Zwave Switch to Control Zwave Outlet

The hub is the middleman

You probably already know this, but just for clarity: the smart switch communicates directly to the hub. The hub then sends the messages to whatever devices you wanted to control.

So you can have an on/off zwave smart switch in the upstairs bedroom control zwave lights in the downstairs laundry room, or zigbee lightbulbs, or a WeMo pocket socket in the hallway, or all of the above as a single group because all the bedroom switch has to do is talk to the hub, and then whatever smart app/routine code you are using will handle getting the messages to all the other devices.

Since all of this is done wirelessly, The physical location of any of the devices, and the communication protocol they use with the hub, don’t matter. :sunglasses: This is one of the most powerful features of SmartThings’ multiprotocol design.

So first set up the lights to talk to the hub

For that reason, as others have mentioned, all you need to do is decide whether you want the two bedside lights to always go on and off together or whether you want the option of independent control.

Then you just use whatever wiring/devices you need to get the bedside lights controllable by the hub. ( there are several ways to do this.)

Once the hub can control those lights, a smart switch can ask the hub to control those lights, and you are all set.

the double tap switch feature

By the way, one feature that some people like while others find confusing is “double tap”. This is where tapping on the light switch once tells the hub to do one thing, and tapping twice tells the hub to do something else.

This is often used for groups of lights, where tapping once turns on a single light and tapping twice turns on all the lights in the room.

Although you will find some people trying to do this just with code, that method doesn’t work very well because the timing on communications with the smartthings cloud can vary and capturing the taps requires precision timing.

However, homeseer recently introduced a line of switches which can do both double and triple tap quite well. The tap pattern is recognized by the switch itself and then it sends a different numeric code to the hub. Since only one message is being sent to the hub whether it’s a single tap or double tap, lag in cloud communications isn’t the same problem. At the present time this is the only switch brand with this feature.

I just wanted to mention it because it is an option that some people like for the type of use case you describe.

The wall switch is still an intuitive switch as far as just as whatever you set up for the single tap option. But you do have to explain the double and triple tap to people before they can use it.