This appears to be an “ultra-fast zigbee handler”, which might do what you desire. Let us know how it works…
Will do! Ordered one on Amazon yesterday.
Yep this will work! Although I’ve seen quite a few people now comment on it’s appearance. I’ll see how one looks when it comes in. It doesn’t look so bad in the photos… but I live in a fixer upper soooo maybe any switch looks good
Here’s an update on ST button-testing extravaganza:
- Iris button: cancelled the order after the wave of “yea this is crap” came in (TY ST community)
- Lutron remote switch: As @JDRoberts said it would, not ST Compatible without it’s own ($189) bridge. Nope. Still a little bitter about the misleading product desc, but I should’ve researched more before buying.
- Aeon Wallmote: Ding ding, we have a winner for a mere 3x the price of the former 2. This thing is pretty cool. Slick looking, and it never occurred to me that it’d be beneficial to have a switch that guests can pop off the wall and set on the nightstand to turn off bedroom lamps at bedtime (especially since it’s important that I discourage them from using the lamp’s own switches, which render the remote button solution useless).
- Sylvania - That comes in tomorrow. I have another room with no light switch (yea… this is a scalable problem!) to try it in.
Aeon Wallmote: For now the little-used guest bedroom gets the most sophisticated lighting switch. The magnetic wall-mount won me over. I installed a custom device handler to get it to work. Instructions: https://aeotec.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/6000162573-using-wallmote-quad-with-smartthings-hub-.
Video showing the Aeon working in the room: https://cl.ly/nq0S (don’t judge that paint color - its on the to-do list).
That’s the fun part. The before and after. Keep documenting your progress. One new shiny light switch at a time.
That got me thinking. How about putting an Echo Dot (cost containment) in each room and leaving everything very simplistic for now? Anyone that walks into any bedroom, “Alexa, turn the lights on/off”. Whallah, no additional trials and tribulations with switches slapped on the wall or just as an addition to compliment and voice automated without the need for any physical buttons to touch.
LOL and don’t neglect the carpet or the garage doors for too long.
Just so you know, the “Lutron connected bulb remote” (LCBR) actually doesn’t work with the Lutron SmartBridge. It’s a completely separate device on a completely different protocol, only intended for control of smart bulbs, not for any of the other Lutron devices. It’s the Lutron Picos that require the bridge.
As it happens, the protocol the LCBR is using, zigbee, May be able to connect to A SmartThings hub, it’s just that it’s not really easy and a lot of people report it won’t stay connected. So personally, I would recommend just returning it, but if you do want to play around with it a little more, see the following thread. ( assuming you actually bought an LCBR and not a pico.) But be prepared for a lot of very technical discussion and a lot of “it worked for me.” “It didn’t work for me” conversation going back-and-forth.
The wallmote is a really elegant device. Lots of reviews that the battery life is terrible, though, maybe 3 to 4 weeks, so it would be a good idea to test it each time before your guests arrive. But personally I think that’s less of an issue for a guest-room that it is for everyday use since you can just charge it up for each visit.
Oh, and as far as the Sylvania goes, there are three different ways to set it up.
- Fast, easy, and official.
It should pair straight out of the box as a two button controller. So most people just use it as one button for on and one button for off.
You will be able to use it with the official smart lights feature or a routine by choosing “when a button is pressed”
https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000236823-SYLVANIA-Dimming-Switch
- A little more complicated, but you get four button options instead of two.
There is a community – created device type handler which will let you use the long hold on both the top and bottom button, so you get four choices instead of two.
- A super fast option with dimming but will only work with a few specific lightbulbs.
OK, pay close attention, because this part is important to avoid getting frustrated. Option one and two above will allow you to use the Sylvania switch to control anything that SmartThings controls. You could use the buttons to run a routine that arms smarthome monitor, you could use them to turn on A zwave pocket socket or a Wi-Fi bulb, again, anything that smartthings can control. That’s because for option one and two the Sylvania device will send a message to the hub and then the Hub will use that based on the automations you set up.
One community member was frustrated because the Sylvania device was designed for use with their gateway and in that scenario it could also do dimming. And he really wanted dimming.
So he wrote a device type handler which will allow the device to be used on a SmartThings network in the same way as it was originally designed. But, it will only work with ZIgbee bulbs. You won’t be able to use it to run a routine or control a device of a different protocol or control devices further away than one hop. It will communicate to nearby zigbee devices directly, which is why it is so fast. But you are going to be very limited in the devices that it can work with. And the set up is much more complicated than for the other two options because you’re going to have to go in and actually find the network IDs of the bulbs that you want to control. But when you’re all done, you will have dimming from the device.
