I’m beginning to map out how I’m going to configure lighting in my house, so I wanted to put together a roadmap of what I’ll need room by room so I can start budgeting. The complicated part here is hardware and compatibility. There’s an abundance of brands and competing technologies, so I’m trying to sort through them to figure out what pairing works best with the least effort.
I want to use Philips Hue bulbs (both white and color), but I’m not sure what switches to use. Should I stay in-brand and use Philips switches; or can I use Wemo or Lutron switches as an intermediary between OpenHAB and the bulbs?
Please keep in mind that overall I lean towards the beginner spectrum with OpenHAB. Thanks!
If you use openHAB, there is no direct Connection between the bulbs and Switches needed. openHAB can take care of that, Any event detected by openHAB can be used as a starting point of sending commands to some other connected “thing”.
The downside is, if any connection to openHAB is broken, from switch or bulb, your control is lost!
You have to do the selection.
You did chose Hue bulbs already, for such you would need controls for ON/OFF, dimming and color. do you want all of that to be controlled by (hardware) Switches (and dimmers). You could also just use a switch for ON/OFF and keep all other controls on a sitemap, i.e. on a Smartphone or Tablett.
This may be too late, as you’re leaning towards Hue bulbs but rather than using Hue bulbs, you could just use regular LED bulbs and just replace the existing in-wall switch with a z-wave dimmer/switch instead?
This way you don’t upset people who just like having a familiar switch on the wall (in the same old place) and you get control of the switch and connected bulb from OpenHab.
Of course, you may have already considered this approach and discounted it.
Thanks for all of the suggestions! It gave me some food for thought. I think I’m going to start with a few GE z-wave switches and dimmers with my existing dimmable LED lights and go from there. The z-wave switches aren’t any more expensive than the standard Lutron paddle switches I have in place now so it seems like a cost-effective option. Plus wifi is spotty in areas so wifi-based switches will probably go offline intermittently (as do devices near my microwave and oven do now).
When I eventually get to the downstairs entertainment area, I can move to Hue flood lamps and control color separately.
On second thought, I had one more question regarding recommendations for a z-wave controller. What would be a better option: a hub like SmartThings or the Wink 2; or a USB stick like Aeotec? Is there any difference in range or functionality as it relates to OH? If most of these controllers use the same or similar chipset and have comparable range (up to 330 feet was quoted on a few I’d looked at), I’d rather go with a cheaper USB-based option.
