My nightstand lights are connected to a surge protector plugged into a Zigbee smart plug plugged into a dumb wall outlet controlled by a single dumb wall switch.

I have the smart plug set to default=On, so the wall switch works fine, and I can also turn the lights off from my phone or via an automation. All good so far.

What I WANT is to be able to turn the lights ON without getting out of bed, and irrespective of the position of the switch.

I tried putting a second smart plug in the switch-controlled outlet and making an automation to toggle the surge protector’s smart plug when the switch’s empty smart plug powers off/on via the wall switch, but it looks like it’s not simple to detect a Zigbee device “disappearing”. I found some integrations that detect zigbee devices disappearing, but those seemed more for running health checks to detect and repair moved devices than for live detection.

Any suggestions?

  • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafeEnglish
    0·
    7 hours ago

    What?

    As I read through that Goldbergian stream of connectedness, I’m left wondering:

    1. Whatever you really trying to accomplish that brought this on

    2. Won’t that wall switch always be a manual interrupt for the automation

    Basically, don’t you want to automate the wall switch of lock it to being always on? (There are wall plates for this).

    • slazer2au@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      6 hours ago

      Kinda sounds like the setup is

      Ac mains -> dumb switch -> ZigBee switch -> power board -> light.

      And they want to turn the light on while the wall switch is off, which sounds like it won’t work because the power would be off, also turning power off to the ZigBee switch and the light.

      • Clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
        0·
        4 hours ago

        The goal is correct, but the current setup is incorrect. Right now, I have:

        AC mains -> dumb switch -> zigbee smart plug

        AND

        AC mains -> zigbee smart plug -> surge strip with two lights on it