Smart Lighting Design - Suggestions / Consultants

We are about to embark on an extension to our 1930s bungalow and I'm very keen to get the whole house hooked up with a smart lighting system. What better time with new walls going up and the retained part of the house needing a complete rewire!

I've come up with a smart lighting design that I hope will work but am keen to get the thoughts of the community and even potentially pay a consultant to ratify the design / make suggestions. Haven't had much luck with my google search for smart home / lighting consultants - they all look like they deal with the "pro" products rather than the DIY style systems.

My design is based on a few principles:

• by placing all the switches in a switch panel in the laundry I solve the problem of my partner and visitors switching the smart bulbs off at the switch and rendering them uncontactable
• we still have manual control over the lighting in every room with the Philips Tap and Dimmer switches so to a visitor it looks, feels and acts like a normal light switch
• in the future once Google Home voice activation matures and / or we put motion sensors in each room then we can go fully automated simply by removing the Tap and Dimmer switches off the wall - given they are not hard wired there would be no unsightly switch holes to patch over
• whilst the smart devices are more expensive than "dumb" ones I'm hoping some of that extra cost should be offset by reduced labour as I'm asking the sparky to pull all wiring back to one central spot with one light panel (rather than individually wiring up an individual light switch in every room). Plus some of the wiring and switches in the existing part of the house will be hard to get to so it should save some stuffing around there

I'm keen to hear any suggestions / recommendations on what I'm thinking and / or any design consultants that might be able to provide some expert advice.

Thanks in advance!
Dave

It seems like a strange approach to take.

Rather than use smartbulbs, I would have something like the Fibaro Dimmer 2 (or aeotec dimmer) wired in behind the light switch, for non-dimming lights you can just use the switch instead of the dimmer.

That will allow you to control them remotely, or use the switch. It doesn't rely on you keeping the switch on all the time.

https://www.smarthome.com.au/z-wave/z-wave-lighting-control.html

The good thing with z-wave is that you can mix and match your z-wave products and not be locked into a proprietary ecosystem.

You could even just go with smart wifi based switches like the Deta ones that Bunnings sell.

I've had smart bulbs for a few years, but now I'm building will be wiring in the Fibaro switches.

Thanks for the thought-provoking ideas DGA! Which generated a few questions:

Rather than use smartbulbs, I would have something like the Fibaro Dimmer 2 (or aeotec dimmer) wired in behind the light switch, for non-dimming lights you can just use the switch instead of the dimmer.

Would this mean a "dumb" light switch mounted in the wall in every room like a regular old switch but with the Fibaro / Aerotec Dimmer behind it? And a "dumb" bulb? And therefore I'd lose the multi-color capabilities of the Hue bulb? (Which isn't a deal-breaker).

The good thing with z-wave is that you can mix and match your z-wave products and not be locked into a proprietary ecosystem.


Seems to be more forum posts around the Internet about Z-Wave than Zigbee. I've looked more into the Zigbee devices because I have a couple Hue bulbs, a Dimmer and a Bridge for testing and I do like the Philips ecosystem but I'm not necessarily wedded to either protocol. Perhaps I don't have to choose if something like the Samsung SmartThings supports both. But I haven't personally played with the SmartThings hub so I don't know its capabilities.

You could even just go with smart wifi based switches like the Deta ones that Bunnings sell.

It looks like these are in the wall like a traditional switch, is that right? It's not a deal breaker for me if the switches have to be mounted in-wall but I have to say the battery or kinetic operated wifi switches that are fully programmable with no holes needed in walls are super cool. Looks like Insteon make one of these but it can only control Insteon devices

If you don't want wall switches in the room, why have them at all? You'd save a lot by not having to wire except for power.

Yes exactly. Which allows you to solve both issues - i.e. providing familiarity for people who are not used to a smarthome, they can use the light switch, but this also doesn't prevent you from using the lights in a smart manner. You could also specify a momentary press switch (like a Clipsal Saturn/Zen or the Iconic with a bell press mechanism) instead of the traditional rocker switch so it is even more seamless.

You will lose the RGB colour of the Hue Bulbs, but IMO this is not really necessary for fixed lighting purposes. You can always use these for feature lighting (i.e. lamps, Hue Go, light strips or the light bars).


Z-wave is more prevalent for these types of devices, particularly in Australia. Our certification costs are prohibitive given the scale of the market. You could very easily use a SmartThings hub, but for me, I use a Conbee II stick for my zigbee devices and an aeotec z-stick 5 for my z-wave ones. Everything is controlled through Home-Assistant. I can connect my Philips Hue bulbs to my Conbee stick instead of the Philips Hub and can still control brightness, colour etc. But through this, I can also connect my Xiaomi temperature/humidity/motion/door sensors to the same network instead of having different hubs and apps to control.


