Theoretically I suppose there could be a switch/bulb combo, where the switch is Zwave/ZigBee enabled, and somehow communicate with the bulb. But I don’t think anything like that exists. It’d probably be very expensive if it did

      • archomrade [he/him]English
        1·
        8 months ago

        My mistake, I read that as just color, not temp

        They do have zigbee switches that can be programmed to specific devices, but I don’t know of any that have temp selectors on them.