With our use of Alexa in the house, I’m slowly replacing things with smart connections to Alexa. As for wall switches, these are interesting – I have some that are single gang (one switch), and some that are 2 and 3 gang. There is no good source for “one smart switch – 3 gang wall plate” to allow me to just use one smart switch and leave the other switches alone. My wife has been asking for a smart switch for our mantle light that we use for just enough light in the room, and sometimes she wants to turn it off just before she’s fallen asleep. Needless to say, I have not had much luck in finding a replacement face to just replace that one switch (it also has a switch for the ceiling fan and the light in the ceiling fan).
Then, some weeks ago, my friend told me he found a 3 gang smart switch for less than 40 dollars. My wife had him order us one, and I was able to install it this weekend.
Here is the link to the product (through my Affiliate site):
https://amzn.to/3ORcveX
Now, this is 3 INDEPENDENT switches with a faceplate. I highly suggest you install one, name it intelligently, connect it to your smart speaker, then continue to the next. After installing all three, then install the backing plate with top and bottom screws for each switch.
My house was built in 2005, and I’ve never looked at the switch wiring we had in the box for our living room 3 gang box. I do know that from other installations, the simple switch is running AC house electricity on the hot side to the light/fan, but I did not know how may builder did the neutral (other side). I was in for a little surprise.
First, I had to find the Live line (AC in) and the load line (to device). Now, what the electrical contractor did was to have one feed line – so a hot, neutral and ground – and then use in-box wires and wirenuts to make the connections. So, the single hot was wired to 3 switches, and the load on each switch had to be checked. I connected a multimeter to the side of the switch and the other to ground (since ground and neutral are the same in house 110V wiring) with the switch OFF. No voltage, that’s the load side. 110V or 120v? That’s the line side. We’ll need to note those and turn off the breaker – since it’s one feed line, it was just a single breaker for me. Always verify (as I did) on each switch that the power is off.
As for the neutral, I found them at the back of the box, with a bundle of wires – the did the same “bundle” thing on the neutral side – just tied all of them together to complete the circuits. The ground was attached to the switch, so I cut the switch out, cabled up my first switch – line, then load, then ground. The kit comes with wirenuts, so I used 3 of the 4. Now for the neutral – I had to add the neutral line to that bundle of wires in the box. I used the existing wirenut, and left it all hanging from the connections.
Breaker back on, and I come back to a blinking green light.
Now, these switches have two modes – AP mode (the default) and EZ mode (what I used). Hold the switch for 5-7 seconds, and it flips from AP mode (fast blink) to EZ mode (slow blink). From there, launch the app and add a device – it should automatically detect it – and rename it. Since I had the Smart Life app installed and connected to my Alexa app on my phone – Alexa popped up and notified me it had added a new device.
I repeated this for each of the other switches (power off, connect, power on, and setup). Then i powered off again to push all the wires back into the box. Once that was done, I put the backing plate on the wall and lines up to the holes in the box. Then I used the included screws, put them though the top and bottom of the first switch (pick one), and then repeated for the other 2 switches. I flipped the breaker back on, and was rewarded with green leds across the three switches
