TL;DR: I want to integrate Smart Lights with Smart Switching with Home Assistant, but it also needs to operate if HA is not working. Any ideas on how to do this? Any reference to a product or a specific supplier would help a lot!
Long ramble
I’ve dabbled into Home Automation before, and I had a Home Assistant (HA) setup before in my previous place. However, I’ve relocated, and I would like to tackle things differently this time around. I have two problems when it comes to lighting, but I am not sure how to combine these two:
Cool/warm light - My SO is pretty sensitive to warm light during the day, so I would need to have some form of smart light that would be able to change temperature during the day.
Smart switches - Would like to have switches in the entirety of the living room to turn on and off all the different lights. For some reason, whoever built this place put lights in different circuits with different amperage.
However, when trying to mix these two, I end up in a situation where I would definitively need to have a HA setup working at all times, regardless of ZigBee, Zwave, Matter, etc. I would like to start this new setup with the ability of NOT having to rely on HA for the switching in case of outages (i.e have the switch to become a dumb switch if there’s nothing to communicate to, even if its to the dedicated circuit). If I decide to have only smart lights, then I’d need a separate switch for controlling the lights, and rely on physical switches when there’s an HA unavailability. Been reading quite a bit in the HA forum, but the framing is usually “do your own research, and then we can talk about these specific products”, or I haven’t looked thoroughly enough yet.
Has anyone figured out what would be the best combination to use Smart Lights + Smart Switches and then have a fallback to basic on/off switching when the brains are not working?
You gan get switches that are zwave/zigbee that can be used as conventional switches regardless If the controller is up or not. GE and lutron are two options to look at but pretty much all the hardwired smart switches have dual functionality.
I’m no expert on smart home/IoT, but I personally have a few Sonoff devices. So I can only comment from that perspective.
You don’t want a central point in the form of HA or something else, right?
This creates a problem right from the start, because most ecosystems need a central point for management.
Define unavailability… Do you mean no internet or a complete HA outage? Because it’s probably not about a power outage, because then the light bulbs will go out…
Many companies offer cloud-based device control… but if you lose internet, you lose not only current control but also the operation of the entire system. In other words, the whole thing becomes dead or severely limited. The only way to avoid being dependent on the internet is to have a local central hub for management and connecting everything together.
There are a multitude of solutions, including HA. But there are also brand-specific solutions. Sonoff has iHost and NSPanel, which can act as a local control point without the need for a cloud.
Some Sonoff products have a mode called LAN mode, which allows for very limited control without the internet or a central point, simply via the LAN app.
In an extremely simplified model, if you opted for ZigBee, the Sonoff ZigBee Bridge Pro could theoretically control devices locally without the need for a cloud or other solutions. But this is a very limited scene model.
And of course, just because something is ZigBee doesn’t mean that different brands are compatible… because in many cases, they aren’t.
I’ve had Home Assistant before, but I had problems where the setup would stop working due to drivers being dropped off its Linux image, or where they had to be loaded manually for some reason or another, in any of these circumstances, HA may become unavailable. I would like for these devices to work in a “standalone” mode if HA is unavailable for these reasons.
My idea is to run HA centrally, but if for whatever reason it goes down, I would like to be able to turn the lights on and off manually
A possible alternative to the HA machine in the case of Sonoff products is the iHost. This is their supposed HA in a simplified form for their devices.
Apparently you can also run HA on it as docker…
Regarding the physical ability to turn on/off when the controller is unavailable, almost every switch should offer this capability.
However, if you don’t plan on centrally implementing HA/something and the cloud is sufficient, and in the event of unavailability, a physical on/off switch will suffice, then… many brands will be suitable, including Sonoff.
It all depends on how complex your ecosystem ultimately is. And how much you want to spend, but that’s something you’ll have to determine for yourself.
Are you cool with installing hardwired zwave switches? If so this will accomplish your goal. Been running that setup for about 10 years now. Wife approved as she can just use the switches normally and I can write and run all the automations in the background.
*edited to add. These run 100% locally with no cloud integration if that’s something you’re concerned about. You would need a zwave bridge/dongle for the HA box. I can’t remember if Sonoff still needs an app or to be flashed with esp home firmware. It’s been a bit since I’ve used them.
Logical I never had faith in Z-Wave and the prices used to be high. Sonoff initially offered very good prices for quality and offered Wi-Fi, RF and finally ZigBee, now also available in Matter.
Yeah, I’m ok running either ZigBee, Zwave or both - Already own the dongles for each protocol and can run them in Home Assistant.
I was actually thinking of going with a combination of Shelly devices and HA for brains, but it seems that they can still behave as dumb switches based on how they’re configured.
I just realized how much additional research I need to put on to figure out all the wiring that I need to set up in order to have this working. This was really valuable to me figure out exactly what I want! Thank you very much!
PS: I do not like Sonoff as I have used their products before and ended up being very disappointed with their unreliability (two DOA switches)
Fair enough… you have to choose the solutions you like and that work best.
Personally, I haven’t had any major problems with Sonoff. And even when something went wrong, I’ve had to file a complaint and have a replacement shipped directly from China for free a few times.
I’d say the best bet would be having a Zigbee2MQTT instance that’s separate from HA but can communicate with it and send messages to it outside HA if it goes down. The pain point right now it’s not the hardware, I think, but how to control it.
