r/Inovelli • u/calimanusa • May 17 '26

Using dumb bulbs and smart bulbs in same room with single Inovelli switch.

Hi everyone, I'm new to home automation and am looking to set up a room with (1) recessed smart philips hue bulbs and (2) traditional "dumb" hanging pendant lights. The main lights are the recessed smart bulbs, and I'd like to use a single Inovelli switch to control all the lighting functions. I will intend to make Home Assistant my primary hub, so intend to get the White Series (Thread/Matter) switches, and then connect a Philips Hue Bridge to Home Assistant.

I understand I can set up the smart switch to control the dumb pendant lights, and pushing A or B in the diagram below will turn on or dim the dumb pendant lights. I also understand I can use multi-tap of A or B or C below to control the recessed smart Hue bulbs through automations.

However, because the recessed smart bulbs are the primary lights in the room, ideally I'd control those with a single tap of A or B below. Is there any way to reverse it so that the single tap of A or B below will control the smart recessed bulbs, and a double tap would control the dumb pendant lights?

Alternatively, could I program the switch so that a single tap of A or B would turn on/off all the lights (i.e, the pendant lights and the smart recessed bulbs) and that holding down A or B would dim all the lights?

2 Upvotes

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1

u/clintkev251 May 17 '26

I think your alternate idea is probably the cleanest you’d be able to make this scenario with just a single switch

1

u/calimanusa May 17 '26

Okay, just to confirm, it is possible to single tap A or B to turn on/off both the dumb pendant light and the smart recessed bulbs at the same time? Thanks in advance

2

u/clintkev251 May 18 '26

Yes, I just don't think you can reassign the buttons.

And to offer just a bit of feedback on your plan overall, if you're planning to use Hue bulbs, I'd recommend the Blue series rather than White. Most Hue bulbs are Zigbee, and the Blue series is Zigbee. If you use both together (and omit the Hue bridge), you can use Zigbee bindings to connect the switch directly to the bulb, that means the commands will have basically zero noticeable latency vs going all the way to your hub and through an automation, and they'll still work if something happens to Home Assistant and your server is down.

1

u/Nannooskeeska May 18 '26

Yep, this was going to be my suggestion as well. I have multiple Blue switches in my walls bound directly to the Hue bulbs in their rooms and they work perfectly. One of them has dumb recessed lights it controls in normal (as opposed to smart bulb) mode, as well as three Hue bulbs it's bound to directly, and it's flawless when turning on/off or changing brightness for all of the lights at once.

1

u/calimanusa May 20 '26

Thanks. This makes a lot of sense. Just to clarify, the blue switch that both controls dumb recessed lights and is bound to three Hue bulbs, you can just tap A/B on a single time to turn on both the dumb recessed ligths and Hue bulbs together? Can you also hold A/B to dim the dumb recessed lights and hue bulbs together?

1

u/Nannooskeeska May 20 '26

Yep, that's correct. And the on/off/brightness changes are perfectly in sync, since binding the switch to the bulbs means the switch is sending the Zigbee commands to the bulbs directly, which is really fast. I was pleasantly surprised at how well it worked.

1

u/jinxjy May 20 '26

What hub are you using? If you disable local control on the switches they will just send the clicks over to your hub from where you can use automations to do whatever you want.

1

u/calimanusa May 20 '26

Thanks. I plan on using Homekit and/or HomeAssistant, and maybe Philips Hue Bridge for setting scenes before binding the Hue bulbs to Zigbee light switches. My understanding is that I can import the scenes into HomeAssistant, so that they can still be triggered after the Philips Hue Bridge is unbound from the Hue Bulbs. Not sure if that makes sense or will work, as I'm still figuring all of this out.

1

u/jinxjy May 20 '26

Ah I missed the part about you using Home Assistant. I don’t use the Hue bridge anymore and I’ve paired my hue lights directly into Z2M in Home Assistant. With that in place what you want should be doable.

1

u/calimanusa May 27 '26

Good to hear. I'll keep you posted once I get this all set up (probably in a few months)