Intermediate smart switch?

[Benpointer]

Being a lazy sod I like the idea of telling Siri to switch the lights on or off.  

 

We are going to have a number of multi-way light circuits in the new house. I presume there are smart switches that could sit in these circuits either as a two-way at the end of circuit or an intermediate?

 

I'm struggling to identify one that is bound to work (with Apple Homekit).  I am no doubt being dim but... any suggestions?

 

Thanks

[Nick Laslett]

Smart home stuff - lots of choices, trade offs and complexity. 

 

UK list of Apple HomeKit compatible switches.
 

https://www.apple.com/uk/home-app/accessories/#section-switches

 

List includes stuff that is very recent and switches from 5 years ago. 
 

There are new protocols & standards like “Treads” & “Matter” that have superseded Zigbee. 
 

Every man and his dog has a hub and an app but some devices don’t need hubs or apps and can use Apple Home app and Matter. An AppleTV helps as it can act as a Thread Border Router. 
 

I feel like we are just getting to the point where nearly everything will work. But you do need to think about what you want to achieve.
 

Also, UK, USA and EU all have specific devices due to certifying authorities, so you can easily find a US YouTuber talking about a device that will never be release in UK. 

Here is a good primer on Apple’s approach to smart home stuff. 
 

 

Edited Monday at 21:42 by Nick Laslett

[Dreadnaught]

Wait until early-ish 2026 and Ikea (and probably quite a few others) are releasing a large range of devices using "Matter Over Thread" across many categories.

 

They should prove cheap and reliable – as is typical for Ikea.

[Nick Laslett]

Another good primer video here: Paul Hibbert’s humour isn’t to everyone’s taste, but he is honest about the tech.  

 

 

[Spinny]

Personally although I have an iphone I hate the idea of allowing Apple, or Amazon, or Alphabet, or Microsoft to have control of every aspect of my tech usage. I consider these companies as leeches striving to turn all our lives into a 'life by corporate subscription' model.

 

It is the problem that keeps besetting technology - companies refusing to just compete in an open market place and instead striving to hook people into a single corporate tech ecosystem by proprietising open standards and building in incompatibilities to exclude competition. It has happened in AV with DLNA, and it has happened in Home Automation. Corporate greed gone mad - who the hell WANTS a door bell subscription.

 

I think forget adopting one monopoly and focus on how you want to do the physical wiring, switches, back boxes, conduits to support automation capability and above all flexibility. Many HA people use devices from many suppliers and multiple technologies at the same time - zigbee, zwave, wifi, bluetooth, etc. etc.

[Andehh]

I also need a smart intermediate switch, for our garage, mainly as the kids love to turn it on... But not off. So having a built in timer would be useful. 

[Benpointer]

Thanks all, especially Nick for those video links - I will watch when I get chance.

[BadgerBodger]

Is the Sonoff mini something that works? 
 

I haven’t got one yet but it looks like the route I will take. 

[Benpointer]

14 hours ago, BadgerBodger said:

Is the Sonoff mini something that works? 
 

I haven’t got one yet but it looks like the route I will take. 

Yes I was looking at that switch too - Looks like you can just wire one in the back of a convenient switch box.  

 

Does anyone have experience of the Sonoff?

[Kelvin]

27 minutes ago, Benpointer said:

Yes I was looking at that switch too - Looks like you can just wire one in the back of a convenient switch box.  

 

Does anyone have experience of the Sonoff?

I use one in the garage. Straightforward enough. My switches are surface mounted so plenty of room to fit it inside the switch although they are pretty small. You can still operate the physical switches plus automate it how you like. I have motion sensor in the garage, and two door sensors it comes in automatically, shuts off after 20 mins or I can tell it to switch off. 

Edited yesterday at 20:44 by Kelvin

[BadgerBodger]

@Kelvin can you use it WITH hue? 
 

My vision was to essentially install the sonoff relay so the bulb was „always on” bit disregard is own „smart” functionality . I think this was the problem @Benpointer was trying to resolve too? 

[Kelvin]

If you’re using it with Hue bulbs you don’t need the relay. Of course if someone switches it off at the switch then the Hue light stops working. I use some Loxone lights within my Loxone system and it works well enough. I have the same problem that if you switch the lighting circuit off in Loxone the Hue lights become unavailable in the Philips app (Home Assistant if you plan on using that) However I never control the Hue lights separately from Loxone. I’ve set the colour temperature I want (or the colour in one case in the TV Room) and configure the Hue lights to remember the last setting after a power loss. 
 

