Your design switch deserves to be smart

We just read the New York Times article «Your Light Switch Is (Probably) Boring», and we couldn’t agree more.

We actually talk about the prettiest light switches during our coffee breaks at the office. So yes, the light switch is definitely having a design moment. Brands like Forbes & Lomax, Dimwit and Residence Supply are making switches in brass, marble, ceramic and bold colour. Products we genuinely want to look at.

Beautiful or smart? Beautiful and smart!

Some people think smart homes work against the traditional wall switch, that everything is just apps nowadays. Or that going smart means swapping the switch you chose for a plastic keypad that came with the system.

With Matter, that’s changing. You can have beautiful interiors and real smart home capabilities behind them, without one getting in the way of the other. The switch on the wall stays a design decision. The intelligence moves into the wall.

It’s all about the DALI-2 Button Coupler

Our DALI-2 Button Coupler is a small device, just 40.5 × 28 × 14.5 mm. It sits hidden in the wall box behind the switch you love and turns up to four ordinary push buttons or switches into DALI-2 controls.

It connects to the DALI line of our SmartCore. SmartCore is Matter compatible, so your favourite design switch now works with Apple Home, Google Home and the rest of your smart home. Press the brass button on the wall, or tap the app on your phone. Either way, the light responds.

What it can actually do

The coupler doesn’t decide anything on its own. It reports every press to SmartCore, and SmartCore decides what happens. That means you can change what a switch does in the web interface at any time, without touching the wall.

The most important thing: one switch can do several things. Tap once to turn the lights on, double-tap to start your evening scene, and hold to dim smoothly. Each coupler connects up to four buttons or switches, and several switches can control the same light, so the one by the door and the one by the bed work together.

For installers, it’s just as easy. The coupler is powered from the DALI bus, so it needs no extra power supply. DALI polarity doesn’t matter, the terminals are spring type, and several couplers can share one DALI line. Addressing runs through the DALI Wizard in the SmartCore web interface. Full details are in the documentation.

Pick the switch you love

So besides being a design object in your home, your switch can do a lot more than just turn the lights on and off. Choose it for how it looks and feels. We’ll take care of what happens behind it.

Curious what it could do in your project? Book a call with us. We’d love to tell you, and to obsess over our favourite switches together.