Hey folks, I'm still learning this and I just began my journey on automation.
My questions are about making things seamless to everyone, so if I have a smart bulb (or a smart ceiling light) should I add a smart switch to pair with that? I'm asking because of people in the house reaching for the physical switch in this case...
From what I've found it seems like it depends on the switch but if the smart switch cust the power when off then, that's a no, right?
Same think for montion sensors, I have a couple of places I wanted to add a motion sensor to activate some lights. Should I do that with a smart bulb or a smart switch? What if the switch gets turned off? Same problem?
You'll probably get a lot of opinions on this. Here is mine.
I don't use smart bulbs when I can avoid it. I prefer smart switches because guests prefer to understand interacting with a switch on a wall better than anything. When I can't avoid it I disable the ability to turn off the switch. I have done this in two ways primarily.
Switch Guards
Removing the switch and placing a button controller in it's place or something else.
In my opinion they are better because in the event that the hub is disabled you can still control the lights to at least turn them off.
Button Controllers:
These give you a lot of flexibility. I use the Hue button controllers and also some various Z-Wave switches that let you run them without a load.
For the most part though, you never want to cut power to a smart bulb in my opinion. I would rather just not have smart bulbs and have regular LEDs and control them with smart switches though.
This post was very incomplete because I didn't even start to talk about all of the ways you can control bulbs without wall switches. But you can get that from others, reading around, discovering on your own, etc.
Correct. If you want smart bulbs for a specific feature they offer (e.g. RGB color control), but also to maintain use of the wall switch, look for a smart switch that can be set to disable its internal relay when pushed (some newer switches can do this). That would allow you to create an automation in hubitat that treats the switch as a button controller to control the bulbs.
I like the suggestions you've got above (and would second the recommendation to use smart switches/dimmers if you don't need the functionality smart bulbs can provide, like color or CT control--often that is the cheaper route anyway, but it's always the more intuitive route for anyone besides you if you have guests, a partner, kids, etc.).
If you do use smart bulbs, you are correct that you will lose smart functions on them if the "dumb" switch is turned off. But for your question on smart switches, many newer ones have a "smart-bulb compatible" mode where they can be made to work better in this situation. You can disable local control (loosely called the "relay" sometimes) and then respond to button events from the switch to control the smart bulbs using the hub instead, simulating the effect of a "dumb" switch or dimmer. (There are also protocol-specific things you could do here: Z-Wave with Z-Wave Association or Zigbee with TocuhLink, either bypassing the hub and possibly being faster, but there aren't a lot of Z-Wave smart bulbs or a lot of Zigbee switches, and I happen to prefer Zigbee smart bulbs--just not paired directly to Hubitat for other reasons.) Basically, these are possibly expensive but quite functional alternatives to battery-powered button devices you could also use instead. Some have other features (like Inovelli's notification LED) and all are, of course, designed to fit where an existing switch is (so lots of people won't know the difference), something not all button devices can do.
For motion sensors: you can use them to trigger anything in Hubitat. For lighting, it won't matter if it's a smart bulb or a smart switch. You don't even have to pick a single method of automation: I combine smart switches, battery-powered button devices, and motion sensors all in the same room in many cases. The motion sensor automation does most of the work, but the switch and button device (more or less equivalent in function) are there if I feel like doing something (dimming, changing color temperature, etc.) besides what was automated. This would be a tad simpler if I wasn't hooked on color temperature control from bulbs--then dimmers would be fine and I'd have saved a lot of money.
