I’m looking at the best smart switches for the house. I’m looking at the GE 12722 and Homeseer HS-WS100+, mainly. I hear that the Homeseer switch has “instant device report” capability but the SmartThings hub has a way to work around it and tell when a user has manually hit the light switch. Does anyone know what kind of latency this report has?
I ask because I want to set up a “report only” switch that will be hooked up to a ZigBee smart bulb in a lamp. The GE switches are cheaper but if they have a lag in this kind of report I might go for something more expensive. Also wondering if there is any problem with the “report only” plan where the switch is not hooked up to a lighting electrical load.
I’m really tired right now, so I’ll let other people discuss the various aspects of the set up, but one quick thing…
One) no-load switches. There’s no problem with setting up the switch so that it’s not connected to load. Lots of people do that intentionally when they are looking for a switch to control a smart bulb.
Most people seem to be going for the smart switch covers now. There are a couple of different brands available. These go over the existing switch. The original switch is left always turned on. The cover has its own buttons. So the cover communicates to the hub, the hub communicates to the bulb, the bulb comes on. There seems to be very little lag with these.
Both the switch covers and no load wiring are discussed in the smart switch FAQ.
Thanks! I’m probably going to avoid anything where I need to change the batteries, so a no-load switch replacement sounds great. Just wondering what kind of latency I can expect with the different switches.