Making my light switches smart - ZigBee, Shelly or others??

[katie279]

Hi all,

Mainly have hue lights around my house - maybe around 80 of them, however few rooms I hardly use - eg my utility room where I have 8 spotlights.

Kids are always leaving these lights on, so planning to turn them smart so they can switch off automatically after 2 minutes.

Don't think much value is replacing all the GU10s with hue lights for this, so think putting a relay switch in the light switch would let me achieve the same.

Looking online it appears Shelly 1s and ZigBee relays are used for this, but can't tell the difference/advantages between them both?

Any tips/advice?

Otherwise think I can just put a motion sensor in and the room will be fully automated!

 

[Semple]

Shelly1s are WiFi, so depending on how cluttered your WiFi network is with IOT devices you may look at a zigbee variant.

 

[SimonR]

Your choices are

WiFi - Shelly Modules, these do not mesh and require 2.4G. You will need a decent router and good wifi if you are going to use these (2.4 Ghz)
Zigbee - Aurora One, SonOff, Aqara these mesh but will need a gateway or hub to connect to your phone or the outside world (2.4Hgz)
ZWave - Fibaro, Aeotech these also mesh and will require a gateway (908.42 MHz )

Ideally all will need a Neutral at the switch but some produce models that can be used without a Neutral.

There is new global IoT Communication standard that is launching this year called Thread - early adopters so far are Leaf and Eve - but other partners are Apple, Google, Hue (expect kit from them very soon).

 

[katie279]

Ah brilliant, didn't twig that Shelly's weren't mesh.

Yes, have a decent WiFi (orbi mesh), but I don't half hammer it 150+ devices easily. It's crossed my mind whether I should have an IOT mesh on one channel with a separate WiFi setup and then have a 'consumer' mesh WiFi with the other elements.

I saw thread being announced - will be interesting to see how this goes, I'm not sure how fundamental a change it'll be (ie could I flash a Shelly to newer compatible firmware or will it be new devices all round etc)??