I’m clearly ignorant so I apologize ahead of time for the question.
I have three wall switches right next to each other in my kitchen (they are in the same gangbox). The light switches on the edges are used (I just installed White Series switches), however, the middle position has never been used for as long as we have owned the house (it is just had a blank cover and looked horrible).
Anyway, I had the great idea (which may turn out not to be so great) of using a white series to go along with the other two white series I just installed as a way to turn on/off the light strip above our kitchen cabinets. The light strip is connected over matter through my Aqara M3 hub back to Home Assistant. I was planning on using the Home Assistant Blueprint fracesc0 created for us within Home Assistant to configure this middle positioned White Series switch to turn on the light strip via the blueprint in Home Assistant.
However, after I supply power and ground to the White Series switch the White Series switch itself will not power on. I know the White Series switch is good because I can move it to either of the edge positions and it works just fine. I also have the same powering on issue if I try to use on one of the two edge positioned White Series switch in the middle position.
Is it possible to use a White Series switch as way to turn on a light strip in this manner? If so, what am I doing wrong?
To power a switch as a scene controller with no load, the switch must be wired with a hot and a neutral. Unfortunately you don’t have that in your box, since both of the switches are non-neutral configurations.
One alternative would be just to use the multi-tap capability of one of the existing switches to send the scene commands for the light strip.
Another possibility exists if either of the loads for the existing switches are smart bulbs. Any chance that’s the case?
Since you have smart bulbs, the light receptacle must be hot full time. So at the light box re-wire the light to be constantly hot by eliminating the switch loop to the switch. Instead, connect the two conductors going to the switch to the hot and neutral at the light. This will give you a constant hot and neutral in the switch box.
Then at the switch box, re-wire the switch with the hot and neutral. This effectively makes the switch a scene controller with no load. Then jumper off of that switch for the scene controller switch that you want to add.
The only downside to this is that the light is constantly hot and there is no way to disconnect power to it short of flipping the breaker. So you’ll have to flip the breaker when you change light bulbs, for example.