So there you have it. Three different options for setup of the Sylvania dimming Switch which will give you three different types of feature control when you are done.
For most people, just using the official DTH, option one above, will be fine. They’ll end up with a two button device that will work with the official smartlighting feature, routines, and webcore. It will be fast to setup and intuitive if you just want on and off, and it’s a nice option for some things like setting SHM to armed and disarming it.
If you want to get a little fancier, use option two, and now the long hold will also work. Some people use that to create a 50% dim setting, for example.
If you want the full functionality of the device, you can get it by using option three, but then you’ll be limited to what it can control, specifically other zigbee devices that are nearby. And setup is much more complicated.
All three of these are good options, but different ones will work for different use cases.
Understood, thank you for sharing. To power-users of the ST community forums, I see how it could be distinguishable as an organized list. For those who are not as familiar with the forum setup, it does not look like a list and is difficult to disseminate info from due to its volume. I recognize the hard work that’s gone into keeping it up, and I went back and read the whole thing now that I’m getting more familiar with the forum structure and how the posting/conversation goes. I’m sure as a regular user it can be frustrating to see redundant posts/questions. From the perspective of a newbie trying to learn, it’s nearly impossible to avoid accidental redundancy. We are lucky to have patient, knowledgeable experts willing to sometimes repeat yourselves in the community, otherwise I’d be literally buried in buttons. Thank you for your time repeating info for me. I will continue to invest time researching before posting new questions.
Already had the battery die 48 hours into install, BUT the wallmote arrived at 59% charged and I messed with it quite a bit in the beginning (as did my visiting mother, apparently giddy with light-up button fascination). So remains to be seen, but initial thought is that yep it dies fast. 59% to 0 in 2 days is not good even with messing with it. I turned off all button feedback except for the light-up (turned off vibration) to hopefully improve battery.
Unfortunately, because I rely on text to speech, I can’t contribute to tables in the community – created wiki.
There are other members who have been working on a table format of the buttons list, but while it has been started, it is missing a lot of the items that are in the forum thread and it doesn’t have pictures yet.
I would like to see a lot more tables of this type in the wiki, so hopefully in the future.
http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=Table_of_Button_Devices
I can help with the table. I just requested an account with ThingsThatAreSmart under username WideSmiler.
Does anyone know if this works with ST?
http://www.lowes.com/pd/Iris-First-Gen-White-Wireless-Home-Automation-Button/3735313
It won’t.
See the “first GEN” notation.
For its first generation, Iris used a proprietary version of zigbee which is not compatible with SmartThings. Only the second generation those zigbee devices, the ones which are certified to the “zigbee home automation” standard (ZHA) will work with SmartThings.
Xiaomi Wireless Buttons don’t work for HUB v1. They are also a pain in the butt to pair.
It’s amazing that a simple push button is possibly one of the hardest things to find… been doing lots of research and I’ve come to the conclusion that I may be better off building one…
Thanks for all the info so far guys as well as the trials of testing…
Very cool tech… but to get a $10 button working… that’s a lot… still searching for a simple button…
A simple button is easy if it’s mains powered – – it’s just a momentary switch. The issue is when you want it to be battery powered and you want the battery to last more than a week or so.
Both Z wave and zigbee use the concept of “sleepy devices” for small battery powered things like buttons. The button sleeps much of the time and then only wakes up when you press it. The problem is that if the sleep time goes on for too long, it may have become disoriented and it may require a second press before it’s actually connected to the network and processes the button press.
This means different customers will have very different experiences. The people who use the button two or three times a day may be much happier with it than the people who only use it a couple of times a month, because those who use it less frequently may find that it keeps going to sleep. Because of this customer dissatisfaction, a lot of companies have been reluctant to go into it.
If you just want a very simple button that won’t have this issue, use a Wi-Fi button, but be prepared to replace the batteries every couple of months. You can get a dash button from Amazon for about five dollars and repurpose it for this if you want. There are project reports in the community on how to do it. But the battery is soldered in place and can’t be easily replaced, so you may have to get a whole new device every few months if you use it a lot.
There are quite a few “simple buttons” on the buttons FAQ list which will have much longer battery life, but which may have the falling asleep issue depending on how often you use them. So it’s a matter of personal preference.
If you build one yourself and you make it battery-powered, you’ll still run into one of these two issues. But it’s up to you.