Light switch advice
Light switch advice
Just looking for some advice if the idea I have in mind is even feasible.
I have 2 light switches in my kitchen, one for some pendant lights, one for some overhead cannister lights.
I hate the placement of the switches, since the pendant lights which I prefer are far away from the actual doorways into the kitchen. Meanwhile the cannister lights are on the switches near the doors.
I'm looking to do some clever "hackery" to make it so the switches by the doors control the pendant lights, if possible, but I don't want to have to rewire things in the walls/ceilings.
Is there a good solution to this? I was looking at some Shelly switches, but I'm not sure those solve for the problem I wanna solve. I'm willing to swap out switches or wire in things near the lights, but trying to keep things simple as possible.
You could replace them with z-wave switches. The switches by default would control the respective lights they're wired to, but you could use scenes to control the other switch. For example, 2x up on the canister light switch turns on the pendant light (and not the canister lights, unless you want that, too).
I have similar stuff programmed with Home Assistant using Node-Red, but the normal automation stuff would work, too.
Home Assistant/Node-Red sees that Scene 2 (or whatever) has been called for, and then does whatever you want.
13My zwave stuff has always worked 100% of the time. My ZigBee stuff occasionally freaks out and my WiFi stuff (wled) on 2.4g is a cluster truck of peripherals and frequently bugs out... But not zwave. Not once, not ever. Its pricy but so worth it.
4FYI setting my zigbee channel resolved all of my zigbee issues, all 3 networks run flawlessly in parallel for me: https://www.metageek.com/training/resources/zigbee-wifi-coexistence/
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The switches don't have to control the lights they are wired to. I have Inovelli z-wave switches, and on these you can disable the relay. So the switch can still send out commands/scenes on the network but the relay is always on.
Then you would put in a relay unit in the electrical box of the lights or if you have enough room in with the switches. Then setup the switches to control their respective sets of lights.
Might even be a switch out there that lets you disconnect the relay from the buttons on the switch but still control the relay which would cut down on the device count.
1This, but I'd recommend zigbee over zwave. Zwave is kinda dead and not worth investing in, zigbee sensors and switches are much more available and cheaper. (I run both)
I do a similar setup to what you want, with inovelli switches. They're nice but a bit pricy, there are cheaper options available.
1Highly disagree that Z-Wave is dead. There are many companies, especially Zooz, coming out with new products all the time. Yes, ZigBee is far cheaper but I've had the worst reliability issues with ZigBee and moved everything to Z-Wave. Zero issues with connectivity or batteries dying too fast.
But that's the beauty and strength of HA. Openess and selection.
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+1 for Shelly as I have or any other drop in relay, all the wiring you'll need to do is behind the switchplate, you can decouple the input switch from the relay output and have HA trigger either output based on some input conditions. My fav config is having two flips of the switch perform a different action
5shelly relays will do exactly what you want. just wire them as disconnected switches. i do this to simulate 3-way switches, but it'll work just as well to swap circuit behavior.
you can use a homeassistant action if you’re already using HA, or you can have the shellys call each others web api when it senses the switch.
5I've heard Shelly bandied about quite a lot in the HA circle but this is the first thing that's made me sit up and take notice. You're saying they're far more customisable than, say, your standard ZigBee light switch?
1Depends on the specific Zigbee switch, but generally yes.
The magic is in the fact that you can decouple the relay, and use the switch as a sensor that triggers things that may or may not be related to the physical switch position.
The other reason I like it better than a typical "smart switch" is that I can use the shellys with whatever switch I want, so I can have it match my dumb switches and use different colors.
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If you want to skip wiring all together, pick up two Aurora Dimmers and put Hue bulbs in all your sockets. It's not the cheapest or most privacy friendly if you're using their hub. But going this way, you can put the dimmer near the fixture you want to control, you have no wiring whatsoever, connection to HA, and you're completely up and running inside of 30 minutes.
4Seconding this, I have two aurora dimmers and they're awesome.
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AliExpress some ZigBee light switches. They arent connected to anything but through Openhab you use them to swtch ZigBee light switches that replace your existing switches.
4A low-wiring way to do it would be to replace the bulbs with hue/similar bulbs, then just put a battery powered button in the location you want to have the controls. £10-ish for each button, plus however much the bulbs are.
Then just have the button set to toggle the lights on/off (you can also call different presets like dim etc by pressing and holding).
Then hass just directly sends the on/off commands to the bulbs.3Install Enocean wireless, battery free switches. I've used them for many years, they work awsome. The switches can go anywhere you want (double side tape on any surface) or screw in as normal light switches. The act of pushing the button generates enough energy to send the RF signal to a receiver you install with the light and its powered from AC mains.
2As long as the sockets have the power from the original switches left on, any kind of wireless bulb and switch would work. The switches then control the bulbs, not the actual power circuit. Just make sure to get brands you know will work with HA if you plan to tie the switches into the system.
2If you're in North America, you can source Leviton wall switches. They're UL-listed. They have ZigBee and Z-wave versions. They have plain switch as well as dimmer versions. Once you have radio control over the light fixtures via the switches, you can add battery powered radio buttons that look like light switches wherever you like and make them toggle the Levitons. This assumes Home Assistant availability. If you don't have Home Assistant and you just want to solve this, Lutron has an equivalent solution with their own smart dimmers along with their own remote buttons.
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