Analogue style rotary dimmer switch - Sonoff + ESPEasy + MQTT

[robmarkcole (Robin)]

Nice project, be great to see it on Hackster

[hijinx (James)]

This is the other project I mentioned:

Pi Zero + Rotary Encoder as Hass Volume Controller & Play-Pause Toggle (no soldering required)

Simple little thing, but I love it. [IMG_19700627_151724] And here it is again, a bit more dressed for the occasion. [IMG_19700628_110426] *Edit: Updated code to make use of the Push Button on the Encoder as a Play / Pause toggle for a media player. Involves one extra wire (the white wire in the photo) in addition to the wiring guide below. All other instructions the same though. I am getting some false double-pushes every now and again, code might need some tweaking. [IMG_19700705_13573…

[hijinx (James)]

Thanks Robin I’ll take a look

[hijinx (James)]

After a month or so of “soak testing” I’m satisfied with the safety and performance of this solution.
I’ve now finally installed the sonoff in the switch back box and the new faceplate has replaced the old analogue dimmer.
So far its all working great!

[john1]

Slightly off subject.
Were you able to fit your Sonoff with its case in your light box?

[hijinx (James)]

Yes… but it was very tight!
I needed to remove more of the case and use thinner gauge mains flex to extend the wire.

[hijinx (James)]

If you have a newer build home with stud walls it would probably be easier to pop the box out and hang the sonoff in the void behind box.

[mamoulian]

@hijinx

This is a smart bulb controller that looks and acts like a dimmer, but really is sending mqtt commands to HA, which in turn controls a smart bulb like Hue.

Please excuse the electrical noob question: as the lighting circuit is permanently closed (because the hue bulb is doing its own switching internally) why is neutral required at the switch to power the Sonoff?

[hijinx (James)]

The lighting circuit is not permanently closed - it’s controlled by relay in the sonoff.
Any mains electrical device requires a L & N to operate.
Where there is only a L at the switch means that the N is supplied to the bulb fitting via another route, but for sure the bulb will have L + N.
You cannot connect a device between L and Earth - it will trip your consumer unit due to earth leakage.
There are other people who posted on the forums who have positioned a sonoff switch by the bulb fitting where there are both L&N supplies.

[mamoulian]

Thanks for this.

@hijinx

The lighting circuit is not permanently closed - it’s controlled by relay in the sonoff.

Is this a feature you’re using in your design or just a side effect of the components you’ve used? If wired a different way could the circuit stay permanently closed with MQTT signals being used to tell Hue to switch the bulb off?

[hijinx (James)]

The sonoff inherently uses a relay to close the circuit for the connected load.
I guess it may be possible to hard bypass the relay, but I personally dont want to mess with the 240v side of the device.
Nothing to stop you wiring the sonoff in parallel with no load though…
(Although I like to be able to turn off power to the hue bulb with the relay in case I even need to change the bulb etc)

[Martinvdm (Martin)]

@hijinx

dimmer

Can every dimmer be used with the sonoff?

[hijinx (James)]

Only rotary encoders can be used with sonoff.
You can see the encoder I used in the photos in the very 1st post in this topic.

[DirkTas67]

Can you tell me how you connected the rotary encoder to the sonoff?
Regards
Dirk

[hijinx (James)]

I soldered a header on the sonoff, then used dupont cables to connect from the header to the encoder.

You can see in one of the photos in the 1st post:

Analogue style rotary dimmer switch - Sonoff + ESPEasy + MQTT

I’ve been working slowly on a project over the past few weeks to create a smart dimmer switch that mimics a standard UK style analogue dimmer switch. I have many analogue dimmers around my house but of course these wont dim a smart bulb such as Hue. There are loads of advantages of smart bulbs that I want to take advantage of, but also want to keep the same experience as with traditional lighting controls - e.g. for children, guests etc. I select a Sonoff basic as the basis for the project as…

Only diff is that I connected directly to the encoder thatcher than via the breadboard

[Rodoz (Rodney Brown)]

I really liked this concept. When I worked with studios we used solid state relays to digitally control all the set lighting effects. The modules had zero crossing switching built in. Banggood sell modules like this plus a lot of arduino compatible switch modules but I doubt those have zero crossing detection. Take a look if interested.
80A SSR-80DA Solid State Relay Module DC To AC 24V-380V Output Not sure how good it would be but it has 50M ohms isolation.

[Quentin (Quentin James)]

Hey @hijinx

Well done for such a great explanation of your project. I am trying to figure out a way of wiring 4 regular non-smart LEDs like these into a spotlight array:

http://www.ikea.com/au/en/catalog/products/50337702/
http://www.ikea.com/au/en/catalog/products/30304651/

I want to be able to dim them via Home Assistant and Alexa only, not from some app.

The thing is, to the best of my understanding, if I place a Sonoff basic in my wall where the switch is, the Sonoff by itself won’t be able to vary the resistance and hence dim the bulb right? If that is true, then how could I go about solving this? Ideally I don’t want to swap out the current 4 bulbs.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Quentin.

[hijinx (James)]

Hi,

Sorry for delay - busy w work atm
You are correct - there is no dimming capability in Sonoff switches.
All the dimming in my project is done in the smart bulb.

I have seen some dimmers that can be controlled by microcontrollers, but not in general availability.

[badgerhome]

Hey @hijinx FINALLY got around to doing this. Yes it’s taken me that long…

Works fantastically well! Very please.

Did you ever get around to defining these two rules?

Send IP address on start up (supported by my HA config)
Detect a long press of the rotary encoder switch to toggle the relay

Specifically toggle of the relay… I’ve got some smart bulbs that power on after boot so would be a great backup for if HASS or Network goes down. I’m planning on wiring mine slightly differently to your for this to work, was going to use the normal L+N input as you have but output to the bulb.

Thanks again for this, the dimming is super quick and responsive!

[hijinx (James)]

Hi @badgerhome thanks for the feedback! V pleased that someone else got it working!

Regarding the rules:
Yes to IP address (I will reply back with the config if I get a chance)
Sadly no to the long press - I have a hunch its possible, but I couldn’t figure it out. I think there is a bug in espeasy that meant the sonoff rebooted during my experiments, so I gave up.

My bulbs also light up with power (hue). I added a switch in HA so I can toggle the relay, but I know thats not what you’re after - sorry.

Not all bulbs are responsive. I tried to change the hue to a yeelight colour (wifi bulb) and rapid dimming caused the bulb to drop off my wifi network (I guess it crashed). But hue works fab.