FAO Tim - Philips Hue

[Simon]

@tim, I remember you saying that you had whole house Hue bulbs? We've a couple of Hue powered lamps around but the light switches for them are a bit 'temporary', if you know what I mean. Now we want to expand their use and start fitting Hue bulbs to the pendant lights around the house, but looking at getting some of those light switch covers that you can clip the Hue switches into. Do you have them? If so, which ones do you recommend? If not, what do you do instead to mount the Hue light switches to the wall?

Leaving this public rather than as a PM in case anyone else is in the same boat. Maybe @Mito Man in his flat?

[McSwede]

My house is all Hue. I took all the old switches off and fitted metal blanks to which the magnetised switches are attached.

I love the Hue stuff, but my wife hates it. I got tuneable white and some colour change BC cap bulbs as well as some colour change tape under the soffit outside the front porch controlled by a Hue wireless pir. My extension is lit with two nice suspended Hue light fittings and in the kitchen I have two 1000lm tuneable white E27 bulbs in some nice pendants that are integrated into the Hue ecosystem as they are ZigBee too.

I really like the stuff but feel that the switch solution you mentioned would be better than what I have currently, so I am interested to see what comes out of this.

[Mito Man]

I use HomeKit stuff myself. It was great until my HomePod died and my only way to override the kitchen cabinet lights to turn off at night was to actually disassemble part of the cabinet to get to the switch.

[tim]

We've just made do with the "temporary look" to be honest. Although there does appear to be proper solutions to it now, which didn't exist when I did my old home out with them.

[simon_g]

Have some of these in the rooms where we group stuff together: SAMOTECH Hue Switch Cover V1 (SM200 V1) https://amzn.eu/d/gQcwTl9

Not the best looking but do the job.

Elsewhere we tend to use hue to switch things off (eg bedroom lights left on at 9am) or on timers so it looks like people are home when we’re away. Sometimes you might go into a room and flip the switch to get nothing (was on, switched off in software) so you flip it again. I can live with that.

[Jimexpl]

These are the nicest switches to use with hue, but they do cost -
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Friends-Hue-Sm ... psc=1&th=1

As Mito said, wireless light switching is great until
it doesn’t work. I was carrying out a survey in an apartment just off Eaton Square last week where the controls compa y had used Rako wireless lighting on a £1m refurb. The switches work 9/10 times, which is fine when you’ve spent £100 putting it in your kid’s room, but not when you’ve spent ££££ and there was the opportunity to hard wire. We’re linking in to the KNX bus that controls the heating and cooling and providing wired knx switches.

[McSwede]

You should be able to use any switch/dimmer/scene plate that uses ZigBee and piggyback it onto the system. There will be some nice stuff out there.

[Ascender]

We've gone Hue pretty much everywhere with Siri activation and some motion sensors. But if you leave the original switches in place you can always just flick the switch off and back on if you need the light on and CBA speaking or something doesn't work. 9 times out of 10 that's when you enter or leave a room so its no real hassle.

[Simon]

Thanks all.

To get me going I've gone for the Samotech 215 HD for the first switch cover (for my v1 switch), just to try. If that looks right I'll pick up a double faceplate for v2 switches, and single for a v2, for the lights in the lounge and dining room respectively.

Will report back at the of the week.

[Simon]

Just to wrap this up, here's a pic of the SM215 in the lounge with the 2 new v2 controllers, sitting over the original lightswitch.

PXL_20230521_222044695.jpg (243.54 KiB) Viewed 435 times

I went for the Samotech over the other brand on Amazon as this doesn't require pulling the whole switch of the wall to fit it, plus these were barely taller than the standard UK switch plate.

Very pleased. The only minor annoyance is that the magnetic clamping force in this combo isn't as strong as the v1 setup I put in my office - don't know if that's down to the new v2 dimmers or the faceplate cover. Either way it's only a niggle.

Thanks to all who helped.