I’m setting up with HA and zigbee smart bulbs. I’ve got a few automations already set up, such as turning on a bunch of lights in the morning and turning most of them off again at night.
All these lights still have physical switches. I don’t want to take those switches out for lots of reasons, and putting smart switches there seems like overkill when the bulbs are already smart. What are people doing with their physical light switches to ensure that they don’t get flipped?
Ideas I’ve had:
- some kind of physical plastic covering that fits snugly around it. I’d probably do this if I had a 3d printer, but I don’t. Maybe someone sells a thing like this? More just a reminder not to touch them.
- Carefully paint the switches a different color (perhaps the HA color scheme?). Again, basically just a reminder. This especially makes sense with a few multi-switch plates where some of the connected lights are automated and some are intentionally left manual.
- Entirely replace the plate with a smart switch? Besides incurring a nontrivial cost and being a bunch of work to install, this won’t even help me with the aforementioned multiswitch plates. I don’t want all my lights automated.
Other ideas?
This is my preferred solution. I like the option that I can use the switch as normal and still get benefits of automations. Switches should outlast any bulb on the market and with other family members around there’s no way to guarantee that they stay in place. Plus with that I can change the lamp itself to self-contained LED without bulb or something else and it’ll still be ‘smart’.
But if I absolutely had to go that route I’d get white tape (assuming the faceplate is white) and use that to hold rockers in place. It’s still easy to switch off if needed but that would give a pretty strong indication that it shouldn’t be operated normally. Preventing access to a switch or jamming them with something doesn’t seem like an safe option and it may be against the code depending on where you live.