I’m about to start building a home assistant setup and I’m looking for switches for my bedroom. Currently it’s a 2-gang box of regular on/off switches, one controls the lights on the ceiling fan, one controls the fan. I know I want one of the presence sensing switches, what should I get for the other? I haven’t committed to z-wave, zigbee, or matter yet. Leaning towards matter bc that’s where things seem to be headed. Is that still the case?
Thanks!
I would tend to lean towards Zigbee or Z-Wave still. In your situation, It might be useful to have one device using Zigbee and the other on Z-Wave. Since those devices are repeaters, this will give you two in this gang box, which could help strengthen your mesh.
I try to have one mains powered Zigbee and one Z-Wave in every room for this reason.
Ah, that’s brilliant! I figured I’d eventually be using both z-wave and zigbee, it didn’t occur to me that you could do one of each in the same box. It doesn’t cause any compatibility issues?
None at all - no worries.
ETA - But think about the load for each switch – will the switch be talking to a dumb load (e.g. dumb light) or a smart load (ZB lighting or ZB/ZW fan controller)? If a smart load, consider matching the switch flavor to the load flavor to take advantage of either ZB direct binding or ZW direct association.
Right now the lights overhead are regular dumb lights. About 30% of the lights in the house are Lifx, will eventually get that up to 100%. I think they use wifi, not z-wave or zigbee. I have three lamps with Lifx in the bedroom I’d like to control with a smart switch. I figured the favorites button on the presence sensing switch could be programmed for that.
Yes, Lifx are Wifi.
As mentioned by @hydro311 above, if you do get Z-Wave or Zigbee bulbs, you would be able to bind them together which means that the signal would go directly to the bulb, so this would reduce (already very low) latency but have the additional advantage to work even if the hub is down for some reason. Note that the switch and bulb can be bound if they are on the same Z* network and using the same protocol. The bulb and switch will continue to be connected and send/receive commands from the hub even when bound.
I used the same methodology - every room has both Zigbee and Z-wave devices to create two stable networks .
But if I’ll start from scratch, I would avoide both Zigbee and Z-wave altogether if possible (more interfaces - more points of failure). I think future is with WiFi (ESP based) devices, especially if they are connected to power. Battery operated should be BLE based
I lean to ZWave myself. the Zigbee 2.4Ghz band is massive and you get so many devices, you can cause headaches. I’ve had incredible good luck with ZWave and the new RED switches come with the 800 series ZWave chips. My Home assistant, I am running a VM in an VCenter ESXi cluster, but I have 56 Zwave devices, 28 Zigbee devices, and so many more other protocols/web/API connections with a total of 187 devices being handled in my Home Assistant.
I love the Innovelli configurations and openneess and taking feedback for firmware performance/features and new product lines.
I have installed 10 Innovelli RED (Project Phoenix/VZW31-SN) and replaced it from my GE Embrighten Zwave switches. My one issue with Innovelli, is the switches seam to feel “looser” with time. Meaning, the paddel, you have to push harder and more in the perfect center spot, where the GE ones, the paddel stays night and tight, and if i click the corder of the up paddel or center it works. Where the Innovelli ones, I have to push the center of the paddel up/down and hear the click to know it pushed, just a quick run by with a push of it wont work anymore on them… So the fitment quality and long term is an issue for me. But these are still the most amazing switches I’ve had…
Why do not change to WiFi smart switches? or change one switch and replace smart bulb to your fan light?