I live in Hungary, Europe in a quite old house. Our light switches and outlets use claws to stay in place. As you tighten a screw, a claw moves out and grips the inner side of the box. I believe this is still a pretty common system around here. The boxes lack a neutral wire and they’re also pretty shallow, so I can’t put a Shelly behind the existing switches.
I bought an Aqara H1 EU no neutral wall switch, but I can’t mount it because I can’t screw the screws into anything, there’s just empty space where they’re supposed to go. I tried MacGyvering a solution by taking the claws from the current non-smart (Legrand brand) switch, but they don’t fit on the Aqara.
So, I’m turning to the community: Does a product exist which:
- Is made by a reputable brand
- Works in Europe (230 V, 50 Hz)
- Can be mounted using claws
- Uses Zigbee and can be controlled locally without any cloud accounts and/or 3rd party hubs (I use Home Assistant with the SkyConnect dongle)
- Preferably requires no neutral wire (I can probably fish one down to each of my boxes, but I’d prefer not to)
For example, In the Zigbee Device Compatibility Repository I see that lots of Legrand stuff is compatible, and these would probably work, but it’s not entirely clear if buying their gateway is required and I’m not sure their smart devices are even available in my country…
Or, you could connect the wires and put the (relay) switch near the light fixture(or inside) this way you have neutral available. And use a zigbee wall switch.
Not the most fancy solution, but you could use some high tack glue. Just a few very small dots will do the trick. And if you need to take the switch off just take a utility knife. Like i said not elegant…
I cannot see any pictures of your hole 😂 but is it possible to fit a retrofit box. They are used as the name states after you build the wall. Just put it in and tighten the fixing screws. Called something like senile-junction-box in Sweden
Here’s a picture of my hole just for you 😏
Good to know a product exists though, I’ll try to look it up, thank you!
