I’m basically trying to understand how dimmers react to being dimmed. And if you’re wondering how that might be practically relevant, I’m happy to share my current situation and what I’d like to achieve.
Current situation:
One dumb in-wall dimmer is controlling an track system on the ceiling. It is hardwired with one set of wires but the track system (IKEA SKENINGE) has three circuits that could be switched/dimmed separately (of which only one is currently used, i.e. all spots are controlled together.
Desired situation:
Two sets of spots can be controlled/dimmed separately (e.g. spots against the walls at 50% while spots against the table at 100%) while keeping as much of the hardwired system as possible for redundancy. When zigbee and/or wifi fails, the it should still be possible to at least turn some of the lights on and off.
So my thinking went like this: to control two sets of lamps separately, I need two dimmers so why don’t I put two shelly dimmers in the ceilingbox and have them control one circuit each? But that would mean that the lights could only be controlled as long as the wifi is working fine (Shelly dimmers are controlled via MQTT), plus I would need a third device (a Shelly i3) to control the dimmers, plus I would loose the possibility of continuous/smooth dimming (because, from what I understand, that is not possible via MQTT).
So I was looking for alternative solutions, such as keeping one of the Shelly Dimmers where the dumb switch is now and only putting the second one into the ceiling box. But that would mean that the second dimmer would be dimmed by the first one. So this is where I started thinking about replacing the second dimmer alltogether and using smart bulbs instead, i.e. not to use the circuits of the track system after all but controlling each bulb individually via zigbee while also having the possibility of controlling them all together via the hard wired Shelly dimmer.
I am starting to realize that the nearest I can probably get to the desired situation is with the two shellies in the ceiling box and the Shelly i3 at the wall switch. But I’d be curious to hear what other solutions I might have missed.
You can put three tradfri bulbs. Use a tradfri dimmer. It will work with bulbs no hub required. This means if openHAB crashes dimmer will still work. The worst case scenario when you cycle power on the switch the lights will come on(as long as this is how they are set.)
All my zigbee is currently setup like this. The remote will function independent of zigbee coordinator running. As long as I have the bulb and remote together it will work. Deconz allows for this type of bind. Zigbee2mqtt and zigbee binding most likely allow it also but not sure.
Thanks for sharing. I added your scenario to my list. The main problem is that I need to find a nice zigbee switch that matches my other switches. The remote from IKEA is a no go. Another downside is that I need to replace all 9 bulbs with smart bulbs and that alone is more expensive than the three shelly devices. Another thing I don’t like about having 9 smart bulbs is that they consume energy. I’ll have to find out how much, but even 0.3 Watts per bulb would add up to something.
The advantage is, of course, much more fine grained control, so I will have to think about it. I
One shelly dimmer uses less than 1.5W and the Shelly i3 uses less than 1W.
What bugs me, though, is what’s been discussed above: that the zigbee lights go on after a power cut. That’s a total deal breaker. But maybe that’s just IKEA.
I’ve read that WiFi plugs/switches consume between 1.5-3W at all times, but haven’t tested this myself. Assuming the Shelly is in the same ballpark, you’d be looking at 4.5-9W for three of them.
Part of me is annoyed that I installed WiFi light switches, not knowing much about Z-Wave or Zigbee when I bought them a few years ago. But realistically, I saved far more than that when I replaced all of my 60W incandescent bulbs with LEDs. If I were really committed to saving energy, I’d unplug anything that draws power when I’m not using it (computers, microwave, random USB chargers, TV). And that would likely also amount to less than a 60W bulb.
Wouldn’t you just have to turn the switch off to prevent this scenario? And does your power go out frequently enough for it to be a major consideration?
I personally favour switches over bulbs, because I don’t want my lights turning on and off independently from the switches. Also, most smart bulbs are 2700K (including IKEA’s), and I prefer 3000K lighting that’s a little whiter, but not as harsh as 5000K. So I’d have to buy colour-changing smart bulbs, which increases the cost again.
Maybe I’m missunderstanding something, but I thought that you cannot prevent the scneario, at least in the IKEA bulbs:
My power goes out every day. Not because of a power cut but because my house has a switch at the main door to turn off all lights in the house and we use that whenever we leave the house. It’s very convenient.
The switch cuts the power for all lights in the house (via a contactor in the breaker panel), so for the smart bulbs, there is no difference between a power cut and that switch.
This may depend on what coordinator you use. Things like this can be set sometimes. You have to do research.
