Am I crazy in thinking my hub once updated on manual presses of the light switches? I thought my dashboard tiles for my switches would turn on/off as the switch was pressed.
I can control all lights from the tiles. Clicking a tile will turn each light on or off. But, if I manually turn on a light (switch), and go back to my tile, it does not update. I have to click the tile once to "turn it on", but nothing happens (because the light is already on). Clicking the tile again turns the light off immediately.
Shouldn't the tile be updating with manual presses? I have started some custom development; and I think I might have broken something. I tried a soft reset and that did not help. I also just updated to the new firmware... going to roll that back and see.
EDIT: Switches are Kasa, linked with Kasa app. I'm pretty sure they run over wifi.
Not having looked at the Kasa implementation I’m going to guess that it is doing some sort of polling of the switch, and if you are in between polls then the status could be stale. The developer would know for sure.
PS - Going to add Kasa to the title to see if that helps get you to a more informed answer.
Well, it was indeed the autopoll.
Apparently, the KASA app has to "call" the device list every "x" amount of time; and update accordingly.
I was expecting an immediate response upon manually clicking the switch.
Is this because my switches are wifi?
Does z-wave or zigbee have an immediate "talk back" feature?
EDIT: Kasa has the interval set to 30 minutes by default. I can change it to as frequent as 5 seconds, but that creates a lot of traffic. If I wanted to attach a routine in hubitat; I would have to wait up to 30 minutes for the routine to fire. Is there such a thing as a switch that has immediate responses to hubitat from manual clicks?
Zwave+ switches, zigbee switches, and Lutron switches all automatically/instantly update their status in response to physical operation of the switch. These devices don't need to be polled.
Thank you. Guess another trip to Best Buy. I suppose that's what I get for trying to find a cheaper alternative. $45 for a light switch.... I have never in my life.
The problem is Best Buy I would assume. You can get multipacks of the Kasa switches on Amazon for really good prices, and Zooz Zwave switches are under $30 online.
But yeah... I only use some Kasa plugs because I don't usually need to poll those, just tell them to turn on and off. The switches work good if its something you plan to automate but not use the physical switch very often (or dont care about its current state).
Avoid Wifi devices when you can, unless there is a dedicated local network integration without polling (there are a few brands that have this but not many).
I would agree. However, I am one of the most impatient men put on this earth. It's bitten me more times than I care to admit. I paid $60 for 3 Kasa switches; not bad. But I don't like the delay in manual interactions; and would prefer not to have a ton of hubitat overhead.
Totally agree with your second statement.
Understood. My younger employee has been assisting me when he can; and he said exactly the same thing. Lesson learned.
What would you suggest for a good switch? I need both non-dimming and dimming; and would prefer the designs be similar. I also need a few with "no neutral wire"; as a few switches in my house are missing the neutral at the switch, but that is a secondary need.
Zooz has good Hubitat support also, built in drivers for basic and I maintain community advanced drivers with more options for a lot of their stuff. They DO NOT have non-neutral dimmers though, so you might have to look for something else to do that. A lot of brands use a similar rocker decora style so its not hard to find something that matches well.
Zooz and their store The Smartest House are great options. They have stuff on sale all the time. It rarely makes sense to use Wifi stuff (especially cloud based) compared to the Zooz Z-wave stuff. If you are trying to integrate existing Wifi devices, fine, I get that. But at about $20 for a Z-wave switch, it is hard to go wrong.
Nope, not at all. Just a noob with all the smarthome stuff.
I absolutely should have listened to my employee; just figured I could save a few bucks.
He insisted wifi was wrong (clogs the network; slower; less reliable; etc). I thought, yeah yeah.. how bad could it really be. Well, ... it's bad.
No problem. I can sacrifice a little cosmetics for more reliability.
Thank you, both. I'm putting together an order on the site now.
While you’re shopping, the Zen34 work very well and have a very long battery life (with latest firmware) if you have need for more switches (or 3-way type setup) where there isn’t an easy way to hardwire them.
