I’ve figured for some people in the home a pressure bad hidden under the sofa is going to be the best way to tell what room they’re in (you know, the people that ALWAYS sit at the same place EVERY day haha)
Now i’ve noticed Maplins sell pressure pads for £8. There was a great topic on here where someone connected something similar to the Monoprice Z-wave open/close sensor, problem is thats a US only Z-Wave device
What would be the easiest way to do this in the UK? I know I could probably do it with an Arduino and an Xbee but that means coding a Device Type and a SmartApp from scratch to do it.
Are there any simple cheap Z-Wave or Zigbee sensors in the UK that would let you connect another “switch”?
If your comfortable soldering any open close sensor should work. Just solder the pressure switch wires to either side of the reed switch in the sensor.
Yes some have screw connections available and that just makes it easier.
Awesome, thanks guys - that sounds just the ticket. In terms of using any switch, does this mean I could wire in any lighting switch and turn that into a z-wave switch too? That might well solve my problems with wanted the same physical light switch to control smart bulbs (until the internet goes off of course)
Not if your talking about wiring it into an open/close sensor, switch can’t have power running through it(bad things happen). They do make modules for behind the switch. Check out this link to see what might work for you
No no, I don’t mean with power like a relay. I mean just wire the actual switch directly to the open/close sensor so its working as nothing more than a simple open/close mechanism.
The power would just be wired directly so the lights are “always on”.
You could I guess but then you would have a battery operated device behind the switch so whenever you needed to change the battery well you know.
Also I don’t know how you would keep the switch and bulb in sync. Since ST can’t control the open/close sensor status if you say have the switch off and use an app or ST to turn on the light then to turn the light off from the switch you’d have to turn the switch on then off.
Using a correct ST module behind the switch would work much better.
There is no perfect solution for smartbulbs for other people in the house that don’t really want them. The closest thing seems to be Fibaro’s dimmer relay and even thats not very good for ST. For a start off you’ve doubling up your controllability, you need another £10 dimmer module to fit it in the box and its unlikely to fit in the back box in the UK anyway (certainly not if you’ve got a 3 way switch like I have. Plus you’d need the S2 port to do the switch actually sends a z-wave command to ST to turn things on and off, rather than physically turn the relay off in which case you’re stuck with exactly the same problem as a normal switch with Hue (and from what i’ve read, no ones made the S2 input work with SmartThings yet)
It seems the best solution really for Hue is to wire always on, and put a blanking plate over the box then use their dimmer switch to turn on and off. At least then it works if the internet goes off as well. Its a shame Philips don’t make a module in which you can add any on/off switch to Hue. It’ll never happen as that sort of depth is not their target market and it would cannibalise their own dimmers and tap module.
Anyway thats quite offtopic, thanks for the heads up on being able to use the Fibaro. Shame every module is a good £35-£40 in the UK for every little task you want to do, but ah well.
If you track the price of the Fibaro on camelcamelcamel, it does come down to around £29 quite often. If you’re lucky and find one of Amazon’s 4 For 3 promotions at the right time that can be even better.