Two way lighting, too easy

Ever had multiple lights that you wanted to control from a single switch or a single light from multiple switches? Typically you would need to have your sparky wire up this configuration. With our light switches you can do some pretty cool things via the app, no additional wiring needed.

Our test home has a single switch in a dinning room that controls a deck light. The garage also has a single switch that controls a second light on the deck. Both of these switches are at opposite ends of the deck and its inconvenient to have to walk from one end of the house to the other just to turn on both deck lights.

Queue the Tuya Smart or Smart Life app. The Smart \ Automation tab is where all the magic happens. You can ad an automation so that when you turn on one light the other light automatically turns on too. You can do this from one switch or both. You can also set the off function so you get light control from either switch.

Setting it up is easy. Open the app and select “Smart” (at the bottom of screen) and ensure you’ve selected the “Automation” tab (at the top of screen). Next tap the + to add a scene. 

Edit the name and give it a title that’s meaningful to you.  

Next add a condition, and select “Device” then select the switch or light you want to pair, and the condition, in this case ON.

Next add an action and choose the second switch or light from “Control smart devices” and set the action to ON. Hit save and you’re done. Both lights will turn on, when you turn on the first switch. Now do the same using the second switch as the source and you’ll have the same functionality from the other switch.

So what if you’ve got one light and you want to do two way lighting, thats easy too. Here is a tip, lets say you have a hallway light and single switch but you want to add another switch at the other end of the hall. You can get a switch with one additional gang, say in a dinning room (one switch with one gang for dinning room light, second gang not wired in)

You can then use a similar automation as above but this time program the existing hall light switch to work with the spare gang in the dinning room. With some imagination you can extend this to do some very clever things. Just imagine replacing your old two gang switch in your entry with an iswitch four gang (two gangs to control the existing lights and two spare) to add a home or away button or a panic button.

If you’re real imaginative you can go even further and use a spare button to control iswitch power points and other automation via IFTTT.