This $10 Smart Home Remote Is Exactly What My Home Assistant Setup Needed

I spent $10 on a smart home remote on the off-chance that I’d find some use for it. Now I’m sad I only bought one, since I’ve found so many good uses for it in my Home Assistant smart home.

IKEA’s Many Zigbee Remotes

I’m talking specifically about IKEA’s Rodret ($10), which is marketed as a wireless dimmer and power switch for IKEA’s line of connected lighting. It takes a single AAA battery and has two buttons (marked as on and off). Like IKEA’s entire smart home lineup, the Rodret uses the Zigbee wireless standard to communicate with other devices.

Credit: Tim Brookes / How-To Geek

If you spend a bit more, you can get your hands on the Styrbar ($15), which is just like the Rodret except it has two more buttons (left and right, in addition to brightness up and down). This gives you twice the number of inputs to play with. IKEA also has the Somrig ($13), which appears identical to the $10 option but seems to have a few more issues associated with it.

All come with a magnetic mounting panel that you can screw or stick to your wall to keep your remotes in one place. Though these are designed for use with IKEA’s own smart home products and hub, you can use them independently of an IKEA system thanks to Home Assistant and its various Zigbee plugins (notably Zigbee Home Automation and Zigbee2MQTT).

Why They’re Good and What I Use Them For

Though designed for use in a specific ecosystem, IKEA’s remote controls are plain old Zigbee devices. They can be used to trigger pretty much any function you can link to an input, whether that’s turning on a light or triggering a scene. On top of this, once imported into your Home Assistant setup, you’ll notice that you have a few different trigger options to play with.

In addition to a single press on each button, you can also use “press and hold” as a trigger, as well as “long press and release.” You can map these inputs to a function under Settings > Automations & scenes using the “Create automation” button to select your remote and define a trigger.

From here, the possibilities are endless. By designing new automations and swapping them out with your old ones, you can change what your remote does on the fly. You could even switch which automations are enabled based on the currently active scene or the time of day. It depends on how imaginative you are and what you might want to use a remote for.

For example, smart homes are great for owners, but they can be confusing for guests. A remote like this is perfect for guest rooms to control lights or fans, especially if you don’t want your visitors to start hitting switches that break your connected home.

You could go a step further and simply use remotes instead of your usual light switches. There’s no need to rewire anything (which makes this solution perfect for renters), plus $10 is cheaper than the average smart light switch price. You’ll just have to change an AAA battery once in a while. You could even map the long-press functions to turn on every light in the house, just in case.

I’ve currently got my IKEA Rodret linked to my Apple HomePod as a wireless volume control. It’s a lot quicker and more precise to do this from my desk than it is to drag a fiddly slider with my mouse, pick up my iPhone, or walk over to the speaker itself.

The more smart devices you have, the more possibilities there are. If you have a smart garage door opener, you could use such a remote to open and close it and turn the garage light on and off. Pass these to visitors or family members without worrying about where you’ve put the old-fashioned RF remotes.

You could do the same for a smart lock if someone needs temporary access to your house (consider toggling the automation remotely, for added security). You could even use a remote to arm and disarm a makeshift Home Assistant alarm system.

What You Need to Make This Work

Naturally, you’ll need a Home Assistant server for this to work. The platform is free and open-source, and runs on just about anything. If you want an instant turnkey solution, consider Home Assistant Green. You’ll want to link your Home Assistant server with a Zigbee radio, like the Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1 too.

Home Assistant doesn’t have to be expensive, and the fact that it runs completely offline means that you can avoid ongoing cloud costs in many instances. Home Assistant even works well with other ecosystems like Apple Home, to give you the best of both worlds: power and accessibility.

There are many other remotes available that work with Home Assistant, but IKEA’s are cheap and accessible. If you use Matter (Thread) or Z-Wave, then make sure you find a remote that uses those wireless protocols instead.