Personally, I’m not too worried about the design. It fulfills my wife’s key criterion: “Does it look like a switch?”
Generally I quite like physical switches where there’s a clear action attached (disclaimer: I do some web-based UX as part of my job, so have Opinions). It’s good to have instant feedback that you’ve done something.
To get subjective, I think you’re heading down the right track of “clearly a switch, but a nice-looking switch” - if I’m upgrading my home (I consider smart switches to be an upgrade) I want it to look no worse than it did before, and preferably better. I think these look better than the standard UK light switch:
(small aside: there may be people who want to keep the “traditional” small switches - would that be possible with a magneto-resistive switch?)
Ooh, putting my mouth where my money is…
OK. Given that Fibaro dimmers are around £40 at the moment and enocean switches appear to be around the £25 mark, I’d expect this to retail at a similar price point. I’d hope you could get a set for £60.
I appreciate that it’s the awful Catch-22 of “combining things nicely is worth something” vs “kits should be cheaper than standalone items” though!
I know everything is personal preference but I did a lot of digging around this area and once I found that LightwaveRF did multigang switches and also slave switches, this is what I went with.
Just replace existing light switches.
Also means if you decide to move house you can either just leave them or take them with you.
They are stateless though which can be a good or bad thing.
I also ended up configuring a Raspbarry Pi to talk to the LWRF hub which shortens the response times to those expected for devices connected directly to the hub. No more cloud to cloud.
They also look good.
As people say. Choice is good.
@Rhoob:
Just thought, the other thing that would be amazing would be some form of straight-up bridge between your battery-less switches and Zigbee. Would that be feasible?
@bobbles:
Yeah, I’ve done similar research. Not yet sold on LWRF switches, especially given the need for another hub. Currently just have the ST one and the Harmony hub, but that at least has a purpose beyond sitting waiting for data.
It is possible and I have seen a 3D print of a potential design but in truth the size of the energy harvesting module really restricts the options for a style which is non-european.
Another vote here for something that looks and behaves just like a traditional light switch. No buttons or fancy faceplates. Just simple rocker switches.
