I’m looking for some smart switches & outlets that I can use to control floor lamps. Each room has a spare switch (the builder installed two switches for each room’s ceiling fan, and the fan only needs one switch). The aim is to replace that unused switch with a smart switch whose sole purpose would be to tell the associated outlet to turn on or off. There would be no electrical load on the switch (in case that matters). I prefer to have something that looks like a regular switch (since I have room anyway) rather than a button.
Can anyone recommend a brand/model of switch & outlet I should be looking at? I’m leaning towards Zigbee - while I have a mixture currently, all my door/window sensors are Zigbee and they need all the help (repeaters) they can get, especially if I stop using the Iris 3210-L smart plugs that are Zigbee repeaters.
I’m a bit concerned about the round-trip time to the cloud and back (hit the switch, wait, the light turns on), so bonus points for devices that will work locally with a local DTH and a local smartapp like Smart Lighting.
Also, if anyone has alternative suggestions I’ll be interested in those too. One example - the house has a couple of iDevices switches, one pair of which appear to talk to each other (to mimic 3-way switches) over Bluetooth - sounds promising, but their devices are a lot more expensive than Zigbee or Z-Wave devices.
This would be very easy to do with a Z wave plus switch using direct association to control a zwave plus outlet, so that’s the way I would go. It would work even if your hub isn’t working, and would be much faster and more reliable than any hub-based option.
As far as Zigbee repeaters, the IKEA tradfri plug in pocketsockets are just $10 when bought directly from IKEA and are very good Zigbee repeaters.
Thanks @JDRoberts, I will check out direct association. It sounds like all brands that support Z-Wave Plus support this and (from a brief read) the association is initially set up via the hub.
It’s a little more complicated than that. Beginning with Z wave plus, all certified Z wave devices must support direct associations for the “lifeline group“ which is used for reporting to the hub. They don’t all have to support association for additional groups and you would need one additional group to associate the switch and the outlet. So you do want to check the zwave conformance statement at the official site to make sure the switch supports at least two association groups. Most will, but it’s up to the manufacturer as it is an optional feature. The outlet doesn’t have to support more than the lifeline.
Wow there are a lot of manufacturers listed, most of which I don’t recognize, and the on/off switches/devices list is huge (cannot narrow it down to wall switches).
Drilling down to one specific item, I can’t find the strings “assoc” or “group” anywhere on the details page for the “ENERWAVE Z-WAVE On/Off Switch”, nor on the command classes nor on the conformance statement. The alliance really doesn’t want people to actually find devices with specific features
Does anyone have any suggestions on narrowing down the list? I’d rather go with a known name brand than something from Joe’s Z-Wave chop shop
Older Devices may not have that, but you don’t want those anyway.
As far as reputable zwave switch manufacturers, other than the Jasco/GE variants, Coolcam, Eaton Cooper, Ecolink, Enerwave, EVA Logic, GoControl/Linear, Hank, Homeseer, Inovelli, Leviton, MCO Home, Zooz, and Zwave Products Inc are all well known Brands with Z wave plus switch devices.
Thanks. It’s likely the one switch I clicked on was not Z-Wave Plus (I probably forgot that the page includes all Z-Wave devices). I now see “advanced” search which should narrow things down.
