I recently installed a Blue series dimmer in my toddler’s room, because he is now able to reach the switches on the wall and turn on the lights when he should be in bed. I am happy to have him independently turn the lights on/off at all other times of day, but after he falls asleep and until 7am, I would like to disable the paddle up/down buttons. From what I have learned so far, using Home Assistant to enable Local Protection would do that. But I was hoping to also have some sort of override so an adult can still turn on the lights in an emergency situation. In an ideal world maybe having to hold the config button and then pressing paddle up or down to activate the lights instead. But it looks like that’s not possible because there is only one “action” available at a time, and I don’t see any documentation showing that there are action states for two buttons pressed at the same time. Another idea is, can I use the config button to toggle Local Protection enabled/disabled? Any feedback would be appreciated.
Enable Local Protection Mode
To enable Local Protection Mode (Parameter 256) on your Blue Series Dimmer Switch, hold down on the top part of the paddle (on) while simultaneously tapping the configuration button ten (10) times (do not let go of the paddle when finished tapping the config button). Wait for the LED Bar to flash solid green (and then let go of the paddle) indicating the switch has enabled Local Protection Mode.
Video Demonstration
Disable Local Protection Mode
To disable Local Protection Mode (Parameter 256) on your Blue Series Dimmer Switch, hold down on the bottom part of the paddle (off) while simultaneously tapping the configuration button ten (10) times (do not let go of the paddle when finished tapping the config button). Wait for the LED Bar to flash solid red (and then let go of the paddle) indicating the switch has disabled Local Protection Mode.
Video Demonstration
Hi Bry, thanks for the videos. Is there any way to change the combination / sequence to enable / disable local protection? Having to press the same button 10 times doesn’t seem like its easy to pull off / remember in the case of an emergency where an adult needs to turn on the lights ASAP. Hence why I was looking for something simpler, like hold config + tap up/down.
I don’t think so. Those sequences are cooked into the firmware. Plus they are intentionally complicated to keep people from accidentally tripping them. In the past, with simpler button pushes, there were accidental button presses that resulted in local protection being turned on.
Got it, no changing the firmware. Do you know a way we might be able to enable a simple sequence if we use Home Assistant automations too? I already need to rely on some automation to toggle local protection at bedtime and wakeup anyway.
Does local protection disable scene controls? If it does, I can’t think of a way to do this.
if it allows scene controls to work, you could set up an automation for double (or triple tap) for up /down or config to trigger it.
Pretty sure it doesnt. Just tested on a Gen 2 and button presses were still recognized. Can’t recall on a Gen 3.
I’m not familiar with HA, but I use Habitat rules, and I believe that the following actions would work if HA has comparable functionality:
Between time T1 and time T2, pressing the ON paddle turns the light OFF. Double clicking or triple clicking (your choice) the ON paddle turns the light ON.
No need to change the function of the OFF paddle.
To add to this (for the adult over ride), in Home Assistant you can listen for Zigbee events and have an input_boolean that is toggled based on holding the config button. I’m using ZHA, and that trigger looks something like this:
- trigger: event
event_type: zha_event
event_data:
command: button_3_hold
I’m actually listening for the config button hold from any switch in the house in my case. In yours, you might need to filter the event data so it’s only for the one switch.
Once you have that input_boolean, you can add to the logic above so that if it is ON the paddle works normally no matter what time it is.
Thank you everyone for your ideas! This has sparked a few idea for me to try this weekend. Glad to see this is probably doable!
