Hi-
I’m planning to jump into the smartthings world and starting out with a few areas of the house with Hue bulbs. I’d like the wall switches to still work, so I’m planning on replacing the existing dimmer switches with some HomeSeer switches / extenders, and then rewiring in the boxes so that the Hue bulbs will have constant power. My understanding is that the HomeSeer switches will send events (via Z-Wave) to my smartthings hub, and then it will relay to the Hue bulbs to turn on, off, dim to a level, etc. The only downside to this is, I believe, that this switch control will not work if smartthings goes down or I lose internet connectivity (correct me if I’m wrong).
So my question is this. Is there any point in getting a HomeSeer Dimmer Switch (HS-WD100+) vs. a HomeSeer On/Off Switch (HS-WS100+) for this configuration? It seems like I don’t actually need the function of varying the voltage to the load to dim the lights, but I still want to be able to control the light level of the Hue bulbs from the switch somehow. With the various multi-tap options on the HomeSeer switches, can I use that to somehow control the light level from the switch if it’s a HS-WS100+ On/Off switch? Is it possible to have the HS-WS100+ have full control over the “dimmer” level of a Hue bulb, or do I have to set up some pre-set levels of dimness, and tie those levels to one of the switch events (e.g. double-tap for 25%, triple-tap for 50%, etc). Same question I suppose for the HS-WD100+ I suppose.
I’m also still a little wary of having smartthings and internet connectivity in the path of turning bulbs on/off. Another option seems to be ZigBee switches. Either the Hue Wireless Remote (don’t like this since it can’t be cleanly mounted in existing switches), or a Lutron LZL-4B-WH-L01 Connected Bulb Remote (which doesn’t advertise Hue compatibility, but apparently it works) - this is nice because it can be mounted into the existing decora switch plate. Both of those would work if I lose smartthings and/or internet connectivity I believe.
Are there any other good backup options for loss of smartthings/internet? Will the Hue Bridge / app allow me to control the lights without internet access? We don’t lose internet very often, but it can happen, and I don’t have smartthings now so I don’t have a feel for how stable it is…
Thanks in advance.