

I’ve been don’t similar and it’s so worth the setup time. I through a few helpers together to track who in the house is doing laundry and getting notifications, and that’s been fantastic. I also made helpers to track the status as running or not, which felt better than displaying the wattage.






I had a similar situation with a cabin with terrible switch placement and maybe a single switched outlet for a lamp that just wasn’t positioned very well.
I used the wall switch to turn on the switched outlet and that triggered three other lamps to turn on. I also configured it to dim them all from that same switch, a Tapo S505D. It worked well until someone else plugged a space heater into the outlet and killed the dimmer.
I also put a ZBT-2 to add ZigBee to the system, as I had a bunch of IKEA smart, wireless remotes that just didn’t work well through their hub and matter integration. With the ZBT-2, I added the remotes directly and had full control over the triggers, so I created an automation to act as a light switch that could be mounted anywhere and control anything.
When said person killed the dimmer, they just grabbed a wireless switch and stuck it on the wall above the switch and now the lights can be controlled while I order a replacement. I’ve got a bunch more remotes coming this week to add switches to every entrance to the room that previously had nothing.