Hello,
I wanted to get advice on ways to control lighting (dimming/on/off) and get ideas from the community.
In the living room, I have a fan/light combination, with 4 bulbs. The unit itself has two pull cord for light and pull cord for fan, just on/off. There’s also a wall switch (on/off) that controls power to the entire fan/light unit. The fan/light unit only gets a single hot - so if the wall switch is OFF, neither fan nor lights can be on. Because of this, I don’t think I can use a wall dimmer switch, since that would also mess with the 120VAC going to the fan.
I’d like to use GE Link bulbs in each of the 4 light sockets. That way, I can dim them individually, and turn the bulbs on/off individually via app. I’m tempted connect the hot incoming wire to the light/fan unit permanently. Then install a $34 Linear z-wave wall dimmer in the current wall switch. The trick is that the wall dimmer won’t actually be controlling the power to the light/fan unit - the light/fan unit is always on. I’d use the “dim with me” app to make the z-wave wall switch control the zigbee GE Link bulbs. And I can get finer control (individual bulb control) with the app if I desire. I’m hoping the control would be which ever device made the most recent change (z-wave dimmer switch or app).
If things break down (ST goes down, I’m testing stuff, etc…), I can always turn the GE Link bulbs on/off with the pull cord, just no dimmer control.
But I’m open to other ideas to achieve the same effect. I like having wall mounted switches, but is it overkill to be using $34 Linear z-wave dimmer to “virtually” control $15 GE link bulbs? It’s the cheapest option I’ve found.
I’m also new to this. Perhaps I’m being too optimistic on how well this scheme would work in real life. Perhaps the lag/reliability of the “Dim with me” function would make this unworkable? Would like some feedback before investing lots of time/money into this route.