> In Australia it's illegal to perform you own electrical or telecoms work. I think most countries have similar laws. Exactly what level of knowledge you need

> In Australia it's illegal to perform you own electrical or telecoms work. I think most countries have similar laws. Exactly what level of knowledge you need to do it legally varies. Where I live most things are off limits to non-electricians other than 1-1 replacement of existing installations. I some times use that loop hole to replace a dumb switch with a smart one, or do other such basic repairs. Other times I try to do most of the work myself but have an electrician bless my work before I power it up again. Obviously I encourage no one to do any kind of electrical work they aren't 100% comfortable doing. > I'd also counter that it's totally fine to replace normal bulbs with smart bulbs! Yes. But the point of my post wasn't that it's EASIER to make a home smart by doing that, it was that by putting a smart bulb behind a dumb switch, you have created a frustrating experience. A bulb that can be controlled from a phone but can be completely disabled by a switch somewhere, isn't really that "smart"... > It works exactly as before if you can hook it up that way, then you have made your home a little bit smarter. Just make it pass the "smart test". I.e. does the old/dumb switch work still? Can someone buy or rent the home and not need to know that a specific switch must be set to "on" for the smart feature to work? Does the app work 100% of the time to switch the light on/off regardless of any switch positions? Great, the home is smarter. If the app some times doesn't switch the light on because a switch has ben flipped to the "wrong" position? Then I'd say the home was actually smarter before. The physical switch functoining and the remote controllability/color temperature/voice command are adding less smartness than the feature "the light switches on the walls actually switch on and off the lights" were. That's what I mean by that smart things should only ADD functionality and be careful to not remove it.