I’m looking for some good zigbee or thread wall dimmers for some hall lights, and I’d rather not use wifi if I can avoid it. The only thing I’ve been able to find on Amazon has been the Embrighten switches. Any suggestions?
Inovelli
I use Lutron. But they use a proprietary protocol (with local control however)
I use lutron (dimming), they are older ones I think the newest one I have is 4 years old, I get a ton of flickering in my LED bulbs. Do you experience that? I’ve tried a variety of bulbs and it’s the same issues if not worse. I was planning to switch to a different brand when I have the time to commit to it.
You mean the Lutron Caseta ones right?
Yea I do notice the flickering in one of my rooms. They do sell a capacitor to solve the issue Lutron LUT-MLC https://a.co/d/eXWMCdY
I haven’t bothered with it since the room with the flickering is my server room.
Lutron is great if you have an old home like I do because of the wall mountable remotes. I’ve added lamp dimmers and 3 way switches in multiple spots in my house where I’d otherwise have to do a bunch of rewiring. The bummer about them is that since the buttons are flat they can be hard to find in the dark.
I really like the Zooz Z-wave ones. Had no problems with mine.
The wifi ones they sell at Costco, but re-flashed with Tasmota
Tasmota is a very clever open-source custom firmware that runs on any smart home device, which uses the ESP Wi-Fi chip. It provides local control of the smart devices through MQTT, HTTP, Serial, or WEB UI.
I just learned about it and now I’m really interested in it as well
It’s pretty awesome, actually. Most stuff in my house is gear that’s been re-flashed to Tasmota, and for a decent period of time the “CE Smart” (plugs , outlets, dimmers, bulbs) branded stuff used Tuya chips which were pretty easy to flash. Costco sold these, but the guts have changed over time.
The older Tuya based stuff can be flashed OTA to Tasmota using a raspberry Pi and a special app, but meant of the newer ones use a different chipset that is no longer compatible (or at least last time I gave it a shot). Much newer stuff seems to have crappy realtek chips that won’t take Tasmota, though I haven’t picked up anything recently. Devices that still use an ESP82xx chipset were also flashable by serial connection soldered to the right leads (RX,TX,3.3v, ground and NO AC power).
About a year ago, HomeAssistant stopped working with straight MQTT based Tasmota after a certain version. Thankfully, there’s actually a native Tasmota plugin now that actually works better for hardware running that particular variety of open-source firmware, and it’s actually become a bit easier to use.
If anyone snags a compatible “CE Smart” dimmer and manages to flash it, I’ve still got a functional template and the command that makes it work nicely in dimmer mode.
My current project is actually to reflash a sonoff ceiling fan controller and get that integrated.
The ‘platform’ for the FEIT ones at costco are really well built. They make the Insteon units look like they were a one off hobby project. That’s the part that has the power circuitry, screw terminals, etc. The wifi module used to be ESP based but they switched about a year ago to a newer BK723 chip, these can be reflashed with a ‘OpenBeken’, which is a newer project that has similar functionality to Tasmota but for these newer chips.
The only downside I’ve seen with these is OpenBeken is not as mature and the units ‘hang’ now and then requiring a power cycle (like 2-4 weeks). I have some of the older ESP based units that are otherwise identical and they never hang, this has been getting better with upgrades so likely will eventually be fixed.
If you are OK with soldering you can buy the ESP controller modules on Amazon for about $1 each and just replace them and run stock Tasmota (you have to unsolder the module to reflash it either way, so its not a big deal to just put a different one on). The module pinout and electrical interface are identical.
Do NOT use enbrighten zigbee dimmers if you have LED lights. I installed a half dozen with Halo LED cans and they make the lights flicker at best and not dim at all at worst. And when I say flicker I mean like strobe light flickering. I had other dimmers installed before that were new but not smart and didn’t have any issues.
