Well, that was annoying.
Where we left off, I had a running installation of Home Assistant with most of my devices running well on it, and a few other server applications humming along pretty well. Time to install some new devices.
One thing I wanted to do right away was smarten my porch light. The ability to turn it on and off both from anywhere in the house and remotely would be extremely useful, especially during the winter dark times. There have been a good number of times that the light was off when I returned home in the darkness of November/December/January early evening, and just the ability to turn it on remotely or even have it on a timer would have made the dark trek to the door significantly more pleasant.
The easy way would have just been to plug in a smart bulb and call it a day. But, of course, it’s one of those all-in-one contrivances, with a sealed up LED inside the fixture, so that was a no-go. So, time to learn how to smarten a light switch!
I spent weeks researching and watching videos in anticipation of this. Pulled off the cover, checking to see if I could detect there is a neutral wire. I learned what a neutral wire is (they’re very handy for these kinds of uses). At first I couldn’t see it, and since my house is nearly a Century Home, I sort of assumed there wouldn’t be (they didn’t become standard in light switch installations until the 1980s). But, the third time I pulled off the cover to once again inspect, I saw it! Or, at least I was pretty sure I saw it!
The other complications were that this light switch was in a 3-gang box, meaning there are two other light switches in the same box. I learned what “3-gang” box means. In addition, I realized that these two switches are 3-way switches, meaning each has a second switch to control the same light. I learned what a “3-way” switch means. They could theoretically be dimmed (although no dimmer was on the switch currently). The porch light could not be dimmed.
So, I researched what the best light switches for these use cases would be, and bought one standard switch (with Matter), and two 3-way dimming switches (with Matter), with hopes of getting them installed over the snowed-in weekend.
The instructions were clear enough. I had also watched maybe 30 people do the same transition on Youtube, so I was relatively prepared, if not just a little confused because everybody uses different nomenclature for the same things inside these plug boxes. Line, load, common, travelers, etc.: lots of names for these wires. But the switch manufacturer’s instructions were actually pretty illuminating (mind the pun). While the installation was actually difficult (manipulating electric wires is a lot harder than speaker wires) and I swore and screamed through most of the installation (but I did not shock myself because I took precautions). But, after a few hours, I managed to get most of the new switches installed.
Except they didn’t fucking fit in the boxes.
Yeah, the addition of a few new wires (mostly ground: my old switches were not grounded lol) and the caps over the new wires (and the addition of the caps on the new pigtailed neutral wire), and the much, much bigger switch boxes, nothing fit back in the boxes. Goddammit.
So I had to put everything back the way it was because it was never going to work. If I were smart, I would have labeled everything before starting and took some photos. But of course I didn’t. Do not be like me. But I managed to get everything back the way it was, with just the switch for the porch barely fitting in (it’s a smaller switch: I assume because it has neither a dimmer nor a 3-way mechanism). Setting up the porch light switch in Home Assistant as a Matter device was a piece of cake, and it was good to go within seconds.
So, at least I have a smart porch light that I have turn on automatically at sunset.
Previously:
