Hello, I am fairly new to the smarthings platform. I am looking for a solution to solve a wife approval problem. I want te make my whole house smart. That includes switches.
Ive been looking everywhere for relays and switches that run locally. Unfortunately the switches out there are not a square and therefor wont fit in my house. The only solutions i could find are the Fibaro dimmer relays for about 50,- each. Does anyone know a cheaper solution to my problem? If not im fine with spending a ton on these but if there are good and safe alternatives i would be very happy.
There are some. The most important question is do you have a neutral at the switch box. If you do, you have a lot more choices because the neutral is used to power the radio inside the switch. There are a few options if you don’t have a neutral, mostly micros from various different brands including Aeotec, Qubino, and others.
What country are you in? That does sometimes make a difference.
For example, if you have any trouble at the switchbox, the TKB line is quite popular and costs less than most of the micros:
There are some inexpensive Chinese Off brand switches that don’t have safety certifications, but I don’t recommend those personally. For fire safety reasons, I look for devices that have good certifications.
There’s a good recent discussion from a UK member you might find of interest:
Goodmorning, thank you for your reply. I live in the Netherlands and I am actually not yet sure if there is a neutral wire since I dont have the key to the house yet. I am currently researching both since allot of houses here tend to have some switches with neutral some without.
Smartthings is still primarily a cloud-based system and there is actually very little that runs locally. For example, you will not be able to control anything with the mobile app unless the Internet is active. Even if your phone is on the same Wi-Fi as your hub. They didn’t have to design it that way, but they did.
The only things that run locally are devices which have “device type handlers“ which are eligible to run locally, and then only with rules created in the “smart lighting feature.” No custom code runs locally.
The TKB Home Devices I linked it to will probably be able to run locally if you just use the generic DTHs for basic on/off/dim functionality.
I’m not sure if the zigbee devices discussed in the thread I gave you the link to can run without custom code or not.
So if operation without an active Internet connection is important to you, I think you will have to look at other hubs like Hubitat, vera, Apple’s HomeKit, Homey, etc. Some of these require an Internet connection to set up a device, but not for every day operations. They all have different pluses and minuses.
I use the cheaper yagusmart wall switches and they run local by default…they are also square, but depending on how deep your wall box is, you may need a Spacer.
No problem. Those devices fall into two categories:
“Hub-connected”, which are devices that connect directly to a smartthings hub. Zwave or Zigbee.
“Direct-connect”, which are Wi-Fi devices that can connect directly to your smartthings account without having to go through another cloud. There aren’t many of these, but there are some. For example, the Philips Hue bridge can be directly connected if you have a smartthings hub. If you don’t have a smartthings hub, then it can be cloud connected.