Tried searching for this but had no luck. Right now I have 5 smart lights (by Cree, working great) in a single fixture - it’s a chandelier at our main entrance of our house. This is controlled by a three-way dumb switch, which I have left in the on position and covered the switches with plastic guards to keep them from being turned off by mistake. Problem is, I’d like to have the ability to press a button or a switch (or really anything I can mount on the wall) that will also tell my SmartThings hub to turn on and off these smart lights.
I’d rather not replace the three-way switches, because I already have the lights connected and having a z-wave switch would be redundant.
I’ve seen Flic which looks to be close to what I want, but it’s not shipping yet and it connects via bluetooth to your phone. Ideally I’d have something that connects to my hub, but at this point I’m up for any suggestion.
Be careful they have one released which actually works with their micro switch. So you would also have to buy and install an in wall micro switch. The stand alone switch hasn’t been released yet.
You could probably use the micro switch one technically but it would be pricy needing both items.
Then you could just hook up the micro switch to power without actually controlling anything with it.
Just checked out Flic, I don’t like that it uses bluetooth to talk to the phone. This means I have to have my phone close to it for it to work. Then I might as well just use my phone. A little more convenient but not much. I would prefer a zwave button since that signal will work anywhere in my home.
One of their examples is a guy riding a bicycle, with a flic button on the handle bar, using the button to get GPS navigation to his next appointment through his headphones. Way more convenient than pulling out the phone.
Another of their examples is hitting a snooze button.
Or having a button you can press to find the phone that has gone missing. (Some people will need this more than others.)
So it all depends on your use case.
In my case, because I am quadriparetic with limited hand function, I can’t physically managed to do much of anything on a smart phone. Having a button that lives in one place and can be pressed with the heel of my hand or an elbow will be very useful.
In fact, I will probably end up with three of them attached to my wheelchair frame if they work the way I hope they will.
For my purposes, needing the phone to be nearby is fine, and I might not always be near the smartthings hub. Sometimes the button press is an easier form function.
@JDRoberts I totally agree it is great for operating the phone and in your examples meets your need. But for operating my zwave network I would prefer zwave.
I have rfid tags in my home to launch some things. For example I have a rftag to connect my bluetooth speaker to my phone and play music in my kitchen. But almost always when I want to play music I realize that my phone is downstairs in it’s charging station. That annoys me. I would love to replace that tag with one of these buttons and have it launch my Harmony “Play Spotify” action but alas if my phone isn’t near by it will not work. Even though the action I want to start has nothing to do with my phone.
I never said it wasn’t a good idea, I just pointed out what I didn’t like about it.
On the flip side this button can be placed where my zwave network doesn’t reach and send a signal to my smart things hub to activate stuff in my home so that is cool. I may even buy one of these to play with it. I just wish they made two models Bluetooth and Zwave
