Lighting is the Foundation of the Smart Home: Smart Dimmers
January 9, 2022
I’ve commented here a number of times that the entry point for most people is lighting. It certainly was for Debbie and I. Initially we installed smart bulbs into our lamps and fixtures or used (external) smart plugs to control our lighting. One of the biggest challenges was keeping track of what was and wasn’t smart — if the light in question was controlled by a dumb switch, we’d inadvertently flip the switch off — effectively killing control of the light. So for the more important lights, like outdoor lights on a schedule, I’d tape the switches into the ‘on’ position. Not a great look and always had to be explained to visitors.
So, looking into a better solution lead me to smart switches. Smart switches will be a staple in our new home to simplify things for us and to make operations as normal and intuitive for friends and family as possible.
I’ve installed a few smart switches during my testing of makes and models but I’m also a hard core DIYer. Some can be a pain to install so I’d heartily recommend hiring an electrician, especially if you’re not comfortable working with electricity. For our house build, we’ll have our general electrician install them as there will be dozens of switches and dimmers, covering every room.
Some of the great things about smart light switches is they let you turn your lights on and off according to a schedule, with a smartphone app and in response to voice commands, motion or even your location (provided you have your smartphone with you).
Where a smart switch simply turns a connected light bulb or fixture on and off, a smart dimmer can also adjust the brightness of the bulbs in the fixtures it controls. Since a dimmer is essentially a switch with an added function, I’ll use the terms interchangeably here.
The prices of smart switches and dimmers have come down a lot in the past year or two, although the fanciest and most powerful ones remain expensive. There are familiar products such as Leviton and Lutron, as well as a number of newcomers to the smart switch and dimmer space, including Noon.
As we’re working through the electrical plant of our new home right now, we’re getting as granular as possible as to where every outlet, fixture and switch will be placed to maximize efficiency and accommodate our smart home overlay on the floor plan. As you can see from the image to the right of our initial electrical wiring plan — and to some of you who have asked for floor plans, this will be a bit of a spoiler — the wiring plan is complex. Our goal is to give multiple locations to control lights, light sets, ceiling fans, etc. Now if you think this looks complicated, we’ll also be installing upwards of 60 Cat6 Ethernet endpoints and 17 in-ceiling speakers with 14–2 wiring, all terminating in 19" media racks in the Office for centralized control.
I’ll follow up with a post about about smart switches, as we’ll be installing a lot of those, but for now I’m going to focus on smart dimmers and what we’re considering for our home. The dimmers are targeted for use cases like ceiling fans and Great Room, Dining Room, bed rooms and exterior lighting. For our home, I’ll be using Zigbee or Z-Wave dimmers and switches as I want to avoid the internet and cloud control dependency that Wifi controls rely on. I’ve covered this in a previous blog in a lot more detail, check it out here. And I’ll cover Wifi and Bluetooth dimmers here as well as those may integrate better with your smart home plan.
There is another protocol that supports smart home — Lutron Clear Connect. This is a proprietary wireless protocol used by Lutron Caséta Wireless smart home devices, including switches, dimmers, ceiling fan controllers, occupancy sensors, motorized shades, and battery-powered remote controls. You can also control a limited number of third-party devices with Lutron’s app — ranging from thermostats to Wifi speakers — and incorporate them into smart home “scenes.” Clear Connect operates independently of your Wifi network, but you must hardwire a Lutron Smart Bridge to your router to use it. You can control Lutron Caséta devices via Lutron’s app, with voice commands spoken to smart speakers and from mobile devices anywhere you have broadband access. Some smart home systems, including Samsung SmartThings, can also incorporate Lutron’s smart home products.
Lutron’s Caséta ecosystem is much less open than the other big three smart lighting platforms: Wifi, Z-Wave and Zigbee. Lutron is the only source of dimmers and switches, but the company is great about supporting other classes of third-party products within the Caséta ecosystem. In addition to its own line of motorized smart shades, ceiling fan controllers, plug-in devices, occupancy sensors and remote controls, you can also create time- and location-based smart home “scenes” incorporating any Caséta or Serena product along with Sonos speakers, several brands of smart thermostats, and Hunter ceiling fans. The Caséta Smart Bridge is Apple HomeKit compatible and it can be integrated with a Samsung SmartThings hub.
The dimmer switches in the Lutron Caséta Smart Lighting Dimmer Switch Kit are elegantly designed with four plate-style buttons: On at the top, off at the bottom, and triangular brighten and dim buttons in the middle. A stack of LEDs on the left-hand side indicates the brightness level. The kit also comes with Lutron’s Pico wireless remote controls, for those situations where you don’t want to use a smart speaker to dim the lights. The Caséta dimmer is also ideal for installations where there is no neutral wire in the box — it’s one of the few smart switches that doesn’t require one.
- Regarding the neutral wire requirement: The vast majority of smart switches and dimmers require the presence of a neutral wire — in addition to line (power from the circuit-breaker panel), load (power to the light to be controlled) and ground wires — in the electrical box inside the wall. Smart switches have radios that must be constantly powered, and the neutral wire supplies that. While all homes have neutral wires, many older homes don’t have a neutral wire in every box. If you’re not sure if there’s a neutral wire at the location you want to install a smart switch, this may be another reason to hire an electrician.
