I was wondering how to handle room switches that directly switch the light on or off.
Family members still occasionally forget about motion sensors and use the wall switch to control the lights.
How can this be handled with Room Lighting.
The switches in question are wall mounted paddle style switches that directly control power to the light.
Thanks for any advice.
That is a tough one, depending on electrical code you may be able to take a switch out but you lose manual control if the automation system is down. They make covers for switches but they are really ugly. I tired to use a offline rule that would alert my phone so I can lecture the family and I would advise against the lecture.
I am assuming you are using smart bulbs within the lighting circuit correct? You may want to replace the dumb switch with a smart switch that has a smart bulb mode. That way you capture the switch event with the Hubitat.
Thanks for the reply.
The wall switch (Zigbee) is smart and can be operated from a dashboard or at the physical switch.
The bulb is not smart.
cover the switch
At our old house, I initially used clear covers to reinforce the desired behavior. Ultimately, are you asking the right question? What is lacking in the sensor automation that is causing them to seek manual control?
My bad for assuming dumb switches with smart bulbs. it's a common pattern. I just started to look at room lighting and was going to setup a lab circuit for that type of combination of devices and events. I use Z-wave mostly and Inovelli and Jasco/GE but the lab should validate how to handle manual switch events with Room Lighting.
Thanks for the suggestion but switch covers are not the solution.
I previously used Motion Lighting which enabled the physical smart switch to be used to switch off the lights and the app would immediately exit gracefully as you leave the room.
Please pass on any discoveries that you make.
I guess that it is early days just yet for Room Lighting but it is looking very promising.
Thanks
I'm assuming it does not have a "smart bulb" mode which decouples the physical switch from the relay allowing you full control over the switch behavior.. That's most likely what you want.. So what is the issue with people turning the switch on/off? I usually try an accommodate for that.. sometimes setting a global variable etc.
Another thing you can do in the rules is detect the "type" of event - either "physical" or "digital" so maybe you could do something there.
In room lightning (RL) you can set the automation to trigger even if the light is on. If someone switch on the light and then enter the room the automation will trigger.
You can also set RL to end automation when the switch is manually turned off at exit.
One more complicated situation is what if someone turn the light on with the switch but then they do not enter the room to trigger RL. What will turn the light off? In this case I have a RM to turn off lights after automation. Regular time + one minute.
Hope it makes sense.
I use Node-RED for my automations so can't be that helpful sorry but thanks for the explanation. You might try and create a virtual switch or motion sensor that gets set when the light switch physically gets turned on OR the motion is activated and use that in RL.
They might forget about motion sensors, but the motion sensor wouldn't forget about their presence or lack thereof. What is the problem you are trying to solve?
I think that I have resolved it by including the light switch as a method to activate and deactivate.
Thank you all for your advice and attention.
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