#How to "deal" with lighting. Hardware vs. software, existing switches vs new wireless switches, etc.

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lament ravine
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I've recently gotten into smart lighting and controlling it with home assistant and adaptive lighting and what not. It works pretty well.

However, the largest issue I'm running into is that... well... these devices (the bulbs) work a lot better if you just never power them off physically. They want you to turn them on and off with software.

The issue with THAT is that, well, all of my lights in my house turn on and off with physically wired light switches. (As do what... 98% of homes?)

I'm not super excited about having to buy wireless, battery powered, double sided tape stick on "switches" for all of the lights I want to use these smart bulbs with. A: I hate the idea of them being battery powered and B: It would look like crap. I don't want these things on my walls.

So my questions are as follows:
What IS the best way to deal with smart bulbs with home assistant? In my few hours of searching here, people refer to this problem as the AB problem because people are generally searching for ways to detect when a smart light bulb has turned off physically and is "unavailable" rather than just searching for better ways of turning it on and off. (In my opinion HA should really work on supporting legacy/hardwired switches and unavailable states as that's what the vast, vast majority of people are going to be dealing with, but that's neither here nor there.) Is there a way to tell ZHA to poll specific devices (bulbs) every 10 seconds or so to determine if it's unavailable? I think Z2M may have some feature like this. Basically, is there a way to FORCE an availability check? (I know that things are "unavailable" only after not reporting into HA for... hours, so it'd have to be something very specifically programmed.)

If all of that fails or is not possible, are there physical, wired switches that are zigbee that can still work as a normal switch as well (Because I don't want to have to remove them if I move.)

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A bit of clarification. No, I don't know how such a switch would work. maybe it has a little button on it to switch it from "normal switch mode" to "zigbee mode". Or maybe a dual switch with one being a physical switch that cuts power physically and the other being the zigbee on/off.

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Hm, chatgpt actually helped out. Apparently these switches DO exist and it's something called "Smart bulb mode."

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An alternative way to do this would be with a simple relay that sits on the hot side of the switch and has its own neutral. So the physical switch would still work, but the relay could keep power on if the physical switch was turned off.

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After some googling, it appears this device also exists, and is called a "Shelly." I think that's probably the best and cheapest way to do this. (All of my light switches match, I don't... really... want to update one or two of them just to do this smart lighting thing, and I don't want to update ALL of them because I'm not rich and not all of my lighting needs to be smart.)

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Clarification: The shellys don't do exactly that, they basically replace the switch and your light switch becomes a very overbuilt low voltage DC (I assume) switch. No high voltage passes through your light switch anymore. I suppose this is probably the only way to do that. (At least I think so, I have to look more into them.)

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I guess a question I have is... wtf happens if your server is down for any reason? Does your lighting just... not work? at all?

gleaming pollen
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Smart bulb mode on a smart switch works without your server on.

My approach is to only use smart bulbs on standalone lamps and smart switches for any lamp hardwired to mains power.

lament ravine
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A good 95% of the lights in my house are hardwired to switches. How does smart bulb mode still work? Does it physically send the signal to the smart bulb if there is no server connection?

Are there other brands other than Inovelli that have this decoupled/smart bulb mode? Google is inconclusive. Using zigbee of course. Right now I'm only using ZHA, and the results I found say that other brands may only work with Z2M

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Nevermind I forgot there is a huge database.

gleaming pollen
warped gazelle
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For what its with, I love my Inovelli zigbee switches. Currently have one in bathroom controlling three smart bulbs and one in kitchen controlling a multi-bulb single fixture with dumb bulbs installed. Both situations work perfectly and solve their own "problem"
I also have a Shelly installed in an electrical box behind a switch for another hardwired single dumb bulb fixture which works well to allow physical control to override programmatically set state. These are not low voltage, they are wired into mains (120VAC here in the US)

None of these options use batteries.

half saffron
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Ikea Zigbee dimmers and various Zigbee bulbs. Battery life on a dimmer is a thing, but I get 2-3 years so I’m not bothered about that. If HA is giving trouble (it hasn’t in 3 years touch wood) I can pop off the dimmer. Also use Styrbars with a mount. Great for kids rooms for different colours etc. Every light, bar the one in my office/project room which is a high intensity pendant and on a relay, is dimmable which is a major plus and non trivial thing IMO. Have become quite snobbish about that and hate staying somewhere without dimmers.
I bought the mounts off eBay because at the time I couldn’t print ABS. Total cost for mount plus dimmer plus bulb was no more than 10 £. Some folk might say they are ugly. I don’t agree, though my comparison as it’s all I’ve ever had is a generic white UK light switch. Another plus point is this change is trivial to undo. Not that I’m planning on selling this house anytime soon.

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The great thing about “smart” lighting is how many choices there are.

lost gate
half saffron
lost gate
half saffron
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So how do you do that then? Assume the bulb and switch are bound? If you get then get the bulb into pair mode it will have reset itself? I’ve tried this. What are pairing HA with?

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Sorry dropped some words.

lost gate
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You add the bulb and remote to your Zigbee network. Then you open the ZHA/Z2M page of the remote, and you follow the menus to bind it to the bulb. While doing that, you need to press the remote a few times to keep it awake

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The classic IKEA method is called Touchlink. And yeah you use it without a hub, because it resets the bulb

half saffron
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Seems to have all been configured correctly, but doesn’t work. Cheers for revealing what the binding config section is for though.

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Hmm the binding disappears when I revisit the screen. This is ZHA. TRADFRI dimmer and bulb.

half saffron
lost gate
half saffron
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Tried two switches and two bulbs and am getting nowhere. No bother. As I said HA hasn’t died yet.

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What kind of group? ZHA group or helper?

lost gate
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Zigbee group (zha)

half saffron
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My Zigbee light groups don’t show in the bind device drop down.

lost gate
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Hmm sorry I'm on Z2M

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Maybe it's a different dropdown. Bind group

half saffron
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Wait does HA need to be off for the bind to work? I’m just disabling my automations.

lost gate
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No it doesn't need to be off

half saffron
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Ahh. Hang on trying something.

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The UI is atrocious.

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No I’m not going to bother. Even if that works I won’t make groups for individual lights, that would be mental.