Just to give a bit of background, I was working on a bluetooth-relay board wired into my mains light switches and I wrote some simply python scripts to control the relay via ble from a rpi2. It worked perfectly for some time while I worked on learning about other things i wanted to automate in my home.
A few months ago I discovered home assistant, got an rpi3 and installed hass.io on it and control my bluetooth relay board from python scripts. But the other day I ran across sonoff smart light switches and I bought 2 thinking ahead because i recently started building my house and figured i would skip the bt-relayboard and go straight with light switches controlled from ha.
Today I installed the light switch and controlled it via the SmartLife iOS app perfectly but havent found a way to interface with it via http browsers-wifi. So I decided to try to install it from ha but havent found how to do so. I did find a post saying that sonoff is hard to interface with because to do so I would have to flash the firmware etc.
So Im wondering is there a better brand to smart-“wire” a home for automation such that I can easily control from ha but is not too expensive?
If you want something that you dont have to flash (which is really not that hard) the shelly 1 might be for you. You use it with any standard switch plate.
I’m not sure if I’m remembering correctly but I thought I read that the new Sonoffs have the ability to integrate to HA without flashing on the newer versions.
But I will second everything Tom said above. Shelly’s are pretty easy to integrate but the Sonoff flashing is fairly easy but you need to but one more device to flash them (FTDI adapter or an arduino board).
This is not a Sonoff device. It won’t work with the EWeLink app. This listings a lie and Ali Express did not help. I would have to ship this back to China and that would cost. Do not buy. Lying seller.
Ok got it. I thought it was just an old sonoff model or something. Well I found peter bugas github for using originaly sonoff firmware with ha, but I have to wait because out of the 2 switches I ordered on, only the first one has arrived, which is the fake one. Still waiting on the original sonoff to try bugas code.
In the meantime I was meaning to mess with one of the fake ones, although I read somewhere that once i flash it I wont be able to use it with the original ios app, which makes sense and Ill figure out whether I want to go that way.
As for the ftdi for flashing, I have these 2 cables already and I was wondering if I could use them to flash firmware before buying and ftdi one.
ok but how do i know if these have 3.3V logic levels, aside from the product description which as i have experienced isnt always 100% accurate. Iow, what would i test with the multimeter?
Thanks and which pins should i check the voltage across? Obviously GND and 3.3V gives 3.3V, actually 3.5V. But i imagine the whole deal between usb, rs and ttl is the voltage levels during data transmission. Should I test that?
Well the reason I asked is because that pl2032 adapter has both 3.3V and 5V. So I measured the pins with a voltmeter and 3.3V gives 3.5V, 5V gives 5.4V but Rx and Tx yield 5.5V when tested against ground.
No it doesnt have a switch and so it always gives 5V, so im not sure what the 3.3V is for, maybe its just there as a power source. So if I order an ftdi cable, if I measure Rx to GND, it should give 3.3V?
I’ve got a similar one to your “uxcell”, they put out both 3.3 and 5V seperately.
As long as it states TTL you’re fine, you just need the 3.3V line to flash.
Just watch out some these use counterfit USB to UART chips and you need to stuff around with Windows drivers to get them working.
To save you pain, my experience if you want to simply flash the sonoffs, use the ESPeasy and flash with the tasmotat sonoff.bin file.
