I’ve been using a home-built circuit on proto board, running the fantastic MiLight Hub Project on GitHub. I’m very happy with the results - it’s reliable, and once it’s set up, you rarely need to adjust anything, just add devices as needed through the web UI.
However, my solution doesn’t look nice (or even safe), although it’s perfectly safe, as I haven’t modified anything in the power supply, just cut the 5v line shorter. So I’ve been thinking of designing a pcb and possibly a 3d printed case, and JLCPCB has a good deal (10 boards for 2 bucks plus shipping).
Is anyone else interested in this project? I’m planning to open-source it, like my other projects. I’m curious about what solution has the most appeal.
A shield for a Wemos D1 mini (I have some on-hand for testing)
A shield for a NodeMCU (I don’t have any, but could potentially order one)
A shield for an ESP32 (overkill for this project, for sure)
A board with pads for soldering on an ESP12 module (or similar)
0voters
Every option requires that you use an NRF24L01 module, which are cheap online. I intend to use through-hole components, since I don’t have a setup for SMD. If no one else is interested, I may decide not to pursue this project.
I would also include (not considering the ESP32 route):
Shield for Wemos D1 R2 (it uses same fw as D1 mini but it is one of the most stable boards among the ESP8266 flavors as NRF24L01 requires stable power source)
Shield for Wemos D1 R2 + Arduino Ethernet Shield; D1 R2 is pin-to-pin compatible with Arduino Uno thus the ethernet shield is a sound hw solution, however there are not many implementations of ethernet + ESP8266. Having copper link instead of wifi would remove most of the connectivity problems and improve a great deal on latency (also Philips Hue is using an ethernet gateway). I don’t think it would reach Hue’s performance but could be used with Ambilight type solutions (such as Hyperion).
On a side note, I don’t think ESP32 would be overkill as currently sending more than 5-6 commands per second (either from the mobile app or HA) usually locks the hub so a more powerful solution would be nice. There are ESP32 boards compatible with ethernet shield which would turn the hub into a beast
