Home Automation

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Home automation is the residential extension of building automation.

It is automation of the home, housework or household activity.

Home automation may include centralized control of lighting, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), appliances, security locks of gates and doors and other systems, to provide improved convenience, comfort, energy efficiency and security.

Warning: Working with electricity can result in injury, property damage, or even death if it is not done properly. Please keep this in mind while assisting others. If you are not sure about what you are doing, hire a licensed professional.

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Smart switch to allow timed control of outdoor outlets/lights? (Or solution for Wiz connected switch problem?) (alien.top)

submitted 10 months ago by amma17@alien.top to c/homeautomation@selfhosted.forum

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We had two Wiz connected switches (dimmers) installed in place of regular light switches last year. One is a switch that controls the outlets in our outdoor outlets which we were hoping to use to control our very basic Christmas lights on a daily schedule. Lights were installed and working at first, but stopped working within a few hours. (I wasn't watching them so not sure when they actually stopped.)

Wiz customer support has been absolutely atrocious and I've already spent hours of my life trying to troubleshoot and deleting/re-pairing this switch in the app numerous times. The indicator lights on the switch itself are on - the circuit has power, it appears to be paired in the app, but it will say it's on both at the switch and in the app and the lights won't come on. Lights work when plugged into other outlets.

Has anyone had this issue and found a solution?
If there's no easy solution, I'm ready to pull Wiz out of our house and switch to something else. In trying to find other posts on wall switches for outlets, I've seen some comments about smart switches not being rated to control outlets? Is there a smart switch out there (doesn't need to have a dimmer - really just want to be able to set a schedule) that folks recommend for controlling outlets? Trying to avoid buying all new lights if we can.

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[–] Hydro130@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Smart switches are generally not ever rated to control outlets, and smart dimmers are definitely not.

A dimmer (smart or dumb) should never control an outlet, since an outlet should always have constant 100% line power. Even at full-on, dimmers do not typically pass 100% power.

You should instead just use a smart plug (wall-wart) for this kind of thing.

[–] amma17@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

Thanks so much for the explanation. I guess it’s back to the regular switch. Not sure we want to put smart plugs on the roof since it would be hard to troubleshoot them up there, but perhaps we’ll see how long it takes before we’ve forgotten about this Wiz experience and feel like a timer is required again. ;)

[–] kichckcc@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

Something from https://sonoff.tech/products/