Newbie alert - I am not an owner yet and am about 48 hours into my research.
I'm about to expand my smart lighting substantially from my 5 table & bedside lamps so far (all Philips Hue stuff) to ultimately all the lights in the house. From there I will probably go on to additional automations but for now it is the lights, and in particular the wall switches, that I care about. Currently setup I am using Philips Hue dimmers attached to dual-unit wall mounting plates from lucasa_ltd on ebay (https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DOUBLE-WHITE-Philips-Hue-Dimmer-Lucasa-Switch-Plate-Adapter-Injection-Moulded/143251734757) which are OK but they project quite a way from the wall (about 26mm) so I would like to get something more sleek and integrated and it must be predominantly white.
So far I have come up with a few contenders that to my totally newbie eye look like possibilities. They are, in no particular order ...
6 - The Lutron Pico range which from exploring this discussion board for only a few hours needs no introduction I think.
Aesthetically I think any of them could work quite well but are there any that I should rule out because they won't work with Hubitat? Does anyone have any experiences good or bad with any of these controls?
I'm in the UK by the way so we have 84mm x 84mm switch plates so US-only stuff won't work for me since they will all go over the non-smart switches I have mounted in the walls at the moment using conventional back-boxes. I will probably hard-wire the live/switched-live inside each backbox so that all control is via home automation. Being a reasonably old UK house I do not have neutral wires running to any of my wall-mounted back-boxes.
Edit: Oooh, you're a tolerant lot. As a newbie with only a few posts to my name I really wasn't expecting all those links to get through without moderation until I had earned my spurs but I'm relieved they did because it would have been tricky to make sense of my post without them.
I love the Pico, but being that you are in the UK, that may not be the best option because of price and availability.
However, the advantage of Pico is exactly the thing that might work for your situation. They don't have to be fitted into a switch box at all. They can be flush mounted to a wall, and if you buy the kit they even come with the wall plate. You just need two small screw holes to mount them.
You can also purchase a table stand that is quite nice (if a bit expensive) and works well with table lamps as you can place it right next to the lamp.
I have no idea what availability or price for any of these devices are for you, but I think that would be a big consideration. And I haven't used any of these devices you list. So I don't think I can help there. Sorry.
Picos are available, but my recollection is that the frequency is different and only work with the UK radio ra2 bridge. The cheaper US picos won’t work, without a US bridge.
I’m not particularly price sensitive especially on purchases that I hope will last me for a decade or more but one thing that concerns me slightly about the Lutron stuff is in the documentation that I was looking at yesterday it says that all devices should be within 9 metres of the hub. I know that you can get repeaters but it’s already a slight irritation to have to add another hub were I to go Lutron and hub plus repeater would bug me even more (I’m a computer scientist who strives for elegant simplicity wherever possible).
What are people’s experiences with that 9m advice? Is it Lutron being overly conservative? Does it factor in the possibility of there being a few walls-worth of attenuation across that 9m maximum? In theory all my fixed wall switches would be within that 9m limit because conveniently the place I would put all of my hubs is roughly in the centre of my apartment but in some cases there would be 3 walls in between.
I don’t know what frequency is used for Lutron ClearConnect in the UK. In the US, it is 433MHz, and I am comfortable stating that 9m is a very conservative estimate. I have used Picos from ~40 ft away with several intervening walls.
I know when the original Wink hub was being tested, its Lutron radio was receiving Pico signals from ~80-100 ft away (line of sight).
Yes, it looks really ugly shown used as presumably the manufacturer intends, nowhere near as neat as the one I am using right now that covers the whole switch but because of that projects pretty much a full inch out from the walls once the dimmers are clicked in.
What I'm thinking though is that this plate is 76mm wide vs the 84mm width of a standard UK light switch and any properly fitted light switch always has at least a bit of finished wall around the edges of the back box or else it wouldn't screw in properly and sit flush and securely against the wall so if I remove the light switch altogether and hard-wire the switched live to live inside the back box(*), something which I would need to do anyway with all the other potential options I came up with, then with shorter bolts I could mount this plate directly to the back box and get a nice flush mounting for Philips dimmers. Even if certain locations don't have the required 5mm or so of good plasterwork running under the existing 84mm wide switches I suspect the gap would be so small that I could very easily fill it with minimal hassle. At £4.99 I'm going to add one to my order of Philips Hue bulbs when I place that order at the end of the week to give it a go. It would be nice to be able to stick with Philips dimmers since they do all that I need, are quite minimalistic and attractive at least to my eyes, and would instantly integrate into my existing Hue hub.
(*) probably with an insulated terminal block although if I could find a small enough 240V single pole inline switch that would be more convenient if I ever needed to power-cycle something)
