Aqara Reveal Smart Rotary Dimmer Switch

Aqara today revealed their latest product designed for the smart home, namely the H1 Rotary Dimmer Switch. This new device, which is designed to be wired into the wall, like any regular switch, comes with an 86 style square plate and requires a neutral wire to operate. There’s also a possible battery-operated version, although we’ve seen no evidence of this so far. As with virtually all of Aqara products, the H1 uses Zigbee, and in this case, it’s using Zigbee 3.0. This means that it will only work with the company’s newer hubs, which includes either the Aqara M1S or M2 hubs, the G2H camera hub, or the P3 AC Companion. All of these use Zigbee 3.0 as standard.

The H1 also comes with a variety of extra features, that include internal temperature and load monitoring, to avoid any potential overloads, and energy monitoring, so that you can see energy usage at a glance, via the Aqara Home app.

The H1 comes in three colourways – Grey, White, and Gold, and also matches other recently released and forthcoming wired products from Aqara, including the Smart LED control panel.

As regards the switch itself, and the functional options available, as HomeKit doesn’t support rotary dials at this time, that option doesn’t work within HomeKit, so in this case, you’re limited to standard switch options – single press, double press, and long press. However, the rotary control can still be utilised within the Aqara app, we assume, to control bulbs capable of dimming (Reddit user u/5798 states that this is not a TRIAC Dimmer*), as well as expanding it’s functionality even further, by assigning the switch to control smart roller blinds or curtains, for example. Additionally, the rotary dial has three levels of sensitivity, to allow even finer control of your devices. As it’s a wired device, it’s also able to help extend your Zigbee network, which in the case of the H1, is assisted by a special NXR chip to aid in relay functionality. The rotary section also has a backlight capable of different colours.

We’ve been told these switches are already on sale in a few stores in Mainland China, selling for RMB499 (roughly equivalent to US$75), although whether they’ll make it onto international reseller stores, we don’t know.

* TRIAC explanation on Wikipedia