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Comment by Symbiote | Hacker News Reader

I have wireless light switches in my rented apartment, and I don't like them.

1. I can't see from the position of the switch the state of the light, so I still after 5 years press the wrong switch sometimes.

2. Sometimes, maybe 5% of the time, the light doesn't change instantly, but up to 2 seconds after I pressed the button.

3. About 5% of the time, the light doesn't change at all. Then I either think I've pressed the wrong switch (see 1), or I have to turn around, walk back and try again.

I think the benefit is for the company who built the apartment, since they saved a few crowns not needing to run wires near the doorways. There is no benefit to the occupant, only problems.

At least the batteries in the switches are still fine.

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I also have a few wireless switches, and in some cases, the light doesn't immediately respond to a press requiring a few tries, and sometimes it doesn't respond at all. Could be distance, could be the battery is running out, but either way it's a problem I'd never had with regular light switches. At our last remodeling, I had some of them removed and replaced by regular wired switches wherever possible. Nothing beats the user experience of direct interaction with a system.

Every light in my house is Hue, and all rooms have those Hue dimmer switches mounted over the normal light switch.

I absolutely love it. It's never been anything other than instantly responsive, works without the internet and I can turn all the house's lights off from my bed. Additionally, the utility rooms, hallways and bathroom lights are just fully automated so you never think about it. The regular switches are still there if you need them, but in over a year since installing it, I've not touched any of the traditional light switches.

My only issue is that the Hue Bridge has a maximum limit for the number of lights and accessories you can run, which I'm starting to get close to. The lights are also expensive, especially the low voltage outdoor lighting, so for that I just use a standalone ZigBee dimmer switch which integrates with the Hue system.

Could you elaborate more on how the dimmer switch covers your normal light switch? From the product page it looks like the dimmer has a flat back.

Did you remove the actual switch?

There are a few options on the market depending on where you are. The specific product I have seems to be out of manufacture now but the replacement is the Samotech Hue Switch cover SM200 V2. It fits over the top of your existing light switch and the wireless dimmer attaches magnetically. If you need to turn off the light completely you can pop the cover and access the switch underneath.

It is a little bit bulky due to the nature of it but that's not something that bothers me. If you're particular about your interior design, you may need to look elsewhere: there are also complete light switch replacement products that are thinner and look a bit sleeker, but I haven't felt the need to move to those.

Another thing I like about the Hue system is I had so much difficulty finding reliable combinations of non-smart dimmer switch and LED light. Despite spending a lot of money to get supposedly high quality LED compatible dimmers, one would break every few months and occasionally they seemed to cause my LED lamps to burn out or have other weird issues like not completely turning off. All dimmer switches I tried had a subtle buzzing at certain light levels too.

It's possible there is some combination of lights and dimmers that works great, but since switching to Hue, it's the first time in my life where my lighting system has required zero maintenance in over a year. Other than when a squirrel bit through my garden string lights...

This: https://www.amazon.com/Lutron-Aurora-Dimmer-Philips-Z3-1BRL-...

You leave the toggle switch in the On position and mount this on top of it. Very clever.

The Hue Dimmer Switch V2 has standard mounting holes on the back plate. You’d need to remove the existing switch.

https://tweakers.net/productreview/292224/philips-hue-dimmer...

If you’re happy with your smart setup it’s trivial to remove the existing switch, connect the wires directly and put a cover on top, then attach the wireless switch to it using adhesive/Velcro.

This seems to reveal that the problem with automated lights, etc. is that we no longer have a single source of truth for the state of the light or other device. I think the problem is that we are updating the state of the light but not updating the state of the UI i.e. the switch. The solution would seem to be that the automated system should be moving the switch in order to turn the light on or off instead of adding another point of control like a relay that changes the meaning of the switch position. I'm sure this would add cost to the system but I think the benefit in usability would outweigh it. The perfect system for me would be a smart switch that is electromechanically actuated by the smart system but also has an override switch that you can toggle in order to prevent the automated system from moving the switch. That way you can still maintain full control, the switch always indicates the correct state and you have all the benefits of the smart system.

FWIW, this is also the case with traditionally-wired 3-way switches (i.e., two switches that both toggle a single fixture).

But that adds yet another point of failure, and something with mechanical parts is probably going to wear out much quicker. And if it fails can I still flick the switch, or do I need to replace it?

The manual override switch I mentioned should disable the smart control completely. The switch would have to be designed to work without the smart control in the first place which would mean it would still work when the smart control was disabled or malfunctioning.

When I bought my previous house I changed to door to my bedroom to swing open the other way, as the original direction awkwardly swung open "in to the room" rather than towards the wall.

The downside was that the light switch was now behind the door, and because I didn't want to re-route the cables for for the light switch I used a wireless switch, which seemed like a good solution. It was, but I also had all of the exact same problems you have.

For "just a guy" like me it's still an okay-ish solution as routing cables through the wall is a lot of work (or fairly expensive if you have a professional do it), but I don't think anyone who has ever lived with these things actually likes them.

I apologize to whomever is living there now. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't even realize it's wireless and were confused why it's such a shitty switch, and when the battery eventually ran out.

> I apologize to whomever is living there now. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't even realize it's wireless and were confused why it's such a shitty switch, and when the battery eventually ran out.

It's odd to me that it's the norm for the seller/buyer of the house to never meet. I bought a 1970s house awhile ago, and have slowly learned it's eccentricities as well as adding some myself. I think it'd be immensely helpful if it was the norm for everyone to walk through the house together and cover things like "oh this is a weird miscellaneous circuit that covers things in 3 different rooms", "this is this way because..."

It's a cover-your-ass move. The seller's agent explicitly tells the seller that they shouldn't answer any questions directly, because saying the wrong thing could create a liability. Admitting awareness of a problem can be used against you.

That’s why I swear by Shelly modules. They’re small relays meant to be installed behind the original light switch and accept an input from it - this means you still retain the functionality of the switch, but get network-based control as a bonus. Should the network go down, the physical switch still works and it’s acceptable for rentals because you don’t even have to remove them as they still behave like a normal switch if the controller is unavailable.

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