Recently I've been helping my Mom get all the exterior lights on her house set up to turn
on and off automatically. To do this I decided to hook her up with these Eaton Wi-Fi smart switches.
Link in the video description.
These switches work with Amazon Alexa and since they connect to your homes Wi-Fi network
you can control them from anywhere in the world where you have an internet connection.
Today I'll be replacing this switch here which is the one that controls the
light next to my Mom's front door.
To install the switch we're going to need a few tools.
First we need both a flat and Phillips head screw driver,
a pair of wire cutters,
some wire strippers,
some large red wire nuts,
and some extra pieces of wire because since this is a computerized device it needs both the
white neutral and green ground wires connected to it as well
and these extra little sections of wire will help us get things wired up correctly.
Whenever you're dealing with electricity you're first going to want to go to your electrical
panel and turn the power off to the device you're working on.
My Mom's panel isn't labeled as well as some others I've seen but after a few minutes turning
breakers on and off we finally figured out it was this one here we wanted to turn off.
Once our switch was safe to work on
I removed the trim plate from the switches using a flat head screw driver.
Even though I was only replacing the one switch I needed to remove both switches from the box
in order to get access to the neutral and ground wires which were tucked back behind
the other switch. Once I had both switches removed from the box I grabbed my wire cutters
and cut off the two black wires from the old switch and then used some wire strippers to
remove some of the insulation to get it ready to connect to our new smart switch.
It was at this point that I referenced the instructions included with the switch
and followed their wiring diagram to get things wired up correctly.
They show how to to wire it up for both a single location as well as for a 3 way;
which is when you have more than one switch controlling a single light.
My Mom's light has just one switch controlling it so I needed to follow the diagram on the top
of the instructions here. I then took my white and green wires I had prepared and
first connected the green wire to the ground terminal on the switch.
And then connected the white wire to the neutral terminal on the switch.
With that done I connected my little green pig tail to the
bundle of ground wires in the box using one of the red wire nuts.
And then removed the wire nut from the white wires, added my little white pig
tail to the bunch and then secured them all together using that same red wire nut.
Next I connected the Load or Charge wire to the
switch, which is the black wire that goes to the light fixture,
and our final wire is the Hot wire. This is the one that is supplying the power to the light.
It was easy for me to tell which was which in this case because it was wire nutted together
with the wire that goes to the other switch next to it and that switch controls my Mom's interior
entryway light so I knew the black wire that both switches were connected to had to be the Hot wire.
If you're following along with this tutorial and you're not sure which one is which
in your particular case, don't worry about it; it's not a really big deal. You'll know
if you got them backward once you turn the breaker back on and the switch doesn't work.
If that happens to you, there's no need to worry, you didn't mess anything up;
all you've got to do is go back and swap the two black wires and you'll be good to go.
Now that that I had the new switch all wired up I had to cram all the wiring somewhat
neatly back into the box and then screw both switches back into their respective slots.
I then placed the trim plate back on and secured it in place using the screws I had
removed earlier. I then went back out to my Mom's garage to her electrical panel,
turned the power back on and was happy to see the switch was working properly.
The little white flashing light you see here means the switch is in
set up mode and ready to be connected to your home network and get it all set up.
Rather than create an app of their own Eaton has decided to just use the Alexa app to control these
switches. So to pair this switch with Alexa you first need to have the Alexa App installed
on your smartphone or tablet and be all logged in to your account and what not.
You'll then launch the app.
Tap on Devices here at the bottom.
Then tap on the plus sign here at the top of the screen.
Tap on Add Device, and it will want to know what kind of device we're adding.
We're adding a light switch so we'll tap on Switch.
It then wants to know the brand of switch we're using, ours is an Eaton so we'll tap on that.
We then need to tell it what kind of switch we're installing,
this one is not a dimmer or anything so we'll select Switch here.
And now it wants me to have my bluetooth and location turned
on on my phone so I guess I need to do that...
and then tap Next.
At this screen we'll tap Next again...
and then Next one more time at this screen and now we're ready to pair our light switch.
To pair it we now need to go to our light switch and double tap the switch in the On
direction and then it will ask us to select the wi-fi network we want to connect the switch to.
I selected my Mom's network here at the top of the list and then waited 30 seconds or so
while it got connected.
Once the switch had connected to my Mom's home network I tapped Next again and then
it wanted to know if we wanted to add the switch to a group.
I had already created some groups for my Mom while installing some other switches and we
wanted this one to be part of the Outdoor Lights group so I tapped on that and then Add to Group.
Then on Continue.
And finally on Done.
The next step was to get the switch set up on a schedule because my Mom wants
this light to come on each evening at sunset and then turn off each morning at sunrise.
I'm sorry to say I'm not going to be covering that in this video however
and you'll have to check out my next video to learn how to do that.
Alexa is capable of controlling TONS of different types of devices
all with very different functions, so there's a ton of options to choose from and it's a little
bit overwhelming the first time you go to set a schedule like that up, so I felt showing how to
do that and how to set up and assign devices to a group was deserving of it's own dedicated video.
Again I'm sorry I'm not showing how to do that here but I hope that you'll understand.