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?
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I use Lutron. But they use a proprietary protocol (with local control however)
I’ve heard good things about those, I’d just hate to have to buy into another system.
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.
Thank you I’ll look into this!
Inovelli
i love my innoveli switches
The inovelli blue smart bulb feature allowing for direct ZigBee binding to hue bulbs has been particularly useful for me.
Ooh those look interesting. Pricey though.
They really are the best though.
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
The Feit ones, right? And what exactly is 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.
CE Smart branded ones. Tasmota is open source firmware that’s compatible with home-assistant and can be flashed over various ESP or Tuya chips (see my longer answer to another post in this thread)
I can’t find them in Costco’s in Canada anymore… I’d buy a ton more if they were available. A pain to flash, but very worth it for the price
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.
How difficult is it to reflash these devices to Tasmora? Do you have to crack it open? Do you have too wire it into the wall first?
I use leviton z wave and haven’t had issues.
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.
Leviton Zwave. They work great and should go fine with matter.
I use the 4 button Philips hue dimmers. Mostly mostly because I already had some from before I started using home assistant, and then because it’s easier to add more or replace when needed. All reconfigured in node-red, all behave the same:
- quick press of the on button toggles the room’s ceiling lights
- quick press of the up button toggles the room’s lamps
- quick press of the down button toggles the room’s fans
- quick press of the off button turns everything in the room off
- long press of the on button toggles the room’s curtains
- long press of the up button brightens any lights that are on in the room
- long press of the down button dims any lights that are on in the room
- long press of the off button turns off all downstairs devices and locks the doors
I’m thinking of buying Candeo, what do you guys think?
I’m in the UK and using Zigbee dimmer modules from Samotech, which match the style of traditional dumb dimmer switches in my country. There are similar models available from Candeo and others.
I’ve also been experimenting recently with a Shelly Dimmer2 module.
I have been looking at getting these from EcoBright, anyone got any experience with them?
YoSmart/YoLink also has a smart dimmer for $30. Those use a 900Mhz frequency to communicate and the hubs are usually $25 or they add about $10 ina a bundle.
The normal Hubs have Ethernet. The “voice” hubs are wifi only (to connect to your network, still 900MHz to talk to their devices).
I initially started using them because they were cheaper than Z-Wave (at the time) and the smaller sensors (leak, door/window, temp, etc) use normal AAA batteries.
I just ripped out my insteon system and replaced it with Caseta. I wanted the “device-to-device” response speed.
It doesn’t work unless you want those MadKatz looking remotes on your wall. The two button remotes send all linked devices to full power, so I process them in Home Assistant. Home assistant is fast enough to process the commands, but the lutton protocol doesn’t have any sort of acknowledgement on the wireless side, it just keeps on blasting for 1.4 seconds. Good for reliability, awful for latency… So for 1.4 seconds after an action, the hub waits for the first device to stop transmitting before it sends commands to the rest of the devices.
I’m going to try some “scene” remotes and maybe get it to be acceptably quick but there are still limitations.
ZigBee is so good, they made thread. Z-wave is so good, there are 4 versions. Matter over thread is what I wanted but that’s vaporware for now. Considering what I know now, I would probably have gone with esphome or tasmota dimmers. I was worried about them mucking up my wifi, but they’re the only things I have on 2.4 and the scene controllers and garage controllers have been solid.
This is good to know, I have a whole home Insteon setup now, will probably have to replace it at some point since they went under…
I replaced a few switches with a Zooz Z-Wave switch. It’s fast enough but it’s paired with ZigBee lights, so I have to use a #HomeAssistant automation to sync up the dimming. Not ideal so I didn’t replace any more switches yet.
All my stuff is wifi based so I can’t really help with that, sorry.
