oblique shuttle
Recently moved into a house and looking for recommendations for products for different rooms. It's (technically) 5 bedroom, 3 full bath and two stories, and front/back yards.
I have an SLZB-06P10 but can/should get something for Zwave and Thread.
Not sure when I should do mmWave/PIR or multi sensor/splitting them up. Or if there are models that tend to be "better" than others.
twilit gorge
First thing I would do is write out a list of switches and bulbs that could be replaced with smart devices, then figure out which ones work better with bulb or switch or both swapped out before buying any parts
carmine pond
And the old “do I have neutrals in the switches”. That can dictate some choices.
On the mmWave front I can’t recommend the EP one and EP lite enough. They are ESPHome/wifi and powered on USBC but they are awesome.
hard elbow
If you are doing any renovating run Ethernet cable.
As mentioned, check if you have neutrals at the wall switches.
Decide on bulbs for the rooms - colour is a novelty but you may want it
If you run Ethernet look at a POE switch, you can use POE Splitters to power a lot of the IOT devices. The EP Pro supports POE and would be my recommendation.
Think about security - door / window sensors and whether you want to be changing batteries or have them wired in.
Also, consider Heating / Cooling especially if you are going to renovate.
oblique shuttle
If we want to do wall switches and bulbs together, how would that work?
twilit gorge
Make sure the switch has a "smart bulb mode"
For instance, the inovelli switches I installed have this mode, wettable by pressing config button correct number of times or via HA
This allows the switch to provide continuous power to keep bulb brains active while allowing you to use switch presses to activate automations/scenes
carmine pond
Does such a switch allow you to dim a light? I couldn’t go back to not having basically all lights in my house dimmable. My solution is smart bulbs and battery dimmers over the old hard switches. It sounds suboptimal but actually works very well.
twilit gorge
This one does, I have one of these and one of the mmwave, both zigbee
If in smart bulb mode though, dimming is done through HA controlling the bulb, not the switch controlling actual voltage pass through
sinful scaffold
make sure the boxes in the walls are deep enough, like 50mm instead of 40mm and indeed the nul wire...
hard elbow
Does such a switch allow you to dim a light? I couldn’t go back to not having ba...
If you are planning to do that I would sugget looking at some of the bulbs that offer both Zigbee and RF connections. This way you can have remote controls that will adjust the lights in an emergency.
If your back boxes are deep enough and have neutrals, you should be able to utilize the location for an independent controller. For example a small touch panel - it doesn't actually have any direct switching but communicates back to Home Assistant.
Note: Be aware that when using RF the Zigbee/RF bulbs don't always report state back to Home Assistant.
spark sundial
If we want to do wall switches and bulbs together, how would that work?
decide what you want out of your system
personally i prefer a smart switch and dumb bulbs - colour changing smartbulbs is a bit of a gimmick imo, and Phillips Huetone (i think) are good for dimmable bedroom lights as they start warmer when dim and get cooler as it gets brighter. This works out cheaper overall, plus is robust in case the zigbee network/HA server goes down for whatever reason (as the switch still directly controls the lights over a wire)
if you want to go smart switch + smart lights then as others have said - there's a "smart bulb" mode on most switches which means it doesn't actually disconnect power to the bulb, just reports the "switching. I would go for zigbee as you can bind the switch to the bulb and again be a bit more robust in the event of the whole mesh going down or HA disconnecting
dumb switch and smart bulb is not something you should do
wind merlin
I'm currently looking into changing the switches in my apartment (rented) to make all the lights smart, i dont have a neutral wire going to the switches though so I considered the aqara switches that dont need neutral, what do you think?