Violet Smartswitch Lite - reviewed and tested - Sonos and Hue control at the wall (UK/EU)

Hey @baldfox,

Thanks for sharing this very in-depth and detailed review! 

These kind of smart-home panels are something I haven’t looked much into for a while, but it looks like they’ve improved a lot since the early days 

Hi baldfox, very interesting assessment.

I’m about to pressure the button on a couple of these. Have an AMP doing good service in the Kitchen with two pairs of CCM682’s and a Sonos sub and 10 downlighters about to be replaced with Hue downlighters so this looks like an obvious next step in our Kitchen refresh.

Just to ask a month on any pros and cons that were not seen first pass.

Hey there, thanks for the message. Yeah not had any issues at all. it just works. Still waiting for a firmware upgrade to unlock the automation goodies (I’m a total geek) but as regards hue and sonos, no complaints at all.

Good to know, thanks for the update.

Yep I’m going to go with a couple of these and then tred further if they hit target. They seem well engineered from what I can gauge.

Just waiting to hear back if they will honor BF discounts. I tried to place an order when they discounted but my flipping laptop decided to check out …. only just fixed. I’m hoping they will do the honorable thing and understand that.

I’ve looked at similar products before but get the impression this is the most rounded accessible form to date.

I hope they fix you up, i think they will. In my dealings with them, they’ve been decent. You’ll like it, it looks very high end and feels well made.

Yep they arrived within 24 hours of ordering, well packed and as you say have a very high end feel very much in line with the Sonos ethos.

I have a slightly stalled install in that the back boxes we have in place are a little shallow. So a little wire jigging is needed and have delayed install till weekend. Other than that it’s looking promising. Will report back with results.

And so we now have two Violet units installed and working very nicely indeed.

The back box was too shallow and needed replacing. What threatened to be a miserable job ended up being far neater than I dared hope. I spoke with Violet suggesting that the 48mm back boxes would put many off. They were ahead on this one and mentioned that the next batch require a much shallower back. A very good call.

The operation for both Hue and Sonos is very very good. Exactly as described in the opening post.

I notice they have just released software version 1.6 which support HttpviaSD. Not something I’m much familiar with (yet) but for the more technical it sounds interesting …..

https://violet-ultra.co.uk/httpviasd/?utm_source=VIOLET+Newsletter&utm_campaign=9f33a3a5c7-Violet+Newsletter+August+BH_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_11095de6af-9f33a3a5c7-511886007&mc_cid=9f33a3a5c7&mc_eid=f1d224f5b9

Maybe useful for folks considering some degree of home integration Sonos and Hue wise.

Glad you’re getting on alright with them. Very cool right? I haven’t received version 1.6 yet am still on 1.4x so will definitely have a look at the link you posted. Good to know they’re working on a shallower version, should make installation even easier.

100%. Was an excellent investment and steer from your original post. Cheers

For what it’s worth, I have full Node-red and Home-Assistant capability with this now. I’ll be posting up a new tutorial on the 1st february here.