Gang simulated switch with physical switch and Hue bulb?

[rsilves]

Hi everyone. I’ve been using WebCoRE for the last 3 years and I’m really happy for the support I received from this community It made me customize my home in ways I couldn’t imagine. Still, I’m no pro, so I’ve come here again for advice.

I currently have a mixture of some old lights with dumb switches (analogic), then some Hue lights which are behind these dumb switches, which cannot be controlled if the switch is off, and then some other lights that are always powered and can be controlled by buttons in my Aeotec remote.

I was thinking of transitioning all the dumb lights to smart switches with smart bulbs. I don’t wanna lose the convenience of having the psysical wall switch which can control the light at any time, but I would also like to avoid the problem of having a bulb connected to a dumb switch that was left off so it doesn’t receive any electricity.

I thought of getting rid of the physical switches and adding buttons near each wall switches but I haven’t found any button or remote control device that I like. And the Aeotec remote works but it has some lag.

So, first, I’m open to any recommendations about lights and remotes, but I’m mostly here to try to figure out one way to program a hue light that is connected to a smart wall switch. I liked the Sonoff M5 models.

I’m thinking of a simulated RGB bulb or simulated dimmable bulb, and a piston that transfers any actions performed to this simulated bulb to the switch (turns the smart switch on so the bulb receives energy) and then sends the RGB levels to the bulb.

But it should also work backwards, if the smart switch is turned on or off manually the simulated switch should reflect its status.

I’ve tried some things like this in the past, but not in WebCoRE, it was in IFTTT, and remember I got some problems with switches turning on and off if I actioned a switch twice in less than 10 seconds. I would like this to be done all in WebCoRE, so how would you program this piston?

Thanks!
Rodrigo

[Mebejedi]

First of all, you would need smart switches with a “smart bulb” mode. Basically, when you flip the switch, it only sends a Z-wave/Zigbee command for “Off/On” (Or dimmer), but doesn’t cut power.

Here’s a basic setup for the commands.

[rsilves]

Thanks for the reply. I understand this would be the ideal situation, but I don’t have switches with those features and I’m trying to integrate the switches I am currently able to get (and the ones I already have installed). For example, there are some dumb bulbs with smart wall switches and for those, I’m only willing to replace the dumb bulbs with smart bulbs.

Also this method has a big drawback: there could be a noticeable and uncomfortable lag between pressing the switches and having the lights respond to them. I have this setup for some switches and I find the lag pretty annoying.

I was thinking something more like:

If simulated RGB dimmer levels change, turn on the switch, then apply the same RGB values to the smart bulb.
If smart bulb changes, apply the RGB values from the bulb to the simulated RGB dimmer.
If simulated dimmer turns off, turn off the switch.

I just thought there would be a smarter way of programming this without having actions loop around. Maybe adding a restriction could help, so the blocks aren’t enabled back and forth (“only when the switch hasn’t been activated in the last 5 seconds”).

Thanks!
Rodrigo

[Mebejedi]

c

So, I actually have something like that. I sometimes give alternate names to my devices, to make it easier for me or my family to activate something. So, I came up with pistons for each instance to make sure ALL the devices are put to the same setting whenever any one of them is called.

Whichever of the list of devices changes, that device becomes MainDevice. The new setting is sent to the remaining devices, and there’s a bypass function so that the secondary devices don’t restart the piston. While I use this for multiple names of the same device, you could tweak the list to contain separate devices at the same time.

(You don’t need the alternate device names like I have. I just do that so it’s easy to see when a device drops, and replace it.)