GE doesn’t build the prettiest dimmer on the market, but its C-Start Smart Switch Motion Sensing+Dimmer switch is feature rich. And if you happen to own C by GE smart bulbs, the switch can also control them even if they’re not wired to the dimmer. Being a Wifi device, this dimmer switch doesn’t require the presence of a smart home hub or any other bridge to your home network. An onboard motion sensor can turn the light switch on when the room is occupied and an ambient light sensor will stop that from happening if there’s enough daylight that the extra light isn’t needed. There’s also a night light in the form of a ring around the on/off button, but that can be turned off in the app if you’d prefer it not be on. The Cync smart dimmer allows you to easily make your non-smart light bulbs compatible with Google Home or Amazon Alexa when paired with your smart devices. This smart dimmer switch works with most common residential wiring (ground wire required), and no neutral wire is required as there’s now also a 3-wire version of this product. DIY installation takes about 30 minutes for incandescent, halogen, and LED lights.
If you’ve settled on Zigbee as your smart lighting protocol of choice, like I have, considering the only other thing you’ll need is an Amazon Echo smart speaker to control it, I like the Jasco Enbrighten Zigbee In-Wall Smart Dimmer. It gives extensive control of permanently installed lights, fans and other fixtures when paired with a compatible gateway.
This in-wall dimmer not only has a slimline design that isn’t tough to shove back into the box when you install it. It also has enough onboard intelligence to distinguish the line wire from the load wire, so you don’t need to worry about mixing them up if you’re doing the work yourself. For further convenience, the smart dimmer connects directly to the latest Amazon Alexa products, including Echo Studio and Echo Show 10 as well as first- and second-generation Echo Plus, for voice commands. Voice control and remote operation using additional devices is also available through Zigbee-compatible hubs. This smart dimmer is also affordably priced, too.
Signify’s Philips Hue bridge is another solution, but it’s generally limited to supporting Philips Hue smart bulbs and accessories. Zigbee is widely supported among smart dimmer manufacturers, including Jasco, Sinopé and Sengled. Lutron also makes an ingenious Zigbee gadget for Philips Hue smart bulbs — the Lutron Aurora — that attaches to an old-fashioned toggle light switch and not only prevents the switch from being turned off, but it wirelessly controls all the Hub bulbs connected to that switch — complete with a rotary knob for dimming and brightening those bulbs and turning them on or off.
As I’m also considering Z-Wave controls, I like the Leviton Decora Smart Z-Wave switches and dimmers. Leviton offers a variety of Z-Wave enabled universal dimmers designed for residential lighting applications.
They use the latest generation of Leviton’s dimming technology for smart lighting control, engineered to function with extremely sensitive, low-wattage light sources, such as a single LED bulb in a hallway or a strand of holiday lights, ensuring LEDs do not glow when off. The dimmers are fully compatible with Wink, SmartThings and Amazon Echo (requires Wink or SmartThings Hub), as well as all other certified Z-Wave controllers, security systems, gateways, and hubs. You can attach one or multiple dimmers to these controllers to provide automation and remote access.
In addition to universal lighting support, these dimmers feature two-way feedback scene capability. They include 49 different fade rates and feature user pre-sets for powering on and minimum brightness. Also features transient surge suppression built-in. They can be used in 3-way, multi-way circuits by using matching remote dimmers.
For those looking for extremely sophisticated smart dimmers, Unfortunately they’re not only very expensive, they also are generally only available through professional installers. The Noon Lighting System consists of a Room Director dimmer with a color OLED touchscreen display that replaces a primary switch in a room and up to 10 slightly more ordinary-looking (they don’t have displays) Extension switches. You can build multiple lighting scenes with this system that can turn on every light in the room at a preset brightness level based on the mood you wish to set.
Another high-end option is the Square D X-Series Smart Dimmer. This is another high priced in-wall dimmer that is more aimed at contractors. On the upside, it doesn’t depend on a smart home hub, since it connects directly to your Wifi network, and the manufacturer has developed a capable app. In the end, however, there are several better and less-expensive choices in this space.
Best known for building inexpensive routers, TP-Link has steadily increased its footprint in the smart home space with its Kasa Smart product line. Its in-wall smart dimmers connect directly to your Wifi network, so you don’t need a hub, and they’re currently priced less than $20. One of the biggest downsides is you can’t use it in a three-way configuration.
You’ll need to make a lot of decisions before you choose which smart dimmers to install in your home, and your choices will be influenced by everything from the type of wiring in your walls to what flavor of smart home system you have now or plan to install later.
You’ll undoubtedly want to control your smart lighting with your smartphone or tablet, and most people will also want to turn lights on, off or dim with voice commands spoken to a smart speaker. But to do that, the smart switch you buy must have some way of connecting to your home network. Remember that Bluetooth smart switches can’t talk to smart speakers.
Since most people control smart switches and dimmers with voice commands, they soon discover that they rarely physically interact with the devices in their walls. But you’ll want to consider the type of mechanism the smart switch uses if for no other reason than to ensure its aesthetic matches the rest of your home and making operation simple for friends and family that aren’t familiar with your smart home.. These are the most common types you’ll encounter.
As Debbie and I move through our planning you can see we still have a lot of decisions to make. There are lot’s of considerations, though I’ve already settled on Zigbee or Z-Wave, like budget and aesthetics that have yet to be finalized. I’ll keep you updated as we move forward with dimmers and stayed tuned for a future post in smart switches.
As always, we’d love to hear your feedback on smart dimmers — what’s your experience with them? Do you have a protocol preference? What types of scenes have you developed to automate your lighting? Where do you use smart dimmers? Let us know in the comments, DMs and email. Until next week …
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