Used a hand chisel to widen the hole and slip the pattress box in. This sits inside your wall box (or pattress as I’ve come to understand), and requires at least a 25mm depth box (although I went with 35mm to give me room to work). Most of the meat of the switch is in a fairly large bulge around back. That means I could wire one of the switches to my real lights in each case, and leave the other one unconnected so that it could switch the other light remotely. Perhaps the coolest thing about these double switches is that, even if you don’t connect a real circuit up to each of the terminals, the switch itself still fires a usable event that you can use in home automation. This plastic cover- housing the switches and not much else- reveals the AAA battery compartment beneath so you can easily change the batteries while the switches are still in the wall. A little slide switch on the bottom of each switch over allows you to unlock the front part and pull it off. The light circuit is switched internally by a relay that sits normally-open and requires the battery power to hold it closed. This means they don’t feel particularly satisfying to “switch” but they’re at least easy to bump on and off if you have both hands full. Plain white, full-height momentary push-button switches that actuate a little push-button beneath them. The switches themselves are relatively uninspiring. I purchased a second smart switch from Amazon so I could do both of the living room lights. TP-Link were kind enough to supply a few bits and bobs for me to write about including a smart bulb, hub, switch, PIR sensor and door sensor. The hub bridges your existing wireless network to some (but not all) Tapo devices and, for the most part, is seamless. This is a pretty handy value-add that I’ll be talking about in another article. It also includes a chime that can be triggered by smart actions. The hub is a little wall-wart that plugs discreetly into a socket and provides the low-power wireless interface that the switches need to operate efficiently. TP-Link’s Tapo switches require a Tapo hub in order to function. Whether they will eventually be compatible, or Kasa will fade into obscurity, remains unclear, but TP-Link have at least mentioned that an update to bridge the two is in the works. Some of my favourite Kasa products – the KL430 LEDs- have disappeared out of production. They consist of different product offerings powered by different apps, but work in broadly similar ways. TP-Link’s Kasa and Tapo smart home ecosystems exist side-by-side in a slightly confusing, two-pronged attack on the smart market. Each is a 1-gang unit with either one or two physical switches, and they’re defensively designed with triple-A batteries for power in order to circumvent the lack of neutral wiring in old houses like ours. I’ve just ordered a pair of their white B22 bulbs so I can find out! /vFcoyKKT2xĪ proper fix, therefore, was ruled out. The latter took the lion’s share of the time- an awkward fare of drilling through ceiling joists and snaking cables that gave us a glimpse at just how painful fixing our lighting might be.Ĭould this assortment of smart toys from be the solution to my ridiculous living room light switch problem? When we moved in we had a significant amount of electrical work done over multiple days to add/move sockets, replace light fixtures, replace fascias and route a particularly ugly EV charging conduit through the living room ceiling. The room is quite large and often really does need both lights to be properly lit. The switches are on opposite sides of the room. My 1950s house is imbued with the kind of character that only results from renovations performed on a shoestring budget. TP-Link Tapo Smart “no neutral” Light Switch Reviewed Resembling a mechanical contrivance or device. having the characteristics or form of a gadget TP-Link Tapo Smart “no neutral” Light Switch Reviewed - Gadgetoid Gadgetoid Gadgetoid gadg-et-oid -adjective 1.
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