I’ve had my home office setup with various ST components, mainles Meross WiFi lights, ST and Aectec motion sensors and Meross WiFI power strips.
I’ve had an issue with the family members using the physical wall switch to power off the lights when they leave the room, rather than letting the sensors detect their being no motion and powering them off automatically. To work around this I brought a ST Button where they could just press that instead, but still the children and wife are in the habit of a lifetime and still power off the main light using the wall socket.
So… I’ve invested in a new Aqara Wall Switch H1 which is a single rocker / button replacement for the traditional light switch and requires no neutral. All good.
Unfortunately, the Aqara still functions in the same way as a traditional light switch! I can of course see it in ST and take actions based on it’s status, but if it’s physically been pushed off then there’s no power to the light bulb where my Meross light bulb is connected, thus making it pointless…!
Couple of questions… Is there any way around this? Ideally I’d like the Aqara button to do nothing electrically and instead it just acts as a signal / input to my ST hub. Is this in any way possible?
Secondly, I have the following options in the Settings within ST for the Aqara switch which I really do not understand:
Mode: “Light Commands (Bind to Group)” or “Button Events (Normal)”
Change switch to wireless switch: On/Off
Power-off memory: On/Off
Turn off indicator light: On/Off
Can anyone advise what these options do, as I can’t see any difference in functionality no matter what I select.
You may be able to wire the switch so that it actually bypasses the current branch that goes to the lights and just send a message to smartthings. I don’t personally give wiring advice on the Internet, so I’ll leave that discussion to others.
There are multiple mainspowered switches available that work with smartthings that have this function as a built-in option, which is nice. I believe at this point all of the Inovelli and Zooz Z wave models offer this. Or at least a lot of their models. That will meet safety code in most jurisdictions, which the DIY rewiring might not, it just depends where you live.
Smart bulb mode: disable the relay for truly wireless control or use as a remote control / smart add-on switch
From your description, it sounds like the Aqara
Change switch to wireless switch: On/Off
Might work the same way, but it may only work with its own hub or perhaps requires different wiring. I’ll have to leave that discussion to someone more familiar with that particular model.
The other alternative is to build a small wooden box or plastic cover for your existing light switch, and then put the battery powered button that you had before on top of that. If you hinge the box, you can still get to the switch in an emergency, but it keeps people from turning the switch off.
These covers are also available for sale at Etsy and Amazon in different formats, typically for under $10 each, so that’s another popular option.
p.s. “power off memory” is a feature whereby the switch remembers whether it was on or off when the mains power was cut, and then restores itself to that same state. Again, though, my guess would be that that only works when you are using an aqara hub. And it’s not going to solve the problem you’re dealing with anyway.
Thank you - marking it as “being Wireless switch” has fixed the issue entirely for me. Once I turned that on the button does nothing when pressed until I set an action against it within ST. Thank you!
As an advanced measure, I recommend using Binding (Direct control) in settings. This function allows the switch to send on/off and dimming commands directly to the light bulbs.
Pros:
You can still control the lights even when the hub is down.
Actions are faster, especially for large groups of devices, as the hub sends events one by one, whereas the switch can send a direct message to a group.
You can uncover hidden manufacturer combinations like triple-click or long-press, which can be very useful.
Cons:
This is not a feature supported by ST out of the box and requires specific skills and hardware.
Your lights must support Zigbee groupsand be the same model. For example, if you have several models in a group, the same command may set them to different brightness levels and colors.
You can not override the preprogrammed behavior of the switch. Even if you need a small tweak, you have to switch to the Hub control
@veonua - I’m desperately trying to bind the Aqara H1 Wireless Dimmer to a light bulb. Can you detail the procedure in terms of the process of events of how to do it. how many clicks on the aqara remote etc after putting the bulb/relay into touchlink pairing etc? I cant find any documentation anywhere.
I’m not sure if Aqara supports Touchlink or anything like this.
But most of the devices support Zigbee groups, and by using the right driver you can put both ZigBee lightbulb and remote in the same group
