Switchmate - Lockitron for your light switches

Any further word on the Switchmate/Harmony Home integration?

As you may know, SmartThings has an official partnership with Harmony ( the Harmony Home box says “SmartThings-compatible”) and the official integration has an expanded feature set currently in QA testing at Logitech.

That may allow even SmartThings V1 hub users to get some control over Switchmate, using Harmony as a “man in the middle.” Whích would be cool. :sunglasses:

(Also, make sure harmony classifies the switchmate as a “home control device,”, not an “entertainment device.” This affects which harmony activities they can be added to and how they are handled.)

Thanks for your response! I can tell you that at this point we are focusing on the core product and ensure that whatever we do release is something that will truly enhance your in-home experience. With regards to the Logitech integration, it is primarily an in-home integration as it is cloud-to-cloud and not from the hub directly to Switchmate. Direct communication between the Harmony and Switchmate would require firmware development from both companies and would likely involve a much longer lead time.

We’re looking to put direct integration(s) into place - unfortunately BLE does not have any standard protocols for light switches.

Even if Harmony/Switchmate is cloud to cloud, Harmony could still act as the gobetween for SmartThings/Switchmate communication. :sunglasses:

Yes, we can certainly do it that way.

Would you be able to send a quick e-mail to our company account (info@myswitchmate.com)? Would love to have a quick chat with you.

Ummm… that should have made restriction to the BLE protocol a questionable design choice. :wink:

But, yup, there are a lot of factors to balance.

Haha, it was certainly something we considered but for our product, we wanted it to be the simplest out of box experience we could get (no hubs, no wireless configuration).

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Different people, different use cases. :wink:

This, combined with switch portability, were the engineering factors that attracted me. Being able to take the switchmate with me when I travel with no setup, not even WiFi, needed at the destination, was the unique aspect I found most interesting.

You still have to have the device join your Bluetooth PAN, no?

Regardless, you ended up with “simple out of the box” but crippled functionality (i.e., the switch can only be operated with a BLE compatible smartphone and not with popular smart home systems).

Different systems, different protocols. Insteon uses one protocol, Lutron another, SmartThings uses zigbee and zwave. A lot of devices use 433. Nest uses Thread. You might as well complain (as some have) that SmartThings is useless because it doesn’t have a clear connect antenna. Or an IR blaster.

BLE is a perfectly reasonable protocol for interior light switches, they can always add a WiFi bridge if desired. :sunglasses:

Besides, by the time Switchmate ships, the SmartThings hub should have added bluetooth for V2. :wink:

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Do we have any confirmation that the switchmate will work with the V2 Smartthings hub?

No, because it’s a Bluetooth device, and as yet we have no details on how the Bluetooth radio in the V2 hub will work in terms of devices that normally operate with an app, nor do we know when that antenna will be turned on.

I’ve noticed an assumption in the forums that if something is a Bluetooth device it will therefore automatically work with a Bluetooth enabled smart things hub, but that is not necessarily true.

Bluetooth devices that pair to phones or tablets take advantage of many of the built-in processing features of the operating systems on those devices. So for example, you can control the volume of a Bluetooth speaker from your phone not because both are Bluetooth but because both have Bluetooth capability enabled and your phone has Operating system level features that can change the volume on a Bluetooth device that it is paired with.

Nothing has been said as yet as to what kind of built-in features the smart things hub might have. Just being able to pair is only the beginning.

So you might be able to pair, but still not have any meaningful control functionality. We’ll just have to see what we get on the hub side before we can even begin to evaluate but we might have on the device side.

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Thanks for the response. I agree that the integration is more complex than simply having Bluetooth.

Looking forward to the Bluetooth capabilities with the V2 though!

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Got three switchmate switches from Amazon today. :sunglasses: (Amazon shows them as temporarily out of stock, but I ordered them as soon as they let me and I got them about a week later. That whole time the webpage showed them out of stock.)

They’re noisy, but they work very well. our house is built in the 1950s and has several areas with old fluorescent tube lighting, which would make a switch selection complex. The switchmate works perfectly on those switches.

The only problem is there it is, so far, zero connectivity with anything else. Last summer they had announced there would be integration with both yonomi and harmony, and I could’ve used either of those. But those announcements were removed from both of those sites a few weeks ago. So not sure what that means. I’ve written to support at switchmate to find out. Harmony, of course, would give indirect integration with SmartThings, so that would be ideal.

I should also note that unlike the smart switch covers from Osram and gocontrol, switchmate does not solve the smart bulb problem because it physically toggles the original switch on and off.

Where switchmate is really good for is people like me who cannot physically work a normal wall switch. This allows me to operate the switch with a tap on the tablet. This is something I can take to a friends house and use there, and that can be installed without wiring. In fact, you don’t even need a screwdriver, it uses magnets. Which means I could move it myself if I had to.

So until they provide some kind of integration method, I don’t think this will be the first choice for most people looking for a smart switch. But I’m happy with mine for these specific use cases. :sunglasses:

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Great! I got one off IGG. It’s an innovative device, yet noisy with no integration. However, I did contact Jody & Mr. Slagle about suggesting BLE Compatibility. So hoping for a chance. Once ST support is gained, I’ll buy another 3… at least.

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Did these ever get any kind of integration?

Not yet. However, wink integration was just announced for early 2017, which should mean either a Wi-Fi bridge or that wink will be using its Bluetooth.

Switchmate wants to add Alexa and IFTTT integration, and they would get both with wink.

So there may be an indirect integration opening up soon, we’ll just have to see.

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Thanks for the info. Hoping so. These would be great for my situation

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I just received one of these for beta testing via Wink Hub 2. I can’t go into details obviously, but I will say it’s a neat idea. I could think of a few different cases where these would have been amazing but the idea to go with BT just baffles me.

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Pretty sure they went with Bluetooth so that they would work without a hub, just with a phone. They were aiming at a really low tech marketplace. And their patent is on the way the switch installs, not anything about how the scheduling works for it. Plus nothing right now in HA has better battery life than a BLE device.

Their Amazon reviews have been really mixed. People who don’t have home automation devices but just wanted to put a light switch on a timer seem to really like the device. People that are used to any home automation devices, even just Hue bulbs, felt frustrated with its limitations, including the drop off problem.

Making it work with wink 2 will give them both echo and IFTTT integration, as well as much more robust scheduling. Assuming it can stay connected to the wink 2, of course. :sunglasses:

Right on, that makes sense from a battery standpoint (I will say they use some decent batteries in these though, no coin batteries here).

I found a perfect use for this, I don’t want to waste $40 on a Z-Wave switch or whatever it may cost to replace the garage light, so I stuck in on the garage light switch and boom - instant turn the light off behind the wife who loves to leave it on…except it doesn’t support multi user. Case gone :frowning: