I don’t currently have smart things, but am looking to move into the environment. I don’t fully understand all the capabilities of smartthings I’m sure. Are you able to control, say a GE Link Smart Bulb from a GE light switch if the light switch is just powered, but not directly wired to the bulb? I would like to accomplish this without IFTTT because of the delay. If this is not possible, is there a way to make the light switch control an outlet that it is not connected to (such as adding one of this outlet adapters I’ve seen around)?
You can control a smart bulb from a smart switch using a virtual switch SmartApp.
2 Likes
Yes, you have a couple of options provided that you are talking about one of the z-wave GE light switch models.
You could have your switch wired to something which would then be controlled by the power, then setup SmartThings to turn your GE Link Bulb on and off at the same time, or even reversed if you wanted to.
Another option is to setup like what I have. My dining room lights are connected to a z-wave light switch. I then use a program called Double-Tap to turn on my living room lights when that switch is pushed twice.
Regards,
David
1 Like
@Maxxodd, yes you can, and I do that with a couple GE Link bulbs I have in lamps in my great room. I have a GE zwave switch set up through a SmartApp that turns on/off these bulbs along with lights controlled by the switch.
In that scenario I don’t see much latency, but on occasion there is a slight delay which is acceptable for myself and the family. On a couple occasions where ST really had issues, the delays were quite long and sometimes the bulbs didn’t even turn on. For me that has been rare.
2 Likes
If you stick with Z-wave devices, you can perform direct association between two z-wave devices. For example, I have a Z-wave scene controller switch that I have directly associated to a lamp dimmer module. This allows me to hit the ‘light switch’ on the wall and have the plug-in dimmer module light up.
The benefit of direct association is the z-wave devices talk directly to each other rather than routing through the hub/cloud/etc. This means it all happens really fast - almost like having the switch and dimmer modules wired directly to each other.
The GE Link Bulbs are Zigbee so direct association from a Z-wave switch isn’t an option in this case, but you could use a SmartApp like others have mentioned.
1 Like