I have been digging around the internet for a while but I was not able to get a sure answer from different brands and communities yet to come.
I have Smarththings hub and google home as a voice control set up in my house. Instead of being tied down with Phillips or LiFX for bulbs and etc… I want to have the smart-switch control on the wall-switch level. So I am looking for smart-switches which work well with smarthings hub or google home directly and have the following features:
dim lights via google home
turn/on off lights via google home
Why I rather do this? because i can still buy any LED bulb or ceiling lights. WEMO has a promising one, however, it does not seem to be available in the UK yet and their support articles do not mention anything about dimming the lights via Echo or Google Home.
There are a couple of options for UK wall switches.
If you have a neutral wire at the switchbox, there are some switches available. Vesternet Usually carry several models. Look for ones that use either zwave or zwave plus. If it is a single gang switch, it will work with smartthings for basic on/off/dim quite easily. You might need custom code for any advanced features.
If it is a dual gang switch, it may require custom code, but it should still be able to work.
LightwaveRF switches are quite popular. They cannot work with smartthings directly, But there are a couple of different ways they can be indirectly integrated with smartthings.
If you don’t mind if your app is out of sync with the switches then it’s easy to use the free IFTTT Service to have smartthings turn the LightwaveRF lights on or off. So for things like turning lights on when you get home, at a particular time, or when triggered by a motion sensor, this may be all the integration that you need. The problem is that lightwave RF will not tell smartthings when the switch is turned on at the wall, so, again, the app may think they are off when they are on.
There are ways to get better integration between smartthings and lightwave RF but they will require additional devices and considerable technical effort. Others can speak more to that if you are interested in that option.
But probably the most popular option is to use in wall micros instead of an all-in-one smart switch and then you can use the micro with any retractive dumb switch that you like. So you have a dumb switch on the wall, a smart micro attached to the wiring inside the wall, and dumb bulbs.
There are several different brands of these Which work well with smartthings including Fibaro and Aeotec. I am going to tag @anon36505037 Here because he has done his whole house with Fibaro kit and can answer any questions you might have.
Meanwhile, here is the link to the UK lighting FAQ which also has more information:
