Best Choice for Light Switches | Home Assistant | Page 1

soft shoal Jan 3, 2025, 2:33 PM

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I'm about to do a full remodel (including electrical) in my house and am trying to decide which switches to go with. I'm strongly considering replacing my current Kasa switches with Lutron Caseta.

Previously I was going to install Hue canned lights in every room in the house until I learned they have a hard cap of 63 lights which I'd be over. I also don't know enough about a good, hard-wired smart-bulb mode switch so that I can always access the Hue bulbs with the app or voice (I don't ever want power disconnected from smart bulbs).

I decided I could use regular LED can lights with smart switches. I want all of them to be dimmable and some to be 3-way. But it looks like Caseta only does 3-way with Pico remotes or dumb switches. I was hoping to wire together a Caseta dimmer and a Maestro dimmer in a 3-way configuration. Does anyone know if that's possible?

I'm also open to other configuration suggestions. I haven't had the best luck with Zwave (although I only used wireless, battery powered devices like door position sensors and temperature sensors). I also don't like the idea of a device that stops working if my server goes down. I'm strongly attached to the idea of hard-wired switches, not remote/wireless stuff.

normal axle Jan 3, 2025, 3:02 PM

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Be aware that the device limit does not apply to the hue bulbs but their gateway hub. You could simply use a different one directly through zha or z2m instead.
For the switches you selected I have no opinion on but make sure that they are capable of acting as router if they use zigbee or zwave.
For actual hard wired stuff you probably are looking towards paying a lot more $

hexed cedar Jan 3, 2025, 3:24 PM

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I'm a strong proponent for smart relays/switches and dumb bulbs wherever possible - not only is it significantly cheaper to set up, but it will still work if your zigbee network goes down for whatever reason, and also result in fewer messages being sent out overall

normal axle Jan 3, 2025, 4:25 PM

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Generally smart bulbs will also work if the network goes down and you get easier control over colors and temp control if that's what you jam. Nothing is worse than mismatching lights in a room

hexed cedar Jan 3, 2025, 4:37 PM

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Really? I thought the whole deal with smart bulbs and switches resulted in them only communicating via the network - depowering them from the switch messes with the network something fierce.
I've also never had an issue with mismatched lights..

normal axle Jan 3, 2025, 4:42 PM

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At least hue ones handle powering down very well from my experience. Come back online without any issues. Other devices really only be funky if their implementation isn't sound or they are out of range to other mesh nodes.

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I generally don't like the idea of smart bulbs being powered all the time. If you have a bunch of them that's quite some idle power consumption and a rather high risk of electrocution if you don't switch off at the breaker

hexed cedar Jan 3, 2025, 4:53 PM

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I guess it's more significant if they're routing rather than just endpoints, that'll recalculate the whole mesh

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and yeah - if you want to shell out for hue you get good bulbs, but jeez

normal axle Jan 3, 2025, 5:00 PM

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Money money money

hexed cedar Jan 3, 2025, 5:05 PM

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I think it was close to £1k for hue bulbs when I looked at it vs ~£150 for a bunch of smart switches

wraith turret Jan 3, 2025, 6:17 PM

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I'm in the same boat; Doing house remodel and I am looking for "smart light switch" but since I already have a ton of smart bulbs, I need smart switches that are compatible with smart lights as well. From my understanding I would need ones that have a "configurable relay" option so it can be configured either to break the circuit or send a message to HA.

p.s. I understand that doing smart switch + dumb bulb has some advantages but in my particular use-case, I have a couple of scenarios where for example three-light fixture is controlled via single switch, and having smart bulbs allows to adjust each light bulb individually.

Does anyone have a recommendation for (Zigbee or WiFi) smart switches that are compatible with smart lights?
I'm also not sure if there is a different/better term that I can use to search for these particular switches?

normal axle Jan 3, 2025, 6:25 PM

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For wifi ones, Shelly should have ones that can be detached

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For ZigBee, aquara should have some but not sure if they can be detached

frail helm Jan 3, 2025, 6:49 PM

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wraith turret I'm in the same boat; Doing house remodel and I am looking for "smart light swit...

Inovelli Blue Series

quiet vale Jan 3, 2025, 7:14 PM

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I've had really solid experience with Home Assistant, Matter over Wifi, and Leviton 2nd gen smart Wifi switches/dimmers. You must have a good Wifi setup to make this work. I recommend going with smart switches/dimmers versus smart bulbs, since with switches such as Leviton you get mechanical control even if smart control is down.

neat citrus Jan 3, 2025, 8:30 PM

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Zooz switches are great too

wraith turret Jan 7, 2025, 4:57 AM

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I've been trying to add Matter switches for what feel like an eternity (Leviton 2nd Gen Smart WiFi (matter) switch, and TP-Link Kasa KS205 Matter switch).
I can add them to the Leviton/Kasa apps and can toggle them through the app. However as soon as I try to add Matter device to HA and use the pairing QR/Code, nothing works. Can't get them adopted into HA.
During setup both my phone and switch are on the same (2.4GHz) network but HA can't find it.
I have also tried enabling IPv6 on my network and that did not help.

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At this point I'm starting to look if there is a Zigbee/WiFi switch that I can open and reflash with some open-source (ie Tasmota) software and configure it to work whichever way I want.
With the above mentioned switches, I'm not sure you can even do detached relay mode without some hacking :\

#Best Choice for Light Switches