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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Using a ZigBee bulb with a light switch (alien.top)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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If I will be turning a ZigBee bulb on and off using a light switch, does it make sense to get bulbs that are end-points like Sengled, or it doesn’t matter, and get bulbs that are repeaters like IKEA tradfri?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Repeaters no the be always on.

Getting repeaters that you frequently turn on and off will make your network topology a mess. Traffic will always have to be finding new routes through the network depending on the combination of repeaters that are on and off at any one time.

You could also create the situation where certain parts of your network are only reachable when certain lights are on.

Repeater switches that are always on make sense. That is what I did.

Repeaters bulbs that could be powered off do not.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I'll answer contrary to others and say it will be just fine, if you always use the wall switch to turn the light off and on, and just want the zigbee function for dimming or color changing.

You would want to make sure that they are off when you pair any new battery-powered zigbee sensors. (Or have another way to force which router a new battery-powered device pairs to.)

As long as you do that, and you have sufficient other routers, the mesh will be fine.

I'm using zigbee bulbs like this successfully with no issues, with Home Assistant and Zigbee2mqtt. It's easy to create an automation in HA that triggers when the bulb turns on (which will happen when it's powered up from the wall switch), to set brightness or color.