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Home Assistant is open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server. Available for free at home-assistant.io

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In-wall light switch recommendations (lemmy.world)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm looking to replace a few in-wall light switches for lights that are not easily replaced with smart bulbs. I currently use Home Assistant with z2m for all my smart lights and switches, so zigbee switches would be preferred. Does anyone have recommendations for smart in-wall switches?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Interestingly. I was a bit worried about adding dozens of new WiFi devices but it sounds like it's not an issue so I will consider the WiFi switches after all.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Actually now that I think about it, without more than 1 access point, everything will all be on the same channel. I have 3 different channels due to having 3 different access points, all set to individual channels. This reduces conflicts (more than one device trying to use the same channel at the same time, a weakness of wifi).

As of right now, my "busiest" access point has 23 devices connected to it on 2.4 GHz. The AP is reporting that channel being 23% utilized. Still, I wouldn't want anywhere near 100% utilization. Things would certainly slow down as it gets higher.

Newer versions of WiFi reduce this problem, but smart devices use whatever is cheap and effective. 2.4 GHz travels better through walls and has better range compared to 5 GHz, but 5 GHz is faster and has more available channels.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Oh I didn't thing about access points. With something like ZigBee, the switches add to the network range. But for WiFi, each switch will need to be in range of an access point. We have pretty decent coverage but the benefit of using ZigBee is other devices can take advantage of the extended network.

Others have talked about Zwave, I'm not sure which camp they sit in.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

I have a bunch of z-wave, too. Z-wave and Zigbee, I think, only broadcast when needed. That's why they're much more battery friendly. If they're plugged in, they do more listening and re-broadcasting to do what you're talking about.

Wifi has, relatively, a ton more traffic. DHCP renewals, keep-alive messages, and basically always listening all the time to see if something is looking for it. That being said, these smart switches use very little data overall. Unifi shows them using about 700 bits per second, which is 0.0007 Mbps.