Sorry if this is a common question, but I’ve tried to research it on my own to no avail.
I have quite a few new smart light bulbs that I use with Alexa. (I use Amazon because my Sonos stuff and clock already had it.) While I love the convience of being able to use my voice or phone, I still find myself habitually using the switches when I walk into and out of a room.
Instead of just 3D printing some switch covers to keep them forever on, I was hoping there would be a smart switch that could trigger an Alexa routine to toggle the lights’ power. Maybe through VoiceMonkey as I use that on my StreamDeck.
The real issue is, I don’t want the switch to stop sending power to the outlet. I want the light to be where the control happens. That way the lights are always responding and ready to go at a moment’s notice rather than needing to reconnect before being able to change brightness/color. Is there any smart switch that does this, or do I need to try to DIY a button near my dumb switch?
Do you have a hub (e.g. Amazon Echo) that supports ZigBee? I believe the Inovelli ZigBee switches have a “smart bulb” mode where they always power the load, but the physical switch sends logical “on/off” commands to the bulbs instead.
For wifi switch running tasmota firmware like cloudfree, you can enable decouple mode.
Zooz for Z-wave or Inovelli for either Zigbee or Z-wave. They both have a smart bulb setting that keeps the relay engaged. Button presses are reported to the hub which can then be used to trigger the lights through integrations. In my case, I use Z-WaveJS and Wiz Wi-Fi bulbs brokered by Home Assistant.
I don’t want the switch to stop sending power to the outlet.
Make it so, then! Inside the switch electrical box, disconnect the outlet from the switch, and connect it to constant power instead. Easy-peasy, works with everything!
I do this with smart switches flashed with ESPhome and Home assistant manages the connection between them
Wouldn’t it be an trivial task to rewire the wires going to the current switch so that power is always supplied to the load, regardless of the switch position?
This absolutely would work if you don’t have a switch that can be configured to disable the relay. As others have said, there are several of these on the market now.
Yeah, and I could probably do that myself, except sometimes I find it more convenient (like when I’m on the phone walking around) or just habitual to hit a switch to turn on the lights.
If I were to rewire it, I’d just put a blank face plate on instead of the switch.
AFAIK most of the smart switches are momentary buttons, not actual switches, that activate/switch the relay when the button is pressed or told to through some wireless signal.
just why?
Pretty sure Aqara H1s do that?
Literally any smart switch/dimmer you just wire the circuit for constant on and dont have anything on the output.
A lot are comming with various bypass mode that just means they stay on and when you wire back in normal bulbs you dont need to rewire.
You just don’t hook the “Load” of the switch up to your lights. You wire the lights to the line side so they’re always powered and you can use any smart switch.
I really like these (for Zigbee.) the look convincing when installs and are about as quick of a way to convert control AND make sure the switch stays on: https://www.lutron.com/en-US/Products/Pages/StandAloneControls/Dimmers-Switches/SmartBulbDimmer/overview.aspx
Are your lights Zigbee? Then you can just control them with a Zigbee remote mounted on your wall.