I’m setting up with HA and zigbee smart bulbs. I’ve got a few automations already set up, such as turning on a bunch of lights in the morning and turning most of them off again at night.

All these lights still have physical switches. I don’t want to take those switches out for lots of reasons, and putting smart switches there seems like overkill when the bulbs are already smart. What are people doing with their physical light switches to ensure that they don’t get flipped?

Ideas I’ve had:

  • some kind of physical plastic covering that fits snugly around it. I’d probably do this if I had a 3d printer, but I don’t. Maybe someone sells a thing like this? More just a reminder not to touch them.
  • Carefully paint the switches a different color (perhaps the HA color scheme?). Again, basically just a reminder. This especially makes sense with a few multi-switch plates where some of the connected lights are automated and some are intentionally left manual.
  • Entirely replace the plate with a smart switch? Besides incurring a nontrivial cost and being a bunch of work to install, this won’t even help me with the aforementioned multiswitch plates. I don’t want all my lights automated.

Other ideas?

  • @thehatfoxEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    I also favour smart switches instead of smart bulbs. It avoids the problems of accidentally turning off the smart bulb with the dumb switch, and provides a fallback control method if part of the smart home stack is not working.

    The main downside to this method is not being able to change the light colour and temperature of the bulbs. I have seen there are some smart switches and bulbs that can work combined but I haven’t tried them myself.