I have a Kasa smart switch in an inconvenient location in my room (behind my door when I open it). I’d like to add some sort of remote light switch on the other side of the wall that will activate that light switch via SmartThings.
I’ve currently tried using a Smartthings Button, but it’s not responsive enough. I press the button and there’s a delay or it will just not respond on first press. I have to stand there and wait to see if it registered before just walking in, which is pretty inconvenient.
What smart switches will work for my purpose? Thanks.
Then you have a lot of choices. See the buttons FAQ. Note that the FAQ thread is only intended to have one or two posts per device, and will generally link to a discussion thread about any individual item. So if you do have any follow-up questions either go to that discussion thread or come back here. Don’t post in the FAQ. Thanks.
That said, pretty much any battery powered device is likely to need extra presses if it hasn’t been used for a while because these all tend to go to sleep in order to conserve battery life.
And they will all have some latency.
One alternative is to choose one of the “battery free” devices like the ones from the friends with Hue line, but those do tend to be expensive And while theoretically some of them should work with a smartthings V3 hub, I don’t know if anyone has actually tried it yet. And you’re always going to have some latency with TPLink Because it’s a cloud to cloud integration with smartthings.
If responsiveness is really important, I would replace the TP link with Lutron Caseta and use one of their pico remotes. But I realize most people who choose TP pLink are looking for budget prices, so that may not work for you. I just wanted to mention that it is a solvable problem, but it often requires a higher class of device which costs more.
Actually I first originally had a Lutron Caseta Dimmer switch with remote, but my lights would flicker, and have a horrible buzzing sound due to the dimmer, and it became too complicated for me to fix. So I went with a non dimmer switch and SmartThings Button, but the thing is just not reliable.
I’m okay with the latency, but I just don’t like pressing it and having no response, then pressing it again to get a response, especially since my button is programmed to have two functions with double press. It got confusing and unreliable. Has it been figured out how long until these buttons time out to conserve battery? Also, is there an automation, say every hour, to ping it and give it an empty command to not go into power saver mode?
No. Most of these kinds of devices don’t expect to receive commands, and the sleepiness is based on the commands that they send because of environmental factors. In this case you pressing the button.
Interesting that you’re seeing an unacceptable delay with a ST button. I have one on the opposite side of my house from my hub controlling a pocket socket and it’s near instantaneous. Maybe a zigbee repeater will help?
On the Caseta, they do have an ELR version of the switches to address that issue. They cost twice as much unfortunately. Probably too late to do you any good now, but I thought it worth mentioning. I was afraid that’s the route I would have to go, but so far I’m ok with what I have dimmers on.
