Home Automation

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Home automation is the residential extension of building automation.

It is automation of the home, housework or household activity.

Home automation may include centralized control of lighting, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), appliances, security locks of gates and doors and other systems, to provide improved convenience, comfort, energy efficiency and security.

Warning: Working with electricity can result in injury, property damage, or even death if it is not done properly. Please keep this in mind while assisting others. If you are not sure about what you are doing, hire a licensed professional.

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Looking for Zigbee, 230V/50Hz, claw-mounted smart switches, preferably no neutral (alien.top)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I live in Hungary, Europe in a quite old house. Our light switches and outlets use claws to stay in place. As you tighten a screw, a claw moves out and grips the inner side of the box. I believe this is still a pretty common system around here. The boxes lack a neutral wire and they're also pretty shallow, so I can't put a Shelly behind the existing switches.

The claws

I bought an Aqara H1 EU no neutral wall switch, but I can't mount it because I can't screw the screws into anything, there's just empty space where they're supposed to go. I tried MacGyvering a solution by taking the claws from the current non-smart (Legrand brand) switch, but they don't fit on the Aqara.

The Aqara switch. I could drill the 4 corners but then I'm pretty sure the screws' heads would prevent the faceplate from snapping on.

So, I'm turning to the community: Does a product exist which:

- Is made by a reputable brand

- Works in Europe (230 V, 50 Hz)

- Can be mounted using claws

- Uses Zigbee and can be controlled locally without any cloud accounts and/or 3rd party hubs (I use Home Assistant with the SkyConnect dongle)

- Preferably requires no neutral wire (I can probably fish one down to each of my boxes, but I'd prefer not to)

For example, In the Zigbee Device Compatibility Repository I see that lots of Legrand stuff is compatible, and these would probably work, but it's not entirely clear if buying their gateway is required and I'm not sure their smart devices are even available in my country...

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Not the most fancy solution, but you could use some high tack glue. Just a few very small dots will do the trick. And if you need to take the switch off just take a utility knife. Like i said not elegant..