DIY Smart Home EP6 – Smart Switches!

Hi and welcome to episode 6 of my DIY smart home series. So far we have set up our main system using Home Assistant, connected Zigbee devices, created some more advanced automations and have remote access up and running. In this episode I want to walk you through some of the ways you can interact with your smart tech, namely with different types of switches.

I say types, but I have four main options in mind. Scene changer switches like these, light switch replacements, motion sensors and door sensors – there are undoubtedly more options here but I think these four should be a decent starting point. And, speaking of starting points, let me explain these Scene changer switches! These look a lot like standard wall switches, they are pretty much the same size as a light switch fixture (at least here in the UK), but they don’t have the “junk in the trunk” a normal light switch has. They are only the thickness of the faceplate, and include double sided tape to stick them pretty much anywhere you like.

If you slide the back panel off, you’ll find the CR2430 battery location. Annoyingly these didn’t come with them, but they just slide in then you hold any button down for something like 8 seconds to put it into pairing mode, and as usual you’ll head to Home Assistant, Zigbee Home Automation, Add Device, then let it find and connect to it. You can get these from a few different manufacturers, and with varying numbers of buttons included. I bought both the two and three button options, although it’s worth noting these support single, double and long press actions separately meaning each switch itself can technically support up to three actions. I say technically just because I’ve had trouble getting these to register the single press action, I think because I’m holding the switch for slightly too long. I’m not 100% on that.

Anyway, these are great for controlling all sorts of tech. Lights are the obvious one, but since you can map an almost limitless amount of actions – including multiple actions – to these, you can do anything you like. Say you have a motorised garage door, motorised blinds, smart lights, smart heating, door and window sensors and CCTV cameras – well when you are leaving the house you could click one of these buttons on the wall by your garage door to open have it open the garage, turn your heating down, “arm” the door and window sensors, enable motion notifications on your cameras – even enable recording on interior cameras – turn your lights off and close your blinds. All from a single switch!

If you’ve got conventional lights that you’d rather not replace with smart bulbs, or you want to retain the standard functionality of your light switches without losing the smart control features you might want to consider replacing your actual light switches with a smart versions. These tend to be a little bigger than standard switches meaning if you have a standard 16mm or 25mm backbox you might need to either upgrade sizes or use a spacer, neither of which I’m all that happy with personally. Alternatively you can keep your existing switches and use a wire-only switch that you connect your switch to, the light to it’s output, then when you flick your physical switch it’s effectively sending a signal to the smart switch to turn on, but even when the physical switch is ‘off’ you can tell the smart switch via Zigbee to turn on anyway.

That can be useful in conjunction with a motion sensor like this one. I actually really like this little Aquara one as it outputs both motion and illuminance – light level. That means you can set up your automations to only turn your lights on when it detects motion and when the light level is low enough to need the lights on. That’s what I’ve done with my living room Hue bulb. When the sensor sees less than 10 lux, and it detects motion for a full second, it’ll turn the bulb on. I added the “for a full second” to make sure it doesn’t trigger any false-positives. I haven’t set it up to turn the light back off again – say after 5 minutes of no further motion – because I generally don’t want the tech to end up getting in my way or becoming more frustrating than the standard.

Luckily, door sensors might actually be the solution to that problem. These stick to your door and its frame and will fire an action whenever you open or close the door. This would be great for controlling the lights in a room, just open the door to toggle their state, or if it’s more like a cupboard, have it turn on when it opens and turn off when it closes. They can also be used in conjunction with other switches or inputs like device tracking to know if you’ve left the house, and therefore the system should do things like turn down the heating, turn off lights and “arm” your security systems. I don’t have any of these yet, but I’m definitely considering picking some up because they should be able to remove the need for a lot of physical switches and I think is a good step towards the idea of having the tech be fully out of my way.

Of course, you can, and probably should, mix and match these to suit your house and needs. Personally I want to make the light switch options work but I don’t think I can without compromising on my requirements. The scene switchers work really well, as does the motion sensor, and like I said I think I’ll be picking up some door and window sensors, both for security and functionality. Hopefully this has been a useful look at some of your options and gives you some ideas for your own smart homes!