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?
Sonoff makes a bunch of Zigbee smart relays, that can take input from a normal switch.
It’s basically just a Zigbee relay that can connect and disconnect regular wires, just like a switch does. But it also has terminals for connecting a regular switch, which then just functions as a button that controls the relay.
Something like this: https://sonoff.tech/en-eu/products/sonoff-zbmini-extreme-zigbee-smart-switch-zbminir2