Home Assistant

Then it's wired wrong.

Above your lights you should have access to permanent live and switched live and neutral, it's one the reasons people install above the lights if there is no neutral at the switch.

Can you not get and use another Hue dimmer switch? You can create automations in Home Assistant triggered by button presses on a Hue switch.

I have 2 hue bulbs paired directly to ZHA using my USB Zigbee dongle instead of the Hue hub (needed a few as repeaters on the ZHA network to reach an outdoor sensor) and am able to control them with Hue dimmers.

It would be most common for there to be a permanent live at the ceiling rose, live and neutral distributed between every light on the same trip/fuse, live is then fed down the wall to the switch and switched live back up to the bulb.

House would have been wired in 70s so not sure what the practice was then.

Even more likely in old installations particularly old retrofits of pre electrification houses as running the lives around all of the switches is far more work.

Definitely talk to him. If he installed to just neutral and switched live he could have done so as you say without touching the live even if it is there, it would be a fairly unusual situation even in the 70's. Is it a downstairs light in a 2 story house?

Yeah I checked with him and he says no permanent live there

I have done all things like move all my 2.4GHz wifi channels to away from the Zigbee channels, turned down the signal strenght in my APs, reduced the channel width, band steered to 5GHz, even turned off 2.4GHz channels on one or two APs becauce I had no 2.4 devices connectiing to them. Still I think zigbee is like a house of cards…one router goes down (a zigbee plug is pluged out then it all goes tits up) devices fall off then them it can be a nightmare to get them back on..

Like last night I have my zigbee aquara button set up that it switches on a number of lights and plugs (great for chrictmass as I have all my christmas lights comes on with one button) but the aquara button failed and one of my lads then couldnt swich off the lights going to bed with the Aquara button so natuarlly he plulled out a few Zigbee plugs that were powering my christmass tree lights. Which then makes things worse as these were acting as routers so its fucked everying up now….

I wil still keep a Zigbee network but for anything important..forget about it.

Can't help on zwave, use zigbee myself and can't say it causes me issues. I'm newish to HA, but still have quite a few items connected, (went and checked, only 12 devices, 22 automations) so yeah I'm still small time. Actually have more bulbs, switches and plugs sitting spare in a press, for when I get 'oh I could....' moments. Plan is, hopefully earlier/mid next year I will be renovating the house, all new electrics going in then, so I've been holding off.

With that said, anyone have or know of a good guide to smart proof new electrics install. Neutral to all locations, etc?

ZHA has a handy energy scan showing the utilisation per channel in the ZHA diagnostics, example here:

},
"energy_scan": {
  "11": 1.7132450748239665,
  "12": 6.789392891308996,
  "13": 6.011489450827149,
  "14": 13.711043742539033,
  "15": 28.30261646762903,
  "16": 31.01324838787301,
  "17": 21.09014924761344,
  "18": 52.75969252664325,
  "19": 73.50699819621309,
  "20": 75.96022321405563,
  "21": 55.9836862725909,
  "22": 6.789392891308996,
  "23": 7.659755505061292,
  "24": 3.2311094587038967,
  "25": 39.90320178295578,
  "26": 19.00785284282869
},

I'm currently operating on channel 25 without issue. Not sure if Z2M has the same.

Here is my Zigbee network as you can see I have a number of devices dropped off, mostly battery sensors like temp sensors, buttons, and a motion sensors.

I have 31 devices in total about 13 of those are routers eg plugs and some Philips Hue lights.

My main coordinator in a Sonoff 3.0 USB dongle plugged into my Pi4 running HA. Probably dont have this in the best spot as its supposed to be in the middle of the house but thats the only place for it.

Ive meesing around with it for the last 3 years and yes it will work for a few weeks even a couple of months without too much trouble. But its not stable enough for spousal approval…If a temp sensor goes out no big deal they are only for fun, but if a motion sensor goes down then its a big problme for certain members of the house… "why cant we use a switch like normal people" Trying to get those fecking motion senors back on line wreck my head. You wouldnt mind but within 2-3meters of the senor I have one Zigbee plug and 2 Hue lights…you would think it would pick those routers up straight away but no…then its about 15-20 minutes of pressing the pairing button, taking out the battery putting in the battery, bringing downstairs so its next to the coodinator and eventally after about 20 mins it will decide ok so Ive annoyed you enough I will recoonnect to the network!!!

looks like the shelley dimmer is the only active product that doesnt require a neutral?

https://www.shelly.com/products/shelly-dimmer2

will it work with a light like this one?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0C1H1DDZ1/ref%3Dppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

i guess the trouble will be fitting it behind the switch as its likely bigger than the mini :(

yes he looked in the ceiling rose saturday but it was tight and would have required a bit of cutting/clearing space and he/we were short on time so left it.. its probably not worth the hassle. Its single switch so not two way/wired to another

That's ZHA's network map.

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha/

Have you looked at the No Neutral smart relays..sonoff do them. They work by always having the power on going to the light but its trottles down so it shouldnt be noticable. But it can cause flickering in the light if its a very low power LED for example.

Worth a look