Hi,
Read a lot, but only just embarking on my first smart home project and looking for some advice/insight.
We’re in the process of extending our house to create a large kitchen/dining/living room at the rear and are presently looking at how we manage the lighting. To this end I’m looking to put in a mixture of smart switch/dumb bulb and smart bulb/strip combinations to support the required task, ambient and general lighting. The room is effectively split into 2 zones (kitchen and living area), each with a circuit of downlights (GU10 spots). I’d like these to be dimmable LEDs (dumb); controlled from 2 switch-plates at opposite sides of the room; accessible through SmartThings and Alexa. The wall plates need to be consistent throughout the house and (realistically) none of the UK z-wave or zigbee switches available are to our taste, so I expect it to be a combination of standard switches, backed by Fibaro 2 dimmers (or equivalent). So far, relatively straightforward (says the SmartHome newbie who’s never done this before).
Where it gets tricky (I think) is then the mixing in of some smart bulb/strip lighting. We’re looking at Hue lightstrips (or equivalent) around the kitchen units for some ambient lighting, which we’d like to be able to control from the same switch plates on the walls (either the same physical plate, or a secondary switch plate of the same design). Similarly, we want some Hue (or equivalent) bulbs over the dining table and kitchen island to allow us more control over the lighting in these areas in terms of colour and temperature. Not worried about dimmer or colour control from the switch for either of these (we can do that after the fact through SmartThings or Alexa), but with relatively young children in the house and relatives that are likely to use the switches over any other solution, being able to use these lights as if they were dumb lights is a must-have.
Essentially what we’re looking for is 2 switch plates on the walls, with 4 switches on each:
- Dumb Kitchen LED spots
- Dumb Lounge LED spots
- Hue Kitchen colour LED strips
- Hue Kitchen colour bulbs
All 4 sets need to be switchable at the wall, and also controllable through SmartThings and Alexa.
In isolation, I think the FIbaro dimmer 2 can do most of what we need, but not sure we can get it all done together. For example, from what I can understand, we can use the dimmer to control the dumb LED spots (S1 control the load, S2 support the secondary wall switch on the other side of the room); or we can use the dimmer to control the dumb spots AND the Hues (S1 control the dumb LEDs, S2 act as a purely Z-Wave switch to control the Hue bulbs/strips, which we’d have to hardwire to on). I’m just not sure how we’d do both controlling the dumb lights from 2 places, and controlling the smart bulbs from the wall socket at the same time. Maybe the answer is multiple dimmers:
- S1: Dumb Kitchen LEDs; S2: Second switch
- S1: Dumb Lounge LEDs: S2: Second switch
- S1: Kitchen Hue Strips: S2: Kitchen Hue Bulbs
Is that doable?
Hopefully that all makes some sense – any advice/correction of my understanding is much appreciated.