Battery Powered Light Switch

With the announcement of the new Wyze Light Switch it would be nice if there were a battery powered version of it for people with older homes or don’t have light switches in certain rooms

Wyze wireless lighting switch ala Philips Dimmer Switch

The new Wyze lighting switch won’t work for me for a few reasons.
1 - Doesn’t work on 220v
2 - Already many companies making the same thing with Alexa integration
3 - As an American living in Europe, the houses in central Europe are built very differently than in America and changing where a switch is located is a major undertaking (not made of wood and drywall here)

Was really hoping for a wireless, battery operated switch like the Philips Hue Dimmer Switch.
There is no competition for this other than Philips, and theirs only works with their bulbs and a hub anyways.
The only thing stopping me from putting smart lighting throughout my entire house is that my wife refuses to use Alexa or her phone. If no smart switch, she’ll just turn on and off the power switch and the entire purpose of smart lighting is defeated.
I love the Philips Hue Dimmer Switch, but don’t like their bulbs and the fact that you have to use a hub that doesn’t always work right and has a very limited range.
A battery operated switch that can be located anywhere or even held like a remote control would be great and would certainly be a big seller. Just do a google search of Philips Hue Dimmer Switch replacements and you will see that there really is a lot of people looking and nothing to be found.
Thanks,

I spent a lot of time looking yesterday and couldn’t find a single battery powered switch that works with Alexa. They are all wired or require a hub or bridge of some kind.

Without a hub you’re asking that a battery powered switch present an always-on WiFi connection. I guess that’s feasible - the WCO cams do it in low power WiFi mode (though with a hub) - but you’d be charging them at least yearly. Since the new Wyze Switch can’t even dim, and since your request isn’t all that popular, I wouldn’t count on seeing it?

Even if I had to charge it monthly I wouldn’t mind. It’s just something that I would personally like to see. Maybe more people with older homes may want it in the future and maybe the popularity will grow. Who knows?

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I think I understand, but let me be sure. In older homes, some rooms - usually the ‘living room’ - don’t have overhead lights therefore no light switch on the wall, right? So what you want is a ‘switch’ to control a lamp or group of lamps, right?

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Basically, but in our house none of the rooms had overhead lights. We paid to have ceiling fans installed but didn’t want to spend the extra money to have the switches wired. Instead we got wireless switches to control each light. Since then a few of them have stopped working so what I did is got the Wyze Color Bulbs and put them in the lights and just use Alexa or the the Wyze app to turn the lights on and off. It would be nice to have a switch or button that we could group routines together to be able to turn the lights on and off with out having to use Alexa or the app.

This might be essentially the same request as a smart button.

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No rooms with overhead lights?! That’s a new one. Just curious, when was your house built? The only two rooms where I use overhead lighting is the kitchen and dining room. So in the family room I have several lamps grouped in Echo and use Alexa to turn them on and off. The Wyze Button that’s already under research is a future solution. I understand that a wireless switch like this Hue Switch is more elegant. It sounds like the wired switch will have that functionality so maybe a battery operated version isn’t too difficult to engineer and produce. Good luck!

We were surprised by this when we moved from the west to Maryland. Aside from a kitchen or a dining room, NO rooms had overhead lights! We found it so strange. Every room had an outlet or two connected with the light switch, so we just had lamps everywhere. Even rooms with ceiling fans…fan but no light! Ha. This wyze biz would have been awesome in that setting.

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Voted ! Sounds like a great idea :bulb:

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Agreed.

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It pretty much is. I would defiantly be okay with a Wyze smart button

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I believe it was built in the 80s. I’m not entirely sure though. I’ve already put my vote down for the Wyze Smart Button.

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Not really buying the idea as such, but I’ll contribute with that the built-in battery could be charged when the light is on by siphoning off a small amount of the current going through (and hence yes, in theory also result in a slight dimming of the connected light). No batteries to replace, not batteries to charge separately, etc.
And yes, this can be done w/o a neutral wire.
You’re welcome.

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Not to speak for others, but I think the idea of battery light switch is in homes that don’t have overhead lights and so no wall switches/ wiring. They’re looking for a basically a button that looks like a switch. Hope I didn’t misunderstand your point…

Yes, “smart button” as discussed above. There are other threads asking for a wall switch replacement that doesn’t require a neutral wire (achievable through a vampiric draw through the bulb as some GEs apparently do).

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This is the way to go.

I have this now and it works great with Wyze and Alexa.
The one issue I have is that the buttons cannot perform a toggle function (on/off) So you have to make one button On and another button Off. The good thing is that each button comes with 4 buttons completely customizable to an Alexa routine.
That being said, Wyze should still come out with their own wireless switch just like Lutron, but better.

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Once again though, this requires a separate hub and depending on the size or layout of your house, could require more than one. Most of us are looking for a Philips Hue Dimmer switch type of thing that works over wifi without needing a hub for our non-Philips bulbs. Changing batteries once or twice a year to many of us is far preferable to needing extra added (expensive) gear that can be worthless over time (I’m looking at you Philips hub V1).

The hub for the Broadlink switches is darn cheap. The button with a hub is $24.99, while the button alone is $22.99.

Broadlink lists, “All compatible devices must be within 20m (with line of sight) or 8-10m (in a home setting without line of sight)”.

I suspect they are using Bluetooth LE, given that they list the frequency as 2.4 GHz. My Switchbot hub also does, but it has a line of site range of 80 meters (but it also typically costs around $40 vs. the $2 extra for the Broadlink S3 hub).