homeassistant

20115 readers

16 users here now

Home Assistant is open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first.
Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts.

Home Assistant can be self-installed on ProxMox, Raspberry Pi, or even purchased pre-installed: Home Assistant: Installation

Discussion of Home-Assistant adjacent topics is absolutely fine, within reason.
If you're not sure, DM @GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk

greatalbatross@lemmy.world

[Solved] How to detect the position of a dumb wall switch? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works to c/homeassistant@lemmy.world

43 comments fedilink hide all child comments

My nightstand lights are connected to a surge protector plugged into a Zigbee smart plug plugged into a dumb wall outlet controlled by a single dumb wall switch.

I have the smart plug set to default=On, so the wall switch works fine, and I can also turn the lights off from my phone or via an automation. All good so far.

What I WANT is to be able to turn the lights ON without getting out of bed, and irrespective of the position of the switch.

I tried putting a second smart plug in the switch-controlled outlet and making an automation to toggle the surge protector's smart plug when the switch's empty smart plug powers off/on via the wall switch, but it looks like it's not simple to detect a Zigbee device "disappearing". I found some integrations that detect zigbee devices disappearing, but those seemed more for running health checks to detect and repair moved devices than for live detection.

Any suggestions?

Edit:

Looks like a relay behind the switch will be my best bet. Thank you all!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] paks@feddit.uk 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

A lot of relay boxes will both detect the switch position and toggle the power, so you should be able to get rid of all smart plugs that you were planning to use for this light.

The relay should have these connections:

Live input from breaker box
Neutral (both from breaker box and to socket)
Switched live output to socket
Connection to one side of the manual switch
Connection to the other side of the manual switch

[–] clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 days ago

Ah, so it would disconnect the physical switch from the circuit except as an IRL input for the HA relay entity ! That does sound perfect.