Building a button box

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21

Even better perhaps, rf https://energenie4u.co.uk/catalogue/product/MIHO003

22

But that is never going to look like anything other than a remote control stuck on the wall. Good price though.

23

The pHAT looks good, but coupled with a pi (even a zero w) it is going to be too power hungry. If it could be coupled with a low power arduino with, say, a 433MHz transmitter, it could be great.

24

Could just take the remote apart and place in another housingā€¦

Also I found a kinetic switch (like the expensive hue) but much cheaper and using RF.

And the double switch for a couple more quidā€¦

25

Yes indeed.

Interesting. Thanks for the tip. Donā€™t forget the Philips switch actually has four switches in it.

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26

I have been thinking of building a capacitive touch switch

  1. Make a series of 12 buttons (4x3) on a piece of PCB.

  2. Use a arduino mini (quite low power) and one of these https://www.adafruit.com/product/1982 and a 433Mhz transmitter. Or an adafruit feather with 433MHz built in.

  3. Above the PCB you place a piece of nicely printed paper with button labels and then a layer of acrylic to create a nice finish.

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28

My kinetic switch arrived. Each switch has two states, so you get 4 RF signals for Ā£20

29

Any thoughts on how you would make the case for that?

My colleague says my button box looks like it is from the 90s. :slight_smile: Thatā€™s fine, as itā€™s just what I had lying around.

I like the touch sensor breakout board idea. Iā€™m thinking a plastic case with the pads mounted under the lid. (e.g. copper tape pads wired to the touch sensor breakout board.)

Iā€™m going to use an ESP8266 module (wifi) rather than 433MHz.

30

Oh wow. Why didnā€™t I think of this before? A WOODEN touch panel!

https://learn.adafruit.com/metal-inlay-capacitive-touch-buttons

31

[quote=ā€œeb3nezer, post:29, topic:13841ā€]
Any thoughts on how you would make the case for that?[/quote] I had an idea I would make something in layers, tied together by some through bolts. Layers:

Glass/perspex
Paper layer with button logos
PCB with capacitance pads
Some ESP8266 board connected to the capacitance PCB
Battery layer
A base of perspex.

It is a concept only. I am hopeless at drawing.[quote]

My colleague says my button box looks like it is from the 90s. :slight_smile: Thatā€™s fine, as itā€™s just what I had lying around.[/quote] Heā€™s right, it would look fine on a factory wall :wink:

32

Sounds like you need to convince her itā€™s 3D printer time :wink:

33

You can get self adhesive copper tape. Stick that to the back of the paper layer (lined up with the button logos), and attach wires to it, saving you one PCB.

I have some ESP8266 boards on order, along with breakout boards for 8 input capacitance touch sensors ā†’ I2C. Iā€™ll probably mount both the ESP8266 board and the capacitance board on a piece of protoboard. (no custom PCB)

While I wait for shipping from China, another ā€œcaseā€ design idea was using a decorated cardboard box from a stationery shop.

34

Another design idea for how to configure the switches:

Make the button box announce itself on MQTT as a set of switches. HA can then discover the switches with no additional config. Pressing a button toggles the state of the switch.

I did look at this originally, but I decided that I liked the idea of just announcing long/short presses, and having HA decide what that meant.

Ultimately what I ended up with is buttons for lighting control. Buttons acting as discoverable switches might have worked well. :slight_smile:

35

Ever since seeing those kinetic self-powered RF buttons Iā€™ve been scouring the web for the internals by themselves. Linbell was selling the kinetic energy-harvesting modules during their Kickstarter years ago, but no sign of them today. RF remotes are plentiful, but all battery powered. The only place Iā€™ve seen self-powered RF buttons are combined with wireless doorbell systems, never by themselves except for the expensive version at the top of this thread. Kinetic energy-harvesting modules should be available out there, and they should be able to be used as short term power supplies for RF transmissions. The possibilities are endless when you add a Sonoff RF bridge to learn the code and use HA to perform actions based on the code.

My kingdom for these self-powered RF ā€œdoorbellā€ buttons in bulk!