There is a new in-wall ZigBee switch in town, and the whole ecosystem is worth paying attention to. There are many options to automate in-wall switches in the market, but this one, in particular, offers a new approach to the problem. If you are looking to automate your main lights and want to go with ZigBee, perhaps Evvr will pique your interest.
Evvr Smart Switch
Offered in two flavours (ZigBee and Z-Wave and HomeKit), Evvr Smart Switch can control 2-gang light fixtures in your home. Instead of packing all brains inside a single enclosure and letting the user figure out the best way to connect it, Evvr splits its device into two modules – a ZigBee-enabled small relay that connects to the light fixture directly and a tiny sub-assembly that is placed behind a wall switch.
Anyone complaining about the 3A limit should re-evaluate how they illuminate their houses as 600W is more than enough to keep your lights on, so I don’t take an issue with a lower current rating.
As Evvr Smart Switch is split into 2 modules, you can pick the number of modules you need for your lighting scenario. A single sub-assembly can be connected to two independent relays for 2 gang control. Thanks to the way the switch is wired, it can also be used in 3-way and 4-way configurations.
No-Neutral & wiring
Due to how Evvr Smart Switch is designed, it could be used on both: no-neutral and live and neutral wall switch circuits. It’s not a “true” no-neutral design, as it taps to the mains at the fitting. It means that anyone with L & N access behind the switch will have more trouble using it this way.
Wiring is very simple, as the device is split into modules, it’s easy to figure out what goes well. The number of terminals on the device corresponds with how many wires you’ll end up connecting which was the biggest complaint I had about some of the Shelly switches.
As the subassembly is optional, the actual wiring scheme will depend on how you’d like your automation to work. Instructions are doing a great job of illustrating this.
Claims about Evvr Smart Switch being 50% smaller than other switches are slightly misleading as while sub-assembly is smaller, it does require the bigger module to work. Up until now, anyone with a no-neutral setup could bypass the circuit limitation by fitting a smart relay into the ceiling fitting and making sure wires are connected correctly, but that took a bit more expertise in figuring out which wire does what. Evvr Smart Switch makes it easier
In use
Evvr sent me Evvr Smart Switch only and asked me to show how their products work with custom coordinators. As I don’t have an Evvr hub, I decided to give it a go with my Benexmart Tuya hub first before switching over to ZZH by Electrolama and Sonoff USB Dongle. After all, this is a ZigBee 3.0 switch, so I expect it to work really well with all of them.
In Tuya
As expected, the switch shows up as a single gang in-wall relay. It works flawlessly with my hub. Low latency on changes through the app, in-wall switch and instant updates in the Cloud. The only complaint I have is the lack of software options to modify the in-wall switch behaviour. It’s not a big deal as you can switch from toggle to push button using the wall switch itself.
Custom Coordinators
It’s time to look at NodeRed and ZigBee2MQTT with my selection of coordinators. It’s a fairly new device so the support wasn’t initially available. But by the time I finished the review, I got the email that they asked the dev to support the device and you don’t even have to use my makeshift converter to play with in Zigbee2MQTT.
I like this approach, as it’s promising and show the willingness of the company to have their products supported by 3rd party. For that alone, they have my regards!
Once paired, I had no problems getting the information from the device upon state changes and I was able to control its behaviour with state updates: {"state": "ON"}/{"state": "OFF"}. This was the case with each coordinator tested by me.
It’s a very basic flow showing how to interact with the switch. If you want to have something more polished, you can simply adapt the project I used for Aqara ZigBee switches. It will not only add dashboard and web controls but also enable a software-based power meter for your device and it will look like this:
Where gets interesting
Evvr Smart Switch isn’t the only offering in their lineup, apart from other controllers, my attention was directed to Evvr Pad S – a small factor touch screen controller that looks awesome. I already own NSPanel from Sonoff and the panel shows how cool these mini controller interfaces can be. Evvr takes things further by increasing resolution to 720×720 and using Quad-core Cortex-A55 with 2GB RAM to drive the screen.
Evvr Pad S brings a built-in microphone and speaker, IR blaster advanced illumination & ToF sensors. Things are looking very interesting and I hope to get my hands on one of these soon as well.
Final thoughts
I’ll be paying close attention to Evvr releases. At the moment they have to address a couple of issues. First, these are not cheap. I found them online for about €46 per set which is pricy, to say the least. Secondly, they are very hard to buy. Only a handful of stores are selling these with products nowhere to be found on Amazon, AliExpress and others. This has to change if Evvr wants to be a successful brand for home automation. My impressions are good, but until Evvr Smart Switch is affordable and available locally, consider this a preview article. Let me know what you think in this Reddit thread.
🆓📈💵 – See the transparency note for details.
