[Closed] Smart Lights - How do you control them?

Smart plugs?

Oh and smart bulbs 🙂

These smart plugs are very good (albeit I use them with Google not Amazon). All our timered side lights are now on them, and the fact I don't have to individually change four plugs weekly at this time of the year is great; they all just come on at sunset now. And of course, no more individually turning them off; just tell them to all go off is great.

Watch the price though; they're normally £50, but regularly go down to £30. Just set an alert on Camelx3

Sorry perhaps I wasn't clear, I was definitely planning on getting smart bulbs for all the lights, hence not being able to use normal switches 🙂 How do you turn your lights off, always using voice?

We use a combination of smart bulbs (Peteme Smart LED - 2 for £24) for the ceiling lights and Smart Plugs (Teckin - 4 for £32) in lamps etc.

How do you turn your lights off, always using voice?

Mostly voice - plus we have various routines set up for some of them, e.g. the hall light comes on at sunset and goes off at 11pm so we never touch that; kids have 'bedtime' routines (that we initiate) which put their lights to 1% brightness in deep purple, plays soothing sounds, then switches off light and sound at 11pm.

I use Philips hue bulbs with the remote that you stick on a wall so it's the same as regular lights but with a removable remote, and full smart control.

We have smart plugs for the lamps and increasing numbers of smart bulbs.

We just use a combination of voice (with routines) and the traditional switches. Sometimes we turn the lights off with the switch on leaving the room, which isn't as annoying to me as it sounds. It's not that difficult to turn them on manually, in our house, cos the sofa is by the living room door for example.

Considering motion sensors for things like hallways, in the future.

Those Teckin smart plugs might as well be called Christmas plugs in my house, controlling Xmas lights is pretty much all they get used for. Very good though and easy to set up and control from either their own app or Alexa

I have a number of Philips Hue bulbs downstairs. The starter pack comes with a ‘bridge’ that you plug in to the mains & connect to the house wi-fi network.

You then download an app onto your phones/tablets and set up various rooms, give each smart bulb a name etc. You can then control the bulbs from this app either individually or as a group or even a number of groups. You can set timed routines for each bulb or group of bulbs

Finally, if you have a smart speaker you can tell it to find the Hue bridge and control the lights by voice. ‘Alexa, downstairs on/off/30%/100%/etc’

I've got Hue light bulbs, and a few (different brand) smart plugs.
Smart plugs control a lamp, TV, and a few zwift fans.

Mainly control the lights with voice (Alexa) but also routines ("goodnight" = hallway and kids room light to 10%, rest off, for example)..

I've also set it up so that when an Alexa countdown timer goes off, the Hue lights flash, and the TV (smart plug) turns OFF!!! My son hates this!!

Shouting "Lights off" as i leave the house is v useful.

I SHOULD also link my Blink cameras to alexa, so I can turn them ona nd off via voice too....

DrP

Is there a way of doing any of this without Jeff Bezos or Google having a microphone in your house and it all relying on a server in the Ukraine?

I'm wondering if there's a standalone rasperry-pi type solution.

@thisisnotaspoon yup, Home Assistant, full local control of everything & integration of all the different smart home tech, very cool

I’ve got a few smart bulbs where I want to zone a single lighting circuit, or want fancy colour-changing stuff, but otherwise I’ve moved away to smart switches instead. Better solution IMO, much cheaper & better looking plus solves the switch problem! Obviously you need to be comfortable doing a bit of wiring. I’ve had great success with some Shelly relays that you retrofit to your existing switches, so I’ve just ordered a job lot in their BF sale to hopefully do every other light/gadget in my house!

Especially useful if OP is making his own lamps as they make a tiny relay that you can integrate into the design or indeed retro fit to any existing lamp/device to make it smart.

To actually answer the OP, I control the smart lights using either the existing physical switches, voice control, or occasionally using the Home Assistant app on my phone (which ties all my smart stuff into a single interface). Ultimately though, I’d like to automate most things to a degree where manual activation is not required - probably a combination of PIR sensors & other presence-detection.

Control my IOT devices with Home Assistant.
I have mine installed on a virtual machine but you can run it on Pi.

If you particularly want a physical input then there are plenty of "smart switches" available that will act as an input to trigger a routine.

