I'm wondering if the Diva dimmer would work in tandem with Hue (e.g. if I dim it on the physical switch, Hue picks up that change).
Also if I turn off the lights from the physical switch, does that cut power to the bulbs or just turn lighting off?
If the Diva dimmer is not viable, would the Lutron Caseta Claro Smart Switch be a good option instead?
This requires a neutral wire, which I'm not certain the house I just bought has.
I mostly just want a physical switch the returns to center (so power to smart bulbs can't be accidentally turned off), so if neither of those work, I'd love to hear other recs!
Yep! I already have that hub (as well as the Hue hub) in my current setup as I've been using Pico remotes.
I've secured the Pico remotes with tape + magnets to Mitzvah light covers that go over my dumb light switches (see here for pics). Even though this solution has been good, I'd like something more permanent/attached to the wall at my new place.
To use a Lutron switch, you need to wire it to always hot and have Hubitat act in the middle. It similar to the pico in this regard. You would definitely need to use the switch rather than the dimmer and must have a neutral to do so. The dimmer won’t work since it does not have a neutral connection. You can’t wire it always hot and have it work. The switch can be wired hot since it requires a neutral.
If you are not comfortable with the above, I strongly recommend going a different direction. The two most common options are switches from Zooz or Inovelli. They have a smart bulb mode that disables the relay and keep power to the bulbs.
There are smart dimmers that can function in a “smart bulb” mode that doesn’t actually dim the circuit voltage; but no Lutron smart switch or dimmer is capable of that.
It will cut power to the bulb. Unless you get a device like what I mentioned above.
If you really want Lutron switches or dimmers, dont screw any smart bulbs into the fixtures they control.
If you really want smart bulbs, dont use Lutron Caseta switches or dimmers on those circuits.
Pretty sure some innovelli dimmers can do this, maybe Zooz too?
I'd love to be able use Lutron Caseta switches all over the house because of their top tier reliability, but I love having CT bulbs around the house and automating them to change temperature according to the time of day.
I guess I'll have to live in the new place for a bit and see what places I'd be okay with just leaving with dumb bulbs (e.g. in my current place, I'm okay with bathrooms always being warm white).
I see the Inovelli switches come in all flavors: zigbee, z-wave, and matter soon. Any protocol to favor in terms of reliability and operating distance?
I use the Zooz switches, dimmers, scene controllers. They're zwave and have smart bulb mode (you configure it right from the Hubitat device page). That mode means the bulb is always powered and the switch acts as a button device. Their handling of double and triple presses is excellent, it's hidden from hubitat and just sent as a different button number. Ie button press 1 is regular press, button press 3 is double press of button 1, etc.
For mains-powered switches, there's unfortunately no path to using Caseta with smart bulbs/fixtures since Caseta does not have "smart bulb mode" (SBM).
Zooz and Inovelli both offer mains-powered switches with SBM, and that enables use with smart bulbs/fixtures as JB20 and Paul4 describe above.
One downside to be aware of with using SMB and smart bulbs -- if your hub is down for any reason, those lights won't work right since they depend on rules-based programming. Hopefully, that's not a common occurrence, but it's something to consider.
Inovelli Blue switches are zigbee, so it's possible to use zigbee-binding to bind a Blue switch to zigbee bulbs/fixtures like Hue. Then the lighting will still be able to do basic on/off/dimming from the switch when your hub is down, so that's a nice warm-fuzzy.
However, zigbee-binding can be a headache to setup -- it requires pairing the smart bulbs directly to HE (instead of say, the Hue bridge), and there are a lot of other caveats & asterisks to be aware of with zigbee-binding -- if you're interested in that option, I suggest doing your own research about it first.
I have zigbee-binding set up with one of my Blues and a group of 2 Hue bulbs in our bathroom. It works fine, but it was a pretty painful process of trial-&-error setup to finally get right, so there is no way I'd deal with doing that again anywhere else in my house -- it's all just too futzy for my taste.
For simplicity's sake, many of here use smart switches with dumb bulbs/fixtures for our switched lighting, and where smart bulbs are desired, we have those in plug-in fixtures.
I saw Inovelli had articles for both Zigbee binding and Z-wave associations, but they both seemed futzy, like you described. For Z-wave associations, they have you install their own parent/child app!
The reliance on hub-based rules programming for smart bulbs (Hue bridge, HE hub, whatever other hub/bridge) is a downside to using smart bulbs in anything... It's just a "risk" to be mindful of.
I do use a fair amount of Hue bulbs in our house, but none of it would result in a big mess if my HE or Hue bridge went down. It would be a bummer, but not the end of the world.
We have enough other plug-in fixtures mixed around that use a smart plug with dumb bulbs (so we could still physically control the smart plug), and the smart switches still would on/off/dim our dumb switched lighting (or bathroom Hues in my single zigbee-binding setup). So we'd get by fine until whatever hub issue could be resolved.
Bottomline -- consider the big-picture of your lighting overall, and avoid putting all/most of your eggs in one basket. Having fallback options/redundancies for when things don't go right is important in smarthome planning, and perhaps doubly so for lighting.
This needs to be at the very top of the forum and documents as an essential best practice.
@gamerkingfaiz if you do decide to go with switches that have a smart bulb mode, there is a fallback with them that can be done if your Hubitat goes down. All of them have a manual process that can be used to enable and disable smart bulb mode. Thus, if Hubitat goes down, you can re-enable the relay and turn off your smart bulbs as if they were dumb bulbs. Of course this isn't ideal, but it is way of getting your bulbs off in a pinch.
