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Re:The smart home is flailing as a concept by taeric on Friday August 06, 2021 @12:02PM (#28089026)
I confess slightly more complicated light switches would be convenient. We have some that have an LED in them when in the "off" position as an easy night light/indicator of where to turn lights on. That is quite nice.

Would also be cool if they were more "push toggle" style so that if I have two sets of switches on the same lights, I don't have to accept that four switches all in different "positions" are different states. (That is, Up Down Up Up, but all off.)

All of that said, most of that does not need any sort of "smart" additions. Basic circuitry has come a long way.

Re:The smart home is flailing as a concept by beerandt on Friday August 06, 2021 @03:05PM (#28091537)
You want the homeseer z-wave plus switches.

Can program double triple or more taps to run scenes or events, and can also sync multiple switches (wirelessly and on different circuits) to control the same lighting, or use cheaper (wired) remote switches that lack status lights, but are functionally identical.

I have single press resume previous light level, double up goes to 100% double down goes to preset dim level, triple up or down turns on/off the entire room/area of house.

Hold and release to manual dim.

Re:The smart home is flailing as a concept by taeric on Friday August 06, 2021 @08:16PM (#28094353)
Strictly, I want those without the wifi. :D

That said, they do fit my bill really well and I'm almost certainly going to switch to them eventually.

Re:The smart home is flailing as a concept by beerandt on Friday August 06, 2021 @08:44PM (#28094525)
They don't have wifi, unless you mean the z-wave protocol, which is a separate wireless protocol.

You can add a zwave controller that translates ip commands from a home server to zwave commands, but it can be wired or wifi (or usb).

You can also directly program zwave "scenes", which work directly between the z wave devices without needing a controller. Like a direct remote control.

Re:The smart home is flailing as a concept by taeric on Friday August 06, 2021 @08:47PM (#28094554)
I did mean z-wave. I am not sure of what acronym to call that by. I guess I could have just said radio/wireless?

Edit: Regardless of what I meant, I think you proved I should look more into these. Thanks!

Re:The smart home is flailing as a concept by beerandt on Friday August 06, 2021 @08:59PM (#28094660)
It's proprietary wireless, usually people just say zwave.

My point was that it's not like most iot devices that try to find an open internet connection to phone home. They're 100% as isolated as you want them to be.

Re:The smart home is flailing as a concept by yurishimo on Friday August 06, 2021 @09:55PM (#28094978)
Check out Inovelli[0]. They are the darling child of the Home Automation subreddit. I have a few of the last generation switches and they do perform well and have a great feature set for the price.

0: https://inovelli.com/

Re:The smart home is flailing as a concept by jaywalk on Friday August 06, 2021 @12:09PM (#28089127)
As far as your "push toggle" concept, you could buy a Z-wave smart switch plus add-on switches and have this today. There's no requirement to actually connect to a Z-wave network, although smart switches are much more expensive than standard switches.
Re:The smart home is flailing as a concept by taeric on Friday August 06, 2021 @12:16PM (#28089230)
Right. Apologies, I meant to offer this as a small feature that comes with many of these "smart home" additions that actually is kind of nice. Just with the major caveat that the "smart home" aspect is... not really needed or wanted.

And with a huge confession that this isn't that big of a deal.