You may want to abandon smart home technology. It sounds as if your concerns on power usage and cutting power when not occupying the home outweigh any benefit you would gain. Smart homes are not intended to be powered down, this defeats the purpose of making them smart.
So if I understand correctly, you have a kill switch for all of your lights, which means that you regularly leave the switches in rooms in the on position. and when you come home, you flip the master and don’t want all of the lights to come on?
Your cheapest and easiest solution might be to get Tuya-based WiFi switches that can be flashed with Tasmota firmware. That would give you a lot of configuration control, so you could decide for each switch whether it returns to the previous state or stays off when the power returns. As well, you never need to worry about the physical on/off state of the room switches.
Yes, except for the part about leaving the switches in the on-position. The problem are not the switches but the Zigbee bulbs going on whenever they get power. If I use those, there’d be no switch to be left in the on or off position.
I’d go for the Shellies, but, yes, wifi switches. But I would be dependent on a functioning wifi and:
I was trying to understand/describe your current state of operation, which wasn’t clear to us.
Tasmota firmware offers smooth dimming, so that it happens at the device level. However, I don’t know if that can be implemented in dimmer switches since I don’t have any.
Interesting. But what exactly do you mean by that? If you mean that I can send an MQTT command telling the dimmer to dim to 70% and it will gradually (smoothly) increase or reduce the brightness until it is at 70%, then I think most dimmers will do that.
What I meant by smooth dimming is, I believe, also called push dimming. You press and hold the button and as long as you hold it, the dimmer changes brightness and when you release the button, the dimmer stays at whatever brightness it is at. So far, I have not found evidence that this is possible with MQTT. I think the problem is a clash of logics. MQTT is “digital” and push dimming is analogue, as it were. If you know what I mean.
I suspect, though, push dimming can nevertheless be emulated somehow, by sending “start dimming” and “stop dimming” commands, or something. I have not investigated this further yet, also because I realize that push dimming may not really be needed in a smart home. Old way of thinking: I want to be able to control the brightness level with ease so that I can adjust it to the circumstances when needed. In that logic, push dimming makes perfect sense (but dimming knobs where turning = dimming are even better). New way of thinking: I want the lights to be at the right brightness in all circumstances (ideally). Note the difference: the point is not that I want to adjust the lights but the lights should be adjusted automatically. So, if that works, there is no need for push dimming.
Most users on this forum have probably had this insight a long time ago, but it nevertheless took me a while to realize this. The remaining question, of course, is: is it possible to achieve that kind of automation where manual adjustment is not necessary. I’m rather sceptical so that I’m still not giving up my wish för push dimming.
Couldn’t this be achieved by just sending lots of MQTT brightness/dimming commands in quick succession, either increasing or decreasing the brightness/dimmer value depending upon the button pressed, and stopping when the button is no longer pressed?
(Source: I’m doing that right now, except I haven’t got the stopping bit working well yet - fairly important!)
Martin jerry dimmer should do smooth dimming with tasmota firmware. I will know when I install mine.
I know Insteon does smooth dimming for sure. I love my Insteon devices. The price I don’t love so much… they are reasonable if you can catch a sale though. On sale switch was $20us and 6 button keypad $40.
The Insteon keypad allows me to smooth dim my lamps with one button, dining room with another and the main load with another.
Ah, I thought you were talking about being able to define the fade time for a dimmer.
I imagine the difficult part would be the latency. I assume that’s not a factor with Insteon devices that are purpose-built for smooth dimming, but anything you cobble together is going to struggle to react to start/stop commands.
You’ve got quite a wish list, so I’ll be curious as to where you land. Personally, I don’t worry about dimming my lights in steps of less than 5%, because I don’t perceive a difference between 53% or 55%. But I don’t worry too much about my lighting schemes–my days of being a theatre stage tech are well in the past.
You could set up a sensor to measure the lux in a room and bump the lights up or down at certain thresholds, but I feel like that would be challenging to dial in. Saying that, I do have lux sensors that determine whether specific lights should come on at all, and it works nicely for me.
I don’t think we’ll reach 100% automation until we have devices that are actually reading our minds, but depending on your expectations you could account for 80-90% of the scenarios. It’ll just take a lot of planning, programming and testing to reach that level of complexity.
I started out with some basic automations, and I refine them whenever I think “it would be nice if my house did this”. Otherwise, I just let openHAB decide what it should do and when it should do it. So I’ve reached the stage of manual adjustment not being necessary, but it hinges on my personal expectations.
