Frontier
About the vendor and its products
Frontier is a brand name of the company King-I, in Taiwan, which makes different products for smart homes. In its selection, there are thermostats and a type of smart plug with a timer, but what interests me is a type of smart light switch called Aura BLE. These use bluetooth for communication and come in versions also suited for Europe. The advantage of using bluetooth is that they can be powered by battery, thus not requiring a neutral line for connection. The switch comes in versions with one and two switches and also in different colors.
The switches are compatible with Apple Home, but do not seem to support any other ecosystems.
Our experiences
We had installed one such smart switch, to enable replacing a “dumb” switch in the hallway, see details below.
Notice that on phones, the table might only display in landscape mode
| Component | Room | Experiences |
|---|---|---|
Aura BLE smart switch |
Uninstalled |
Functionally, the switch is very good, it uses touch of the switch plate to turn on/off lights and since it uses batteries it requires no neutral lead for connection (which not all homes have). The challenge with using the switch here in Norway is that (even though it fits into the wall boxes) its physical dimensions are less suitable here. With the attached frame, it is so large that only a single switch can be replaced by it, if the existing switch sits in a cluster of two or more components, it won’t fit. The switch plate itself is actually smaller than our switches, meaning it will fit without the original frame, but the challenge then is that the frames we typically use will leave a gap around the switch plate. Our switch of this type gradually started to turn off by itself. It has therefore now been uninstalled. |