I know you’re not supposed to keep cutting power to Zigbee spots via the light switch, but my 2 and 3 year old kids (and guests) just use the normal switch.
What I need: the switch keeps working physically as normal, but the bulbs themselves never actually lose power, so there’s no risk to the Zigbee network and spots that lose connection.
I red about several options already, curious what you Guys think is the best and why!
Looking for something reliable, not overly complex. Anyone dealt with a similar setup and can recommend what worked?
The more complex and expensive route would be to replace the switches with something like the Aqara Wall Switch H1, which you can configure with the app for the switch’s button to become wireless. So the relay in the back can then only turn off the power from Homey and flows. And the switch will then be usable in Flows to control the lights on and off without losing power. But you still retain the safety of being able to cut power to the light fixtures from Homey if you need to change a bulb for instance.
Use a built-in wall switch module that supports ‘detached mode’ that sits between the physical switch and the cable to you lights (e.g. some of the SONOFF and Shelly switches have this functionality).
Philips, targeted at Hue lamps, has a (battery powered) unit that you can build into the wall switch to which you attach the physical buttons and acts as a remote.
In all cases the light is wired such that it is permanently powered or the built-in switch provides permanent power (in case of detatched mode).
Finally, instead (but I think you are passed that point), use ‘dumb’ lights and make the physical wall switch smart via a built-in smart switch (e.g. from SONOFF). This means of course that you only have the option to switch the lights on/off (and dim in some cases). This might be enough if you don’t want color changing lights.
Another alternative you could investigate which works (mostly) reliable for me, is using WiFi lights. They do not interfere with your Zigbee, Thread or Zwave mesh.
When you power them up, they will come to life with the same settings you powered them down with. It, however, takes them 7 - 10 seconds to boot up and only then they become available for changing parameters like color, color temperature or dimming level.
Beware of Shelly bulbs. They are low quality and the Homey driver app freaks out when they become unavailable. Maybe the latest Shelly app fixes that but I had moved mine to Home Assistant where they have been working flawlessly ever since.
WiFi bulbs also can no longer be controlled from Homey when you turn off the physical switch
I think @Jer_Vos needs either a relay (or smart light switch) behind the physical switch and “dumb” bulbs, or use smart bulbs and remove the physical switch entirely, and use remotes (like Hue Dimmer Switch) for control.
Who wants to control a bulb that is switched off?
You can do anything you want to easily in a flow with a 10 second delay timer after the the “is switched on” event.
With a dumb bulb you can do exactly nothing. And a smart relay behind a physical switch or no physical switch at all is a complete fail if homey is gone, while a real physical switch alone will allways work.
WiFi bulbs at least have settings and they come back with the same settings they had before. - And its no problem for the WiFi network because many WiFi devices (like phones) come and go.
Then what you need is something like this behind the switch and wire the lights with a switch bypass and just use the smart switch relay to control the smart on/off of the bulbs depending on the physical switch position
