A bit of forward thinking can be useful

Feb 12, 2023 Last reply: 3 years ago 14 Replies

Don't always go for the obvious!



Four years ago we had a central ceiling light fitted in the lounge of our bungalow. At the same time I put in replacement wall lights and the single wall light switch was replaced by a 2-gang Quinetic switch. Two Quinetic receivers were installed in the loft - one for the new ceiling light and one for the wall lights. There had been a ceiling light at one time, as the cabling and junction box were there.



All worked fine until this morning. The ceiling light didn't come on, but the wall lights were ok. I tried several times but the ceiling light just didn't respond to the Quinetic switch. Thankfully, when I tried an hour later all was well with both lights. That makes no sense, but I was pleased it was working again (they are on the same supply from the CU).



In the meantime, I was thinking about the problem of testing and replacing either the ceiling light transmitter or receiver (or both). If either needed replacing, access would be required to get to the receiver to pair it with the transmitter. The ceiling light receiver had been placed by the original junction box, and that was in a area of the loft only accessible by crawling behind the hot and cold water tanks, and the expansion tank, and wriggling through the A frame, all with barely a metre of height available. It struck me that I should have put the receiver in a much more accessible position by running 3 metre cables from the junction box to it. I could then easily see if it was working and/or required replacing.



As I said, a bit of forward thinking!


Yes, well, I have baulked at fitting any Alexa controlled devices where the switch is wired in and hard to get to, and where there is no over ride. Why? Well most of these so called smart switches only work if the internet does and if the Alexa device and Amazons computers are on line. If you cannot over ride them you will spend a long time with your devices on or off or being able to get at them to sort it out. I'm happy with smart plugs but then you can go in and remove those.. Brian

We have a number of lights etc with smart switches linked to Alexa. Only one doesn’t have an easily accessible manual switch by design ( ie they came that way). Even that one could be made accessible.

If you avoid google/apple/amazon there are other systems like hubitat, home assistant, that run locally.

Andy - you know my views on such things

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In message <tsabvm$1o2go$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me, Brian Gaff snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com writes

Me too! Not so much reliability fears but dependency.

I have limited myself to 8x plug in Smart Plugs, my experience of those, suggests it would not be a good idea to rely entirely on them for anything essential. They are a great way to automate things, such as dusk to a set time, or giving a battery a quick, regular boost charge, but they do sometimes fail to respond.

Strangely, I have found that setting up a bit of software to ping each plug every so often - I do it every 30 minutes, dramatically reduces the frequency of their failures to respond. When there are repeat failures, the software notifies me of the failures. Unnoticed, the failures could become critical.

What do you mean by dependency?

All new stuff to me. I was surprised to see that Hubitat seems to have no downloadable documentation on its website, just videos and online info. The Hubitat site compared it to SmartLink and Wink. SmartLink had only one simple downloadable document available; the rest seemed to be online only. Wink was the only one with pdfs available.

Is that typical of "Smart" device suppliers? I can't stand that sort of "support" - or lack of it. Give me something I can read any time.

So you are on holiday in Tenerife and the greenhouse thermal alarm tells you the auto vent opener is not functioning! I rely on a neighbour to manage ventilation when I am not there.

Don't need anything like that with the Philips Hue system.

All the devices are receivers so they would all have to fail to be a problem.

:-)

I prefer smart switches with actual wired inputs as well as zigbee control, e.g.

<https://sonoff.tech/product/diy-smart-switches/zbmini/> £10 each if you buy a four pack from amazon.

Sounds like you forwardly thought that you'd need the exercise.

I'm so much happier with moron plugs.

Yes but the original poster had placed a device in a very inaccessible place so when it went wrong it was a pig to get to. I've seen switches that can be wired in and some people say, well hide them. I say no don't do that, you will regret it later on!

Brian

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