ZIGBEE SMART SWITCHES SUCK! (except this one) – Philips Hue Smart Dimmer Switch V2
I’ve been using these Moes Zigbee switches for over a year now, and they’ve been nothing but a frustrating, intolerable mess the whole time. This is just some of the batteries that just two of these things have burned through in a matter of months, and that’s ignoring their constant lack of connectivity. You’d press the button, the light would flash, but nothing would happen. You’d have to hit it again, only to then find out they were just taking their sweet time and the light it controls would turn on then off, so you’ll need to press it again. It. Was. Infuriating. So I put my foot down and said NO MORE!
That’s where these come in, these are the Philips Hue Smart Dimmer Switch V2, and they are a very, very welcomed improvement. Before I get too far into these, it’s worth covering what the hell it is I’m even talking about. This is part of my smart home series, so if you haven’t seen the other videos I’d highly recommend watching through the playlist and coming back to this one as there’s a fair bit of terminology and jargon I’ll be using that is explained earlier in the series. With that said, let’s jump into this!
As a short TLDR, Zigbee is an open source smart home connectivity standard that acts as a mesh network to let your gadgets talk to each other, but is a separate network to WiFi meaning they can’t talk to the internet without a hub of sorts. I use Home Assistant as my hub, and that’s what controls the various devices I have here. I use smart switches like these to mostly control smart light bulbs – Philips Hue bulbs specifically – although especially when it comes to these “scene changer” style switches, you can have them do anything you want. You could have them close your robo-blinds, lock your smart door lock (please never buy one of those), or turn up your central heating. They are rather handy!
So what do I mean by types? Well this Hue Smart Dimmer is what most call a “scene changer” style switch, that is to say it’s just a remote. This sends a command over Zigbee and the hub manages what to do with that command. There’s no wiring here, you don’t connect power and a light circuit to this, it’s a battery powered remote. That’s it. If you just search “Zigbee switch”, you are more likely to find a wall mounted light switch replacement. Those are powered, and send power to something like a light bulb. They replace the switch you already have in your wall – although it’s worth noting that they are quite deep. They are normally 30 mm or more deep, whereas at least in my old house the wall boxes are only 12mm deep. You can use spacers depending on their location, but generally you’ll need to swap to a deeper wall box. There’s also a few sub-types within that too, namely if they require a neutral wire or not. Since they are powered by the incoming supply for the lights, normally you need live and neutral to complete the circuit and be powered, but many lights are switched live or neutral only, so many switches wouldn’t work. Luckily some don’t need a neutral wire, and they generally advertise that fact. There are also faceless switches, basically Zigbee controlled relays that can take input from your regular switch faces, but that can also take commands from Zigbee. This is great if you want to keep your regular switch faces but still want to add smart control.
There are also some smart switches that will actually talk to smart bulbs if configured for it. The thing with smart bulbs is that they need to remain powered to be remotely controllable, but a regular light switch just cuts power to the bulb to turn it off. Certain smart switches, I think Aqara makes a few, can actually keep the power on to a smart bulb, while just sending a command over Zigbee to turn it off. That’s great as it means you can still wake the bulbs up remotely say via your phone without having to turn the switch back on. That’s normally called “decoupled” or “detached” mode.
Ok, so that’s some context, now let me show you why I like these Hue Dimmer Switches! First off, the physical. While these do have a base plate you can stick or screw to your walls or really any flat surface, the actual controller is only magnetically attached to it, meaning it’s actually a proper remote. You can take it anywhere you want inside your Zigbee network and it’ll still work, but it always has a place to live back on the base plate. I’m not sure how much use I’ll actually get out of that personally, but I do like that it’s an option.
Second is the button layout. While I’d kind of prefer a blank, stickerable set of buttons, Philips clearly intended this to be a lighting dimmer controller, and so the inclusion of screen printed labels makes a lot of sense. What you might not realise though is that there are actually four buttons here. Power, brightness up, brightness down, and the hue button at the bottom. The whole front face is buttons. That means you essentially have space for the expected controls, plus a spare at the bottom to do whatever you want.
Third is the software side. Here are all of the button press options this thing exposes to Home Assistant. You have single tap, double tap, triple tap AND quadruple tap, AND long press. FOR ALL FOUR BUTTONS! That’s 5 actions per button, for a total of 20 different commands you could have this thing do. Maybe a quadruple tap of the Hue button is your panic mode, turns all the lights off, locks all the smart locks (don’t buy them please) and shuts all the blinds. Maybe long pressing the power button turns every light on in the room to full brightness. Maybe double tapping brightness up sets the light to max brightness but single tapping only steps it by 10%. The possibilities are endless, there’s so much room for activities!
This level of customizability, paired with the fact that – at least for my relatively short time testing them so far – they’ve been perfectly reliable and that they use standard CR2032 coin cells you can buy at Tesco and the included battery is meant to last three years on a charge… I’m rather happy with my purchase. They’re also decently cheap – I paid £18 a piece for these, which really isn’t too bad.
Of course I’m not using these in the standard way – I’m pairing it with my Zigbee dongle connected to Home Assistant, so it isn’t exactly what Philips had in mind, and it might not be how you are using it either, but I’m really happy with these. The form factor, the customizability, the reliability, and the battery all make it a welcomed upgrade over the Moes smart switches I was using. Perhaps when connected to the hub they expect you to use, they work better. Who knows. But for now, I’m happy with my purchase.