Yes they are. But I would think that switches where a person would expect them should be the preferred approach. I have some hue dimmers and taps, but they're a stop gap for the fact Hue needs to be powered all the time.

My understanding is that you're legally required to have a switch. But someone with access to the standards might be able to confirm

I am sharing my 2 cents of Smarthome choice of components that I have implemented in my home -
Hub - I have Samsung Smartthings Hub. This supports Z-wave (make sure you buy the AU version of Hub as that will support AU Z-wave frequency), Zigbee, Wifi, Bluettoth via phone. The hub also acts as my internet router and is connected to the ISP modem. Smartthings has a great ecosystem and support for so many other brands.

Z-wave devices - I have purchased z-wave only in cases where a good equivalent using zigbee was not available. Z-wave devices are tied to the country specific frequency...thus z-wave devices from USA will not work in Australia (assuming the Hub is Australia specific). This limits the number of devices available for AU markets. Not all manufacturers spend $ to produce z-wave devices for different markets in the world and also have those locally certified in every region. I have z-wave devices to control my garage door, 2 way lights, water leak sensor.

Zigbee - One standard applies globally so a device purchased in USA or Europe will work in AU as well. Some of my zigbee devices have their own controllers (mini hub) so I just plug all such into a LAN switch and it works great. Examples of these mini hubs are Philips Hue, Ikea, Link Tap water controller.... Samsung also has a (growing) range of zigbee devices and these are priced very competitively. The Smartthings app and the portal allows creating endless automation rules to make the home smart. The support community is very active as well.

I have conventional electrical wiring and the zigbee/zwave devices can be installed in the cavities thus making it simple.

In that case, the idea of having all the light switches in a centralised place (laundry in this case) would not be allowed anyway.

I'm working on the assumption that the legislation will require a hard-wired switch but I'm hoping the switch doesn't have to be physically located in the same room / area as the light. I'm sure I've seen centralised light switch panels in various places but they may have all been commercial buildings which are subject to different legislation.

Having a look around to see if I can find any applicable legislation. Regardless, I'd want at worst to have a bank of hardwired lights I can operate manually in the event the smart home controller drops off the face of the earth or (more likely) I misconfigure it

If the legislation says that I need a switch in the same room then it pretty much makes the decision for me to go smart switch or the Fibaro / Aerotec option.

Thanks IamSAM - that is some really useful information regarding Z-Wave and Zigbee.

I had been prioritising equipment I could source from within AU but knowing that about Z-Wave it means if I get of those I'll definitely need to grab the AU version.

Comforting to know that mixing and matching isn't the end of the world.

Further argument in favour of Zigbee
https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/18/21027890/apple-google-amazon-smart-home-standard-zigbee-connected-ip-project

Great reminder here



The issue with zigbee is that some manufacturers overlay additional functionality making it compatibility between products problematic. That's why products like zigbeetomqtt and the Conbee/Raspbee controller exist. They're needed to integrate devices from different manufacturers together.

Although z-wave is expensive, it is still open source, but you can use devices from other manufacturers without issue in the same network. The reason it is more expensive is due to the fact that there is only one licensed manufacturer of the chips. This recently changed with the z-wave alliance opening up manufacturing to everyone.

I guess this is all off topic - my earlier points around the lighting design still stand. For me, I would (and do) use z-wave for the light switches and power points and zigbee devices for various sensors.

Finally got a chance to have a look at the Conbee and Z-Stick devices. Have to say the Conbee especially is pretty cool.

Whilst I've got 3 or 4 Raspberry Pi's sitting around from back in the day and actually worked as a Linux Engineer for probably 10 years so would have minimal issues gettng these working, I've made a conscious choice over the past couple years to move away from custom or "self-supported" tools as, to be honest, I just could no longer be bothered managing them, updating them, fixing them when they broke. The NAS got packed up, the Media Centre Server went in the bin, the RPi Squid Proxy got bypassed and thrown in a cupboard and the Billion router/AP got replaced with a Meraki.

These days I'm happy to sacrifice some functionality that a "self-supported" tool brings for the ease-of-use of the off-the-shelf product or cloud service. With those there's no way I can tinker, break it and lose a whole weekend fixing (we've all been there!) and if it does break I just return it under warranty for a new one. From a connectivity perspective the new router will have NBN as primary and 4G as backup (I've been using 4G as my primary Internet service for a couple years now and its pretty reliable) so I'm confident 99% of the time I'll have connectivity to the Clouds.

I reckon I'll end up with a SmartThings hub to co-ordinate across the protocols. Zigbee, for me, I think has the upper hand so I reckon I'll go with that as the preferred but if there isn't a Zigbee device that does everything I want I won't be put off grabbing a Z-Wave device.