All the lights in my home are zigbee smart lights driven by HA + deconz + conbee 2, but all my switches are not smart switches, they are normal on/off physical switches, which means that, for the smart lights to work properly, they need to stay always ON. People that do not know this (guests) sometimes toggle them and are always confused on why the first time they trigger the switch (and they move it from ON to OFF) nothing happens. This is only one possible weird scenario, then there is a cascade of weird behaviors if you don’t know how the system is set up and try to trigger the physical switch.
So: I am thinking to try to change some physical switches with smart switches and see how the thing is going to work.
Ideally:
I’d like the switches to be compatible with my current set up, which is Vimar Idea (I think this is already a huge constraint, and so likely needs to be relaxed).
Since my home is already fully wired, ideally I’d like the switches to be without batteries.
I’d like the switches to work if any of the smart components (either deconz or HA or the zigbee network) are DOWN. So if anything is down, they still toggle the light ON and OFF. So basically they act as physical switches in this case.
If the smart system is UP, they act like smart switches, so they know if the light is ON or OFF, and toggle accordingly.
Am I imagining a not yet existing world? I have done some research on smart switches but always ended in a dead end where either I have not found any switch that is properly discussed as working fine with deconz, or I am lost not understanding what I am looking for so thought to look for some inputs in this forum if anyone has already tried this.
Hey, great to see that someone is having some good thoughts around this. You should always be prepared for such cases, so you can basically operate everything and just need to go without some convenience feature.
In essence, you’re discovering the true power of zigbee with that. What you need is “just” having aligned client (grey) and server (blue) clusters. Grey are the controllers, blue the actuators.
To only turn devices on/off, there’s probably many devices out there which you can use. If you want something like level control (for dimmung) and/or color control, that will probably be a little harder to find. Some brands I came accross offering that are ubisys, ecodim, sunricher, bosch.
Technically, under the hood, you would steer them via groups, which also has the benefit being immune to any routing issues.
You shoul’ve done the same for your heating in the other thread as well, as the route you’ve chosen is somehow contradictory for me I have all capabilities in my thermostats, so I never have to touch them and they just do their thing is the GW goes down.
I’ve used Ubisys devices for this approach in combination with standard Jung LS 990 switches. So using the switches just feels like using a classical installation.
Nice things about Ubisys devices:
The switches can be 230V, no need to change anything.
The D1 (one dimming output) has 2 inputs, so you get a second smart (only) switch.
The outputs are configured to trigger their output by default, so it worked out of the box.
The devices work really well (for me), get firmware updates regularly (working via deCONZ).
Ok, they’re on the expensive side (but I started using them when there haven’t been so many devices on the market available).
Thanks both for your answers @Swoop and @cs42, nice to hear this is possible and I will research a bit more on the brands you mentioned.
@Swoop you’re right the other thread on the thermostat is a bit contradictory, but the problem for me was that I could not find a thermostat that I liked and that was also smart, so I thought let’s buy the simplest possible and do my automations with HA. The thermostat can still be triggered on/off manually so I am covered in case of catastrophic failures. If you know one that can be programmed weekly, is also smart and works with deconz, I am all ears!
Well, I’m afraid I can only comment on TRVs in that case and not really on (wall) thermostats. But for the latter, maybe the Bosch room thermostat is of interest
so thought to look for some inputs in this forum if anyone has already tried this.
I have all capabilities in my thermostats, so I never have to touch them and they just do their thing is the GW goes down.
