The Smart Switch to Nowhere

I feel like this is a scene from a sit com, but I have a light switch in my back hall that I could not figure out what it actually did.  I initially had always assumed it turned on and off the light on my back deck, but since I usually went on to my back deck from my master bedroom, I never really had a use for it.  It is in a dual gang outlet with the hallway lights. I had grown increasingly suspicious that it really didn’t work, or that it wasn’t wired correctly for a three way switch, but when I deiced to upgrade my hallway lights to smart switches, I decided to see what the other switch was connected to, once I had the box opened up.

Well, I opened the box, and found that the switch was connected to absolutely nothing, it was simply sitting in the box filling space. In fact, I wondered if my neighbor, who has the same floor plan only reversed, had a dual gang box in their hallway.  In fact they only have one switch, so I guess someone changed their mind in the initial wiring plan, after roughing in our electrical. This discovery did start to make me wonder, after years of not caring about the switch, what could be put in its place that would be useful. Since there is power to the box, I thought maybe I could put a smart switch in the box with no load attached, but program it to do something completely of my choosing.  I had lots of ideas of what would be handy, after all this is the door we use when leaving the house when we are driving somewhere, so various ideas went through my head. In fact, I had several ideas, and wondered how I could accommodate more than one function in space of one switch.  I looked for multi-function programmable switches, and no one seems to have develop anything specifically for this, but I was aware of a ceiling fan switch that had two main buttons, one for the light and one for the fan.  In addition, it had an up and down arrow for dimming and fan speed, which I wondered if I could also program for additional functions. The specific switch I found was the Treatlife Smart Ceiling Fan Control and Dimmer Light Switch.  I know it seems like I have been plugging Treatlife switches in my two blog posts, but really it is a coincidence.  If you find another brand out there, Gosund appears like they may have something similar, but it doesn’t have physical separate switches, instead it has sliders.  Now installing as stated before is pretty simple for Smart switches, basically just like a normal electrical switch, except you need a neutral wire, and the space it takes up in the box is much larger than a normal switch.  Once it is installed and the power turn back on you will add the switch in the Smart Life app (coincidently since I have other Gosund products it would also be in the Smart Life app) then it is available to use.  In addition to adding in the Smart Life app, once it has been added it should show up in either Alexa or Google Assistant almost instantly, which ever is your preferred platform. 

Now to the fun stuff, how do I make an otherwise useless switch do what I want.  My plan for the two buttons is to have them turn on or off several different lights.  The bottom button on the switch I wanted to be my, “I’m leaving home” command and the top button be my “I’m home” command.   Incidentally, when I named the Smart Switch in the Smart Life app I called it “Command and Control”, not just because it sounds cool, and I can remember which one it is, but also, so it wasn’t something close to any other switch name, so as to not confuse Alexa or the Google Assistant later, when trying to control other lights by name.   This switch will never be controlled by name by either assistant but will show in the assistant as part of its normal auto discovery process, and if you have a lot of smart home devices that you control by voice, it is best to pick a name that is totally different than anything else.  Other than setting up the automation, no one other than me needs to know its name. 

This by the way is a good rule of thumb for all your device, try to avoid calling any of your switches “Living Room Light” and another “Living Room Lamp” as this will invariably make it different for the assistant to discern which you mean.  I have “Living Room Light” and “Buffet Lamp” as an example.

Now getting the smart switch to do what I want can be accomplished two different ways.  If all the other smart switches, bulbs etc. that you wish to control are tied in to the Smart Life app then life is fairly straight forward. If they are not, then option B will be covered in a future post, which is likely your only choice, and involves IFTTT.

Use the Smart Life App (a.k.a. Option A)

First the concept of what we are doing here is essentially creating a scene, and then having the physical button on the switch initiate that scene.  Now one tick is that the smart switch button whether a single button or a multi button as in my example have two states, on and off, even though we are treating the button click like the same command, regardless of what the switch thinks its state is. One is the “On” state and the other is the “Off” state, so we are going to have to create two automation that initiate the scene. Let’s get started.

 

1. In the Smart Life app (it is the same for Android or iPhone), we see all of the switches we have added to our network. First, select the Smart icon in the tray 

 

2. Next, click the Automation option and then the + sign to create a new automation

3. Now, select the “When device status changes”.   

 

 

4. Then select the device, in this case a switch, from the list.  In our case we named it "Command and Control"

5. Then select the Light Function, remember this switch has both a light and fan button.

6. Next select the On function, we will be doing this same process again with the Off function as well.

7. Next Select the "Run this Device" option to add all the functions we wish to have the button execute when we click on it.

8. Select the light switch to be turned off

9. Select Switch1, from the list of variables available to the Smart Switch. Since the switch is dim-able you could set brightest level via the same process.

10. Then select OFF from the options, and then click SAVE

11. This will return you to the Create Smart main page, where you can either click PLUS (1) to add another switch action, and repeat steps 6-10, or click SAVE (2) if that is all you wish the Multi-Function switch do.

In my case I added my Living Room, Dining Room, Kitchen, and Hallway lights all to trigger their Switch to the Off position. You will notice you can give the scene a name, but I find the convoluted auto-generated name is fine, since we never intend to use this for a Google or Alexa command, and therefore this will not be confused with any of switch names.  After you have completed this and tested your results, you will notice it only works every other time, this is because every time you click the smart switch Light button it toggles between on and off, so to ensure the button does it every time, you will need to repeat the process for the Command and Control Light switch when set to the OFF position as well.  Then every time you click the light button regardless of the switch thinks it is trigger the same automaton.

Other things to consider

Now that you have completed these automation steps for the Command and Control light switch you can decide on what to do with the other switches.  For the fan switch I decided to have it trigger a "I'm Home" scene, basically the opposite of the bottom button, but I could have it do anything I wanted.  As you build out your smart switch inventory, you may want to still have the bottom switch turn everything off when you are leaving the house, but probably unless you live alone only have the basic lighting turn on to help you see your way in, be triggered by the upper switch.  You wouldn't want to turn the kids lights on at night when you are coming home when they are asleep in bed, but probably still want everything to turn off when you leave, especially if you have kids like mine who leave everything on.  

Once you have the two main/large buttons triggering your desired lights or devices, remember even the plus and minus buttons can be used to fire off two more scenes or sequences of events, actually they could be programmed for four scenes, but keeping that straight would be a challenge in our use case, I suggest two, let me explain.  There is a bit of a trick you need to think, since they are designed to be tied to either the light or the ceiling fan depending which button you had just pressed, to have them consistently perform the actions you program, you will need to program those twice, once for the + when the light was the last button previously pressed, and once for the + when the ceiling fan was the last button pressed. Once you do that, then those buttons can be treated like independent scene triggers.

If you are interested in the exact switch i used, you can check it out at Amazon by clicking the image below: