- Location
- Illinois
- Occupation
- retired electrician
Are those battery powered at the wall device?
Distance of light switch from bedroom doorway
- Thread starter tompegbel
- Start date
letgomywago
Senior Member
- Location
- Washington state and Oregon coast
- Occupation
- residential electrician
Maybe. I've seen some controls that are universal remote style without hard wiring and the remote goes into a caddy. They might need a second wall controller though. Most the automation stuff I've used though is line voltage powered with cat 5 for communication only.
- Location
- Placerville, CA, USA
- Occupation
- Retired PV System Designer
Not sure about monitored switches with fail safe, but there are definitely wireless remote switches that rely on kinetic energy from the switch actuation and do not require either battery or external power.
There are several brands from different manufacturers, with the"kinetic" line probably being the most widely used.
kwired
Electron manager
- Location
- NE Nebraska
I've been noticing more ceiling fan/light units with a wireless remote in recent years. You don't know they are getting these when you do the rough in. In past you could bypass the light through the controller - especially convenient if it was wired with three way switches since you don't know if it is on or off. Many lately don't have that capability or at least not as easily done as they used to be. The fan needs to use the remote or you have no speed control.
- Location
- Illinois
- Occupation
- retired electrician
For those types of switches, the rule does not apply...the rule is specific to "battery powered" wall control devices.
brantmacga
Señor Member
- Location
- Georgia
- Occupation
- Former Child
That is an interesting problem to think over. Over the last year or two I've replaced almost all of the lighting in my house with Philps Hue bulbs, and all of them are controlled by battery operated switches in the form of either a battery operated Zigbee switch, or a zigbee Hue Switch Module wired to a mechanical toggle or push-button switch. There is no feature I'm aware of in the Hue app that turns the lights on when the switch battery dies. I believe it will alert you to a low battery though.
Everything in my house is integrated to work together using Home Assistant, and I can monitor switch battery levels in that software, which means I should be able to write an automation that switches the lights on when the battery drops below a defined threshold. But imagine being asleep at 3am and all the lights come on.
A project I've been thinking about recently is to move all of the Hue switch modules to a central location instead of buried in the switch box as my wife and I have been discussing a plan to sell our house in 5 years after our daughter graduates; I don't want to rip all this stuff out, and having it centrally located where someone can easily work on it in the future would be nice. I just looked online out of curiosity, and I see there are CR2032 battery eliminator kits that replace it with a hardwired disk fitting in the battery slot and connecting to either a wall-wart or USB power source. Now that I know that exists, that's exactly what I'm going to use.
- Location
- Illinois
- Occupation
- retired electrician
A TIA to 210.70 was just issued by the NFPA. If you have link, it will show up there, however, it does not become part of your locally adopted code, unless the TIA is specifically adopted. The new language is shown below.
The original 2023 text was:
So this change will eliminate the requirement that the battery powered switch turn on the light when the battery fails.