Best practice for smart bulbs connected to smart switches and dimmer

💡 Lighting Groups and Scenes
#1

HI,

I have had Meross switches and dimmers controlling simple light bulbs, but have added Sengled RGB bulbs into the equation. To prevent the bulbs from flickering, I've set the Meross dimmers to not dim below the Sengleds' threshold, so basically, they have been "dumbed down" to smart switches.

With the dimmer functionality now out of the equation, I have smart switches turning smart bulbs on and off. I could leave the switches always on and control the bulbs singly (table lamp) or in groups (group of pendent lamps), but I'd prefer to control the switches for On/Off commands, but the bubs / bulb groups for color, brightness, hue, etc. commands. For example with Alexa, saying "Turn on the living room bulbs." should turn the switch on, which in turn turns the bulbs on to their last settings. Saying "change the living room bulbs to yellow." should command the grouped bulbs to change color to yellow. Saying "change the living room bulbs to 25%." should command the grouped bulbs to dim to 25%. Saying "Turn off the living room bulbs." should turn the switch off, but not effect of the bulbs' settings.

My question is: What's the suggested method to accomplish this?

Edit: What I'm currently doing, is I have the switch named "Living room light", and the bulb group named "Living room bulbs", so I turn "Living room light" on and off, and I control the parameters of the bulbs with "Living room bulbs". It doesn't bother me much, but will get confusing for others...

#2

Update: I added a dimmer to the bulb group, and it works almost like I want. The on, off, brightness commands affect the bulb and the dimmer switch. Commands for colors, hue, etc. act on the bulbs only. The issue is that saying On or manually hitting the switch after saying Off causes the bulbs to come on briefly, but some bulbs turn right back off. I assume it's because one or more bulbs got the Off command, so when they are re-energized by the switch, they come on, but remember that they should be off, and go back off.

Update 2: I "migrated" the group to room lighting, and unchecked Off for the bulbs, but I still have the same issue.

#3

An axiom is to never cut power to smart bulbs, because it will wreak havoc on zigbee mesh. I'd suggest getting a switch with "smart bulb mode" either Inovelli Blue Series or Zooz. Or wire the bulbs to have constant power and use the switch to command the bulbs through the hub. The Inovelli Blue switches are fantastic for this, as you can bind the switch directly to the bulbs, and the switch works even with the hub off(or crashed or overloaded) !!

And you should not dim smart bulbs, at all, by altering current to them, they need full power 24/7 for best results

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#4

@Rxich: I appreciate your feedback, but I can't replace my switches as I just finished putting them all in... Like I said, the dimmer function is disabled for the ones with the smart lights attached. If I read the specs correctly, these bulbs do not repeat, so they shouldn't interfere with the mesh. Hard wiring the lights would be a divorce issue, it the hub went down. :wink:

#5

Update 3: Toggling the check marks to send Off to the bulbs, but not the dimmer is better, but if the bulbs are turned off at the switch and the switch is re-energized, either manually or with HE, the lights come on, but go back off in about 3 seconds. Toggling the wall dimmer switch, or pressing On in HE brings it back as expected.

Edit: Based on this information, how would I go about creating an automation that when one or more bulbs turn on, and the last state of the dimmer was Off, the bulbs get the On command "a few times" forced?

Edit: Based on that, I came up with a rule that's not perfect, as the lamps go off, but come right back on, but it's serviceable...

Fire On command to bulbs
Fire On command to bulbs1523×908 69.1 KB

#6

I have Wiz Wifi bulbs and Kasa Smart Dimmers and this is how I've been able to get them to work correctly for me.

Take all of your bulbs connected to a smart switch and put them in a group using Groups and Scenes. Use the Switch Bindings app to bind the smart switch to the group. The light bulb group will follow the smart switch in terms of being on/off and dimming.

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#7

I find when using groups to integrate wifi bulbs, the bulb status does not update on my apple home app if it was changed from anywhere other than the home app. Using the mirror app in Hubitat (ie. mirror virtual bulb with wifi bulb + reverse mirror) can solve this problem if you decide to not use the Hubitat dashboard.

#8

Here is how I have it setup with Wiz WiFi bulbs from Home Depot. I also use Switch Bindings to bind the Kasa WiFi Dimmer Switch to the group and have the switch polling every 5 seconds. I have 55 of these switches, 123 of these bulbs and Hubitat doesn't buckle under the load. I only poll/refresh on the switch status and the Switch Binding and Group do the rest to update the bulbs.

image
image2584×718 169 KB

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#9

Screenshot_20221122-072916_Amazon Shopping

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#10

oh wow I tried Switch Bindings, it's actually much better than using the Mirror app. I run into the "infinite loop" sync problems with Mirror when changing bulb settings too quickly. Thank you!

#11

It does work really well for keeping switches and bulbs synced with just switch state and dim level. I've never had a good experience putting the bulbs and switch into the same Group using Groups and Scenes. I just put the bulbs in a group and use Switch Bindings to get the two working together.
In HB I will name the physical WiFi or ZigBee Wall switch something like "Kitchen Ceiling Lights Switch" and the group "Kitchen Ceiling Lights" to tell them apart, then just use the group object in my automations.

#12

This is what I do, though, I use Hue groups brought into Hubitat. Then I use Switch Bindings to combine the switch to the Hue group. It works really well.

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Download the Hubitat app