I recently, maybe foolishly, replaced our apartment lights with some Matter bulbs. They’re mostly great, but yesterday the SO needed to turn on a light and it was such a chore for her. It’s had me thinking how I can make it work without voice. I’m guessing I’ll need a whole new setup, which sucks. I considered making a fancy Siri Shortcut to help her control things from her phone. Maybe a smart button on top of the switches? I’m a bit confused, if I’m being honest.
Any ideas on this are appreciated!
Smart switches and local automations are the key, not smart bulbs in the cloud.
Every light in my house is smart in one way or another, but if HomeAssistant and my internet connection both went down, basically everything would still function totally normally. Light switches would still turn on lights, etc. They’d just lose their voice control and wouldn’t be turned on by motion sensors, etc.
I do have some smart bulbs in the house, but they’re in accent lighting (pendants, etc), they run 100% locally, and they’re turned on and off by automations that are triggered by physical light switches. For example, you turn on the main kitchen lights with the smart switch, and that triggers the pendants to turn on. Its reliable enough that I’ve only seen the bulbs miss a trigger or get out of sync twice in two years, and toggling the light switch and extra time fixed it both times. If the bulbs ever had a network issue (which they haven’t), they’re accessible without a ladder or much fuss, and can be easily unscrewed/reseated for a power cycle.
My family doesn’t share my interest in home automation, but as long as everything works reliably and in an intuitive way, they’re fine with it.
This is it !
I think the key to successful adoption of home automation is to make the complicated easier and what’s already easy, invisible.
In other words, if you turn a light which previously was as simple as turning on a switch into an app or a different button or something, it’s not going to work.
In our basement (old 1920s house) we had a bunch of independent string lights, so you’d have to run around and turn on 5 different lights separately. I made the only switch into the room a smart switch (it’s not even connected to a light anymore) and it now triggers the five different lights automatically. So while there is the odd chance of not being able to turn on the lights in the event of a failure (don’t do this type of solution in important locations) the overall ease/improvement outweighs the inconvenience should it go down.
The only time I have issues with my installation is when I try to “fix” what was already working perfectly fine. I’ve definitely learned to resist the urge to update software when I’m not home / traveling :)
This. Smart switches, dumb bulbs. Or smart switches and smart bulbs if lighting your house like a disco is important to you.
But since you have the bulbs already: As I understand, Home Assistant is working on support for Matter. (It’s in beta) HA also has cloudless voice command functionality available. Something like a last-gen Raspberry Pi could get this up and running PDQ.
Smart switches and local automations are the key, not smart bulbs in the cloud.
100% this.
OP is saying how it was a chore for his girlfriend to turn on a light and thought of putting a switch above the switch but not replacing the switch. A logical reason is that they’re renting and can’t replace switches easily; I feel like that’s an important enough detail to include.
Unfortunately, Smart Bulbs only make sense in situations where the light isn’t controlled by a switch.
Unfortunately, Smart Bulbs only make sense in situations where the light isn’t controlled by a switch.
Not true at all: ZigBee bulbs plus ZigBee wall switches (and then binding them together, of course) is the common, standard way of running whole-home circadian smart lighting
Lutron Caseta. No one has to learn anything unless they want to.
It’s a personal preference thing, but my official policy is to not break the traditional operation of any light/device. So I will automate a light, fan, appliance at the switch, but the wall switch will still turn it On and Off as it always has.
This means that remotely controlled bulbs and LED strips will only be used where previous switched lights did not exist, or for setting color, rather than On/Off. An example of this is cabinet or painting lights that never previously existed and don’t really require manual switching can be operated by automation only. But the overhead lights or lamps in a room must continue to be operable from the wall switch.
If the home automation controller is removed, the house should still function as it did prior to automation.
I’ve had smart lights since the 80’s, things I’ve learned.
Everything needs a traditional switch/dimmer where people expect them to be.
Switch functions need to override automations, I turn the lights off they stay off until automations figure everybody has left the room and now come back.
Voice is the worst way to control HA, I love the Star Trek TNG computer lights as much as the next guy it’s just not efficient.
Colors nice for accent not realy good for primary unless your throwing a rave in your living room (at which point you want DMX).
People are very sensitive to latency, they expect an immediate response so cloud anything works poorly. Even local logic can be a problem some things you want a direct link, dimmer talks to bulb directly.
From the sounds of it a pico remote that looks like a normal switch could take care of things. better would be a matter dimmer that can direct address those bulbs.
There is rather a lot of language in the NEC on the subject of residential lighting and light switches. Here is the main part of it:
NEC 210.70(A)(1) Habitable Rooms. At least one wall switch–controlled lighting outlet shall be installed in every habitable room, kitchen, and bathroom. Exception No. 1: In other than kitchens and bathrooms, one or more receptacles controlled by a wall switch shall be permitted in lieu of lighting outlets.
Accordingly, people expect the light switches to be present, and to control the lights. That is a reasonable expectation. So I use smart switches for the switch-controlled lighting, and the switch over-rides the automation. If a guest operates a switch, the light must behave as expected.
A switched outlet is allowed, instead of or in addition to a ceiling fixture. And, where a lamp is plugged into the switched outlet, it is still allowed to turn the lamp off manually. But the wall switch must be present, and must control some kind of lighting outlet (either a fixture or an outlet). And, it is usual (though not required) to leave the lamp turned on.
All of this is actually about safety, not just design. Without lights, people trip and fall. I don’t want my guests getting injured in my house. So I make sure there is light, and that the conventional controls do work.