BroadLink Smart Wall Light Switch, 2-Gang Single Live Wire Switch, No Neutral or Capacitor Required, Push Button, White,Compatible with Alexa, Google Home and IFTTT, S3 Hub Required (With Hub)

Works very well. Looks good, and not cheap. The only thing is- it requires this USB Hub to be constantly connected - which I dont like. It was very simple to install, and did not expect for such a flawless pairing procedure with Alexa.

Unfortunately though these worked well at first I have now had four fail on me one by one. The hubs work fine, as these have been tester with a recently purchased replacement.I have tried resetting them and completely removing them from the system but no joy. All of them failed a couple of months apart so it seems to be a widespread fault that only seems to surface after a year or two.Due to my experience, I can no longer recommend these I'm afraid.Received and set these up over the weekend, and so far I'm impressed.I ran into a couple of issues during set up that are worth bearing in mind:1. Make sure you include the purchase of the S3 hub when setting up your first switch.2. The broadlink app doesn't appear to work with Android 12 when setting up the hub for the first time. I had to switch to a phone with Android 11 still running on it to get it working. Though I was able to switch back to my A12 phone once up and running. Hopefully this will be fixed in a future update.3. Make sure you don't be daft like me and try to set these up without the switch cover being attached. This may be obvious to some, but the white paddles only act as a spring mechanism and the actual switch button is located just below. Took me ages to figure this out and I thought I had a defective product when pressing the paddle down and it didn't operate the light nor did it place the switch in pairing mode when holding it down for 5 seconds as instructed. All was fine when placing the switch cover back on. Doh!I have these set up in the kitchen along side an echo flex with a motion sensor attached. Using an Alexa routine, I'm able to trigger the lights when motion is detected in the kitchen and they turn off again if no motion is detected for 2 minutes. Bear in mind you have to add the switch to an Alexa group in order to include them in your routine though.Anyway, after the initial set-up issues, they have worked really well and I'm very happy with my purchase.

Managed to install one of these myself. Two gangs for two main lights (used capacitor in ceiling rose for each) and a third to trigger three Wemo switches, connected to comfort lights. I was using IFTTT for about a year before IFTTT service started to become extremely unreliable. Even paying for Pro didn’t change it. You would switch the third switch on and wait up to 5 minutes for the lights to actually come on.Eventually I’ve found a more reliable solution. Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi 3. It’s pretty fiddly to find integration.You will need to read the entire thread on the Home Assistant community page titled “Broadlink S3 hub support”. You will then need to follow mnayef95’s readme from his Github page: Support Broadlink s3 hub in AppDaemon.Now my switches work perfectly and instantly, without relying on a cloud provider.WARNING: both setting up the main lights with the capacitor and setting up the Home Assistant with a Raspberry Pi and then installing HACS etc. is not for the faint hearted. I would say you definitely need electrical and IT experience to set these up.

When I first opened the box I was a bit disappointed to see a capacitor in there as I had purchased this model specifically because it was advertised as “no neutral and no capacitor”. However I didn’t need the capacitor so all is well and it gets 5 stars from me.Installation was fairly straightforward. As others say you need a deep wall box. Ours was a going into a plasterboard wall so we already had a deep box. Wiring is traditional and requires no special knowledge. Earth and neutral are not required. The fixing screws that came with the switch were too big for our wall box but we reused the screws from our original switch and it works fine. Remember that you need to complete the installation including re-attaching the switch faceplate before it will work. Once fitted it immediately worked as a traditional push on/off manual switch. The instructions do not tell you how to connect the hub to WiFi but it is easy (download the app and scan the QR code) and then once the hub is connected do the same for the switch. We plugged the hub into a USB socket on the other side of the room and it worked fine. Connection to Alexa via the Alexa App was quick and we now have voice activation too. At last we have solved the problem with the previous smart bulb that my natural instinct was always to turn off from the wall at night meaning my wife could not turn on from bed in the morning! No more frosty mornings :-)

UPDATE PAIRING FIXED.It turns out to get the switch into pairing mode you have to press and hold one of the buttons while the switch is ON and powering whatever it is connected to. So if the lights aren’t on when you press and hold the button for 5 secs nothing will happen. BEWARE!So this worked wonderfully for the first two years, then it dropped out of contact with the Broadlink hub. Despite my best efforts the switch will not reset and will not reconnect to the hub so we have lost the smart function. The switch status LED is flashing, I input the QR code into the hub but it will not pick it up as a sub device.The light switch still works as a switch but we have had to buy another unit to swap it out and restore the smart features. Not good value and I am grateful I did not buy more if they fail so quickly!I am led to believe that the fault may be due to breakdown of the capacitor that is added to the circuit. I will test this when I get the new one and see if that’s the fault.See above. I fixed the pairing issue and added a star back to the review.