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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

The best controller for lighting by far is the light switch. "Smart lightbulbs" behind dumb switches might seem like an easy solution, but it makes everything dumber (If you have a light switch you must not switch off because then you can't turn the "smart" light on, then you have a dumber house not a smarter one).

Smart switches which fall back to regular switches if they malfunction is fantastic. Add some scenarios for double/triple clicks and you can do a lot without even bringing out your phone. E.g. switch off all the lights when leaving either by double clicking the switch next to the front door, or trigger that same "all off" scenario through the alarm being armed or the door being locked.

Making "smart home" stuff is about integration, which requires tinkering. But making a subset of your home smart such as "smart lighting" doesn't have to be so daunting.

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Smart switches don't make dumb lights as smart as smart lights. Most smart lights also feature dimming capability along with color tone switching. Smart switches can't add these features to a dumb light.

Smart dimmers definitely exist. I've been using the Insteon smart dimmer switches for years now.

Not all dumb LED lights support dimmable switches though.

If you want a dimmable light in a room, you're going to have to buy a light that supports dimming. That's true for a smart bulb or a dumb bulb.

Yeah, and if you already have dumb LED lights in your apartment that are not dimmable? Now you have to swap out the switches and the lights.

With this hassle, you might as well just skip swapping the switches and just jump to smart lights directly.

Smart switches+dumb lights are far superior to dumb switches+smart lights. Why go to all that effort and money for a poor outcome?

A smart switch:

- Allows for anyone to interact with the light without apps/voice/whatever. You just hit the switch.

- Fails gracefully. If the controller dies, it's still a switch.

Smart switch + smart bulb > Dumb switch + smart bulb. With a smart switch you can send various commands to the bulbs walking by with a tap.

You do a dimming switch (so add a spring to the button). Replacing a dumb switch with a non-dimming smart switch is indeed not a good idea.

The color change though won't be possible - but it might still be possible through whatever secondary interface you have, e.g. in an app. Given the choice between physical switches for dimming and color of the lights, I pick physical switches every time.

I personally like the Shelly switches. They're just WiFi relays, so you can control them remotely, but also use a normal wall switch to control them.

I like shelly for their openness, but I still find them a bit less reliable than some more premium things like Plejd. Unfortunately Plejd isn't very open. It's doable (e.g. using with HA) but not pleasant yet. Hopefully that might change though

The best part is you get to choose from wide variety of normal looking switches, not some designers coffee break sketch of "advanced and futuristic".

Shelly seems to be more US-centric, over on EU side I've had good experiences with Sonoff ZBMINI relays - same idea, only on Zigbee connection instead of WiFi.

I like Shelly devices a lot.

The smart switch is a great controller. But so is the smart watch. Allows you to do all sorts of things quietly without getting up or finding your phone that you left on a counter at the beginning of a movie. I also like saying "turn off the lights" into the tv remote once I sit down, cuz its already in my hands and I don't have to shout to a speaker/mic across the room.

I would love to use smart switches, but the house does not have a 3rd return neutral because of age.

I know There are some that might work on a small current (so they ‘on’ all the time) but most do not.

Just one thing to look out with in switch v bulbs debates.

Yeah Lutron Caseta dimmers can connect a hub while not needing a neutral. They also can be linked to wireless remotes without need internet access. It is a good balance of smart switches and functionality without smart features.

You can still use smart switches AND smart bulbs. Wire the fixture as always on or and program the switch to never cut power. GE and Lifx switch/bulb combos will still give you the best of both worlds. And the lifx switches can act as giant homekit buttons, with single click, click and hold etc performing different functions.

Good idea to multiplex some scene functions onto the local smart switch.

I personally don't understand why the "smart switches" don't run powerline (data over the electricity lines) instead of zigbee. Surely that'd be way more reliable.

The building I live in has this and it's not ideal. I consider it on par with other solutions, and I will not be my first choice for a new home due to complexity.

First it requires more hardware, it's more expensive and as far as I know you'll be stuck with one vendor. On top of that you need to isolate your home from outside signals (you don't want your switch to talk to you neighbor's devices). Second, it's pretty slow. This might be because our system is already 8 years old, but it's pretty noticeable (feels close to a second when you turn on the lights). And then you get into issues with your appliances that have cheap power supplies. I needed to buy a filter for my PC because the power supply unit was generating so much noise on the power line that the devices could not communicate anymore. Also I'm not sure how well this will work in older house, when the lines are not in best condition.

The system we have is made by DigitalStrom. They have a newer generation available, but since we rent I don't want to pay for the upgrade.

> Smart switches which fall back to regular switches if they malfunction is fantastic.

Not if they do so when you’re asleep. Fallback behavior should be always off, so it won’t wake you up in the middle of the night following a short blackout. (Sadly my yeelight bulbs don’t even allow such a setting, which forces me to use them as dumb light bulbs.)

The fallback doesn't have to change the state of the switch. Just leave the state alone on disconnect/reconnect from the network/controller.

In the case of power outages where the whole device loses power... presumably these devices have some sort of nonvolatile memory and can afford to keep track of their last state. That's one bit for a basic on/off switch. :)

Philips hue bulbs allow you to set their behavior if switched off (power loss), including “last state”.

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