We've just got 4 Echo Dots scattered around the house, so there is always one within earshot.

controlling Xmas lights is pretty much all they get used for.

We have them on lamps, fishtank, a clothes dryer, games consoles, and best of all our electric blankets (something delightfully middle-aged about saying "Alexa, turn on my blanket" ten minutes before you hobble up to bed).

Shouting “Lights off” as i leave the house is v useful.

Being the saddo I am, I have a routine for that too. I say "That's me away" and she says "Bye dear, have a nice day", turns off any music and lights, then says "Love you too" 😁

It will also turn on Alexa Guard when they finally release it in the UK.

weve got Phillips Hue bulbs. Ive got a few shortcuts on my phone (All off, for instance), but weve also got a few little buttons. They are 2p sized wireless blobs that are a simple click switch. You tie them to whichever lights you want using the app, then they just replace the light switches.
By replace, i mean they sit next to, or where ever you want them. They come with some nice little magnetic sticker bases, so they are secure enough on the wall, but easy to pull off and relocate should you need to. The original wiring and switches remain, and if someone comes and turn the lights off-off, obviously the smart bulb isn't powered so just disappears from the system till its turned back on again.
On hue you can set the action for a light being powered on. either a chosen setting (brightness or colour), or resume previous setup.
the little button batteries in the buttons are a year old now and still going strong.

Not especially cheap tho. About 15 quid each.
https://www.philips-hue.com/en-gb/explore-hue/works-with/smart-switches

Because the setup is all handled in the hub, one switch can control numerous lamps, sockets or combinations of so you only really need one switch per room.

I'm likely to get another button for my daughters bedroom, so she can click her bedroom light, hall light and bathroom light on to 25% brightness from her bed, should she need a wee in the middle of the night. I can click them all again from my phone should i need to.

Watch out for the koalas that play with the switches when you're asleep.

I dont have any spart bulbs but i do have the no neutural light switches and a lot of plugs controlled by google assistant.

It works very well. Note that you will have to wire in a capacitor for the light switches or if you fit a relay (unless its a lamp) will have to have the switch on all the time. This is why i dont have smart bulbs.

ive had the cheap light switches from amazon btw and a few have combusted the ones from wifi-smart-home havent but are twice the price. i use the tuya ones as i had more luck with them instead of sonoff

I'd recommend the Amazon branded smart plugs btw. The others you have to sign up for an account on a mystery Chinese server, which could end up being rather dodgy.

The others you have to sign up for an account on a mystery Chinese server

All my IoT exists on a separate WiFi network for exactly that reason. Majority of this stuff is very insecure, regardless of brand.

I’m wondering if there’s a standalone rasperry-pi type solution.

I've been using Energenie light switches and plugs for lights and heating all controlled by RasPi's for years. I used to have it all connected to an echo speaker as well but don't bother now and let the raspi configure the automatic timing or I can use my phone.

I use a Philips Hue remote for my bathroom ones (you choose which bulb(s) to pair it to). I'm thinking of getting a 2nd for my bedroom to as I'm fed up of whispering 5 times for Alexa to turn the light off before I get the level right she actually reacts.

All my IoT exists on a separate WiFi network for exactly that reason. Majority of this stuff is very insecure, regardless of brand.

locally hosted server FTW.

Yeah.. but.. I like using Alexa for voice control, listening to music, etc

I could dick about with Home Assistant and some kind of Alexa bridge, but I honestly can't be bothered.

I could dick about with Home Assistant and some kind of Alexa bridge

Awesome, lots of useful advice 🙂 Smart switches sound like a great option for normal white bulbs rather than using smart bulbs. Shelly 1L looks exactly like the kind of smart relay I was thinking about, so the devices can be used smart or with normal switches.

Should one be worried about using lots of different brands stuff, like what if Shelly go bust, is it better to stick with the mainstream brands or things that work with generic apps like Tuya/Alexa for future reliability?

@GeForceJunky yeah I got a bunch of 1L’s in the post yesterday so will be fitting them at the weekend! Used the older dimmer version (Dimmer2) previously which have been great.

