Have you considered simplifying your lighting design to save money? 100 lights seems like a lot! Our 4 bed 2 bath house has about 30.
It's a big house - 52 Squares. It sounds a lot - and is, but we have dimmable LED downlights throughout except over the Kitchen bench and at the top of the stairs. Interestingly, When I had a look at the display home ours is modified from, I counted around 100 lights in that one too.
That's why I'm looking at using something like a Shelley 1 or Aeotec Nano to make the lights smart. I'll leave the wiser zigbee control in the 5 light points it's installed in if it works with everything else, but look for a cheaper alternative to control the other lights.
Thanks for the detailed writeup. You've given me a couple of new ideas to explore. I think we share some thinking in that I too want to avoid smart end points and instead have as much as possible built into the switchboard or at the very least the wall. We'll likely have lots of downlights too. Not as many as you though. You win there! I've seen discussion of izone for ducted a/c control. I'm going explore that more.
I can see a tonne of leftover gear at the end of this process. I'll definitely get that buy/sell thread going I've mentioned previously!
Thanks. I'll check it out. One thing that would bug me is if the dumb GPOs look different to the smart GPOs. Hopefully being Clipsal, it all looks the same.
That's one reason I went with Clipsal Iconic plates and mechs with Aeotec nano's (z-wave modules) - with those you can install them behind the switch plate with Clipsal momentary switches and no one will ever know what they are (very High WAF as a result).
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Btw if any Aussies want to upgrade their C7 to external antennas, I found all the correct parts on Element 14 to make life easier for folks. I’ve ordered the parts for myself and will have them in a few days. The cost was $72 delivered.
As zigbee operates in the wifi band any easily available 6dB antenna should work fine.
True, but you want to avoid rubbish antennas with misleading specs. And you also don’t want a dual band antenna.
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Sure. Dual band antennas should be easy to avoid as they are usually advertised as such. Also I've recycled quite a few 2.4Ghz ones from old gear that I no longer use. The RP-SMA connectors themselves are available pretty much anywhere.
I’ve played with a bunch of cheap 2.4ghz antennas while experimenting with making a Zigbee range extender, and most are utter garbage with many having worse performance than the PCB antenna that came in the Zigbee plug.
Yes these are not dirt cheap, but they are from a manufacturer who tests their products and provides legit data sheets on the performance.
Fair points. 
By the same token I've converted quite a few Ikea repeaters using cheap rubber duckies and all have performed better (higher LQI/range) than stock, albeit whether a known high quality antenna would be an improvement again I honestly couldn't say. (As an aside I've now swapped out all the ikea stuff for the tiny Tuya repeaters and so far these are super rock solid).
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Nice! I just checked the price of the ZigBee Clipsal GPOs. They're $200 a piece! I think your idea is better. Although the zwave gear is pricey so if controlling a double GPO, it might work out about the same cost. I'm thinking Shelly gear might be good here.
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The Aeotec dual nano modules are only a few Bucks more than the standard nanos. I’ve found the dimmers to be good too and the Fibaro dimmers are great if you want the same switches to trigger scenes via a double press etc.
I just checked out the Clipsal Wiser GPO here. Apart from the expense, I don't really understand why they opted for toggle switches instead of momentary press. It seems the way it works with the switches is that you either turn the GPO off (with no ability to control it after that) or in 'smart' mode where you control it via Zigbee (or BLE if you change the firmware). No idea what state it adopts if you toggle off then to 'smart'. Presumably the last state it was in when in 'smart'?
Since a GPO is only ever going to be on or off, a momentary switch would have made more sense to me, so you can control it either via the switch or a hub. Am I missing something? Anyone else see any merit for having a toggle switch? Seems dumb to me.
Unless they are self articulated .... but there's nothing in the data sheet to suggest that is the case.
Personally, I used the Clipsal momentary switch mechs - they are still rockers, but always reset to the the "off"position.
The data sheet says "rocker on/off" rather than bell press or momentary.
Yep. So my question still stands. I don't get it. Seems dumb.
Seems dumb because it is.
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I counted up the lights in the latest electrical plan and I dropped down to 92 lights all up. I was over 100 in the first iteration of the plan.