It might be challenging to use them where you have multi way lighting circuits though. Where I use one there are two switches to control a single light and you can wire that easily enough although it took me a couple of goes to get it right. You can get around this by installing the Sonoff at the ceiling rose rather than at the switch and they do a couple of types depending on how your wiring has been done. 

[Bramco]

On 17/09/2025 at 06:38, BadgerBodger said:

Is the Sonoff mini something that works? 
 

I haven’t got one yet but it looks like the route I will take. 

We have a lot of these and they work well.  We use them to turn on lights at sunset through the eWeLink to Google Home and then a voice command to turn all of them off as we go to bed 'OK Google night night'.  On on a tree where our drive meets a lane, we leave on all night - this is turned off at sunrise.

 

You can also turn on/off any light with one of these switches.

 

There are other types around as well as Sonoff but we started with Sonoff, so have stayed with the brand.

 

It's quite easy to also manage blinds etc. with their kit.  And I'm just putting together a control box to turn on/off ASHP cooling. There'll be a switch on the unit but it also has a sonoff mini, so we can control it via Google Home.

 

And yes I don't like relying on Google or Sonoff but the alternative isn't really there for the functionality we need/want. And they aren't the only infrastructures we're sadly plugged into, there's Tado, Zehnder, Cool Energy, MyEnergi, etc.  All of these only provide the functionality if you're hooked up to the ecosystems.

 

Back to sonoff and similar brands of switch, the great thing about them being in the back box, is that the switch still works - so if the interweb fails, you can still switch things on and off manually.

[Kelvin]

12 minutes ago, Bramco said:

 

 

And yes I don't like relying on Google or Sonoff but the alternative isn't really there for the functionality we need/want. And they aren't the only infrastructures we're sadly plugged into, there's Tado, Zehnder, Cool Energy, MyEnergi, etc.  All of these only provide the functionality if you're hooked up to the ecosystems.

 

 

 

The advantage of using Home Assistant is you can mostly ditch all the proprietary apps and expose all the sensors. How you do it varies from platform to platform. For example with Zehnder there’s a Home Assistant integration that uses the Zehnder Comfoconnect LAN C box to integrate it with Home Assistant. Once it’s in HA you have the ability to automate it how you like. I’ve added our Sigenergy PV/battery system to Home Assistant via the MODBUS in the inverter. This gives me complete control over the system independently from their cloud based app which means I can still see what’s going on if their cloud service goes offline. 

 

Edited 15 hours ago by Kelvin

[Bramco]

2 hours ago, Kelvin said:

I’ve added our Sigenergy PV/battery system to Home Assistant via the MODBUS in the inverter.

 

I've added our inverter via MODBUS to a Nodered system that we use to automate turning of the PV diverter in the evening before dumping what's left in the batteries (15p export) before reloading them at the cheap rate (7p) and turning the PV diverter back on. Something easy to do in Nodered but not with the suppliers apps. It's about the only thing that isn't in Google Home - why Google Home - my other half can cope with GH it's very simple.

 

Looked at HA several times over the last 10 years or so and have always been put off by the 'apparent' opaqueness of setting things up - and the awful user interface. Haven't looked recently though.  Sadly relying on the apps from the various brands is simpler and probably a better way of doing things - we all have a limited time here and need to make sure that if we're not here, the house can still function without a sysadmin.

[Kelvin]

Agreed the more complicated it is the more likely things will stop working and anyone not familiar with everything will soon be a bit lost.
 

It does take a little bit of time to figure Home Assistant out but it’s fairly user friendly nowadays and the interface is greatly improved. Its flexibility and openness also makes it slightly harder to use for sure. Our system is setup such that the folk I live with never need to use an app to do anything. I kinda think a home automation system fails if you are relying on apps to do stuff. It should either be genuinely automated reacting to whatever is going on in the house, operated via a switch without screwing anything else up or voice activated. My other half won’t have any of these apps on her phone anyway. There’s a central iPad just in case she needs to for some reason but never has. 

 

I do exactly as you are doing with our battery system but it is automated within the Sigenergy app.