this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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Researcher has developed, at a cost of less than one dollar, a wireless light switch that runs without batteries, can be installed anywhere on a wall and could reduce the cost of wiring a house by ...::A U of A engineering researcher has developed a wireless light switch that could reduce the cost of wiring a house by as much as 50 per cent.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (7 children)

Harvesting stray RF energy sounds like a cool technology for certain niche applications.

But for switching lights in particular, I much prefer smart bulbs vs installing stuff to put the switches in nicer places. It also makes it easy to dim a room or the entire house in the evening.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 11 months ago (5 children)

Wouldn't it make more sense to make the light switch the smart part then you can have cheap bulbs. You want the technical bit to be the bit that doesn't wear out and has to be replaced.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (2 children)

As someone who has smart bulbs and smart switches. The switches are a 1000x more preferable. It’s nice to be able to use my phone, but it fucking sucks needing to use my phone every time I want to control them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Smart switches are one of the next things I'll upgrade in the house. But some of my switches control fans as well, so there's not a huge amount of choice when it comes to finding something that's compatible and works with some sort of standard instead of having their own app.

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