Yes trying to avoid cloud services for that reason (amongst others). Although basic Shelly use is via the cloud, they’re one of the few (only?) smart devices I’ve seen that work locally out-of-the-box as well (normally you’d need to flash with custom firmware, for example). Simplest way I think is running a MQTT server at home, I’ve gone full-on though with a Home Assistant installation (it’s come on a long way and is actually quite easy to get up-and-running now... after a recent update it now automatically detects & integrates Shellys on your local network so you don’t have to do that manually any more)

I use tp-link smart bulbs and extension cable. Connect to WiFi via an app on phone. I then link tp-link and Google home so they are all voice controlled as well as routines.

All work easily and the bulbs are dimmable.

Bulbs screw in to standard light bulb sockets and have a WiFi kit in each.

Just been dipping my feet into this stuff. Wasn't keen on having loads of WiFi stuff but that's what the majority of the stuff is and it's easy to use.

Went with Tp-link Kasa smart plugs for non-smart uplighters and a few Kasa smart bulbs for other rooms, mainly hallways to run on schedule.

Key thing to look for with WiFi are those that run on the local network without Internet, even if they don't use a hub. The Internet stuff comes in if you're using Alexa and other cloud services, but can still have schedules running and I think use the app even with Internet or cloud services down.

The next step I'm working on. I can turn stuff on/off with Alexa but I'm not keen on talking to gadgets. No Echo, I just use my phone or Fire TV remote to talk to it. Discovered neat thing that turning on the Fire TV turns on my TV and AV amp automatically (Fire TV is hooked to the amp which goes into the TV). Though if I tell Alexa to turn on living room lights it keeps turning on the TV.

What I want though is lights coming on when I walk into a room, if it's dark enough. Turn off if not in the room for a while. Turn stuff off leaving the house but ideally stick some lights onto a schedule or random actions while out, plus set the heating down (I have Hive for heating). Also nice would be turn light on low when it's getting dark and increase to full brightness when proper dark.

Went for the Kasa version of Tp-link as it supports IFTTT whereas the new Tapo ones they've released use a different app and doesn't support it. I've not worked out how best to use IFTTT though.

Unsure on kitchen. G10 spots and not doing all of those with WiFi versions so maybe get a smart switch. Non-smart under counter led units at the moment and could just put smart switches on them or could replace with smart led strips that come in a roll. They can have loads of colour control.

Just playing about to see what I can do with it all though. It needs a change in behaviour to not want to turn lights on/off with a switch and a bit more smart to not need to tell Alexa or whatever to do likewise, which is the bit I'm working on.

So, after playing a bit, yeah having to faff with the phone to turn on a light when entering a room even if just to talk to Alexa is a big faff. Likewise returning home etc. I can get an Echo for every room to talk to but that's a lot more plugs taken up and bit annoying especially in the bathroom and still don't like talking to the things.

So, motion sensors in every room I think, plus a door sensor when entering the front door (and can be used for security also). Power is still an issue though unless these can run off battery. Especially hallway and door as there are no power sockets at all.

p.s. IFTTT needs paying for to make proper use of it? The applets provided are okay but not always quite what I want, but creating my own it says I've only got 3 I can create. Or this is where I go with Home Assistant? I've got a Synology NAS which I think I can run it on, or some Pi's.

Though I've found Alexa routines are fairly good for stringing together actions. Just doesn't have much of the 'if this, then that' logic.

Like ideal would be, motion sensor on entering a room but only turn the light on if it's dark enough. Light sensor needed as well (sunset isn't enough as it can still be light enough, or on a dull day it's dark middle of the day, like today!). Light sensor in each room even? !! Getting silly now 😄

I'm paying £2/month for full ifttt service - not exactly expensive!

You could put a light sensor on a pi and when the light is low enough it could send a pushbullet message to IFTTT which would then switch your lights on.

@tjmoore Shelly are bringing out their long awaited motion sensor soon. Promise 1-3 yr battery life. If you were really worried you could get some PoE sensors but they’d be £££.

Yes you’d need to pay for IFTT, as said it’s not loads though. Or you can run a Node Red server locally, or go the whole hog and install Home Assistant. Alexa routines are fine for very basic stuff but not much else.

Not thought about light levels on a room by room basis yet! Lots of ways it could be done though. Lux sensors are cheap enough.