Light switch and relay without reliance of hubs or wifi?

[hardy crane]

Hi all!

I'm bit lost at the moment cause I'm in a situation where I would need a relay and a light switch that are not dependable on wifi for usage of each other. Shelly's Wifi option would work but when the network is down, those are down too. I don't want to rely on my phone when the network is down, which means that the switch needs to be able to send messages directly to the relay.

In this case, Zigbee or Z-Wave could be the most viable option but what would be the best? The minimum would be that I get on/off but nicest would be to have dimming also.

The use case is to control 24V lights, mainly 24V COB Kitchen lights. Running new wires is not possible for this case which is why this is far more complex than it normally would.

(Note, ESPHome or Tasmota are no go, I want solid choice that would be usable for non-tech savvy people also for liability reasons)

[hoary sphinx]

Where is the transformer or power adapter in that setup? Can you put something like a Sonoff Zigbee relay on the full voltage AC side?

[charred moat]

There are zigbee and zwave devices that run on 24 and dry contact. Zooz makes a zwave one, and shelly makes zigbee ones. Also Tuya on AliEspress but I wouldn't rely on those.

[hardy crane]

The transformer/power adapter will be close to the lights itself. I have planned that the AC relay / dimmer thingie can be hidden nicely there.

[hardy crane]

I haven't seen controllers/buttons that support Zigbee from Shelly, how would one pair one if Shelly doesn't provide?

[grizzled crow]

You don't need Shelly controllers/buttons, you can use any Zigbee controller/switch/button/etc

[next relic]

you could get an LED driver with a small wireless handheld remote

[hardy crane]

Not an option here, I would like to have more robust way rather than those flimsy remotes that fail every now and then, and require batteries. I would also like to add it next to the other light switch

[hardy crane]

Interesting, does it needs to be based on certain specific standard or any Zigbee could work, like Ikea, Sonoff or similar?

[grizzled crow]

It depends exactly what coordinator etc you use - but if you use something like a SLZB-06 or Sonoff dongle, you should be able to use essentially any Zigbee button or switch. You'll VERY occasionally find one that isn't supported in Home Assistant, but I've had that once out of like 200 devices

Generally speaking Zigbee is quite a simple protocol and the device can't really "decide" what to be compatible with - meaning you can more or less use any device with any coordinator that chooses to support that device

The only time you really run into compatibility issues is if the coordinator is proprietary and chooses not to recognise devices outside their own ecosystem (eg IKEA might not bother to handle Aqara or Tuya devices). But if you use Home Assistant and a generic coordinator, then as long as someone's set HA up to support it, it will generally work

All of which is a lot of words for "If you use HA as your Zigbee hub, almost any device should work"

[spare hare]

Zigbee was built for this use-case. Another alternative is the high-end route with Lutron and RA2/3 switches. Those will work well for those who want to replace the light switch entirely in the room/home.