I am looking for advice on the most cost effective, and simple solution to hook up 4 doors in my house to HA, that are currently hard wired with magnetic switches. Currently I have all of these switches wired down to my main server rack. My first thought(because it is all I know), would be to get 4 sonoff SV units and use ESPHome integration. This mirrors exactly what I did to get my garage door control and door sensor working. But I remember when I did that, I was not exactly a fan of flashing the device.
I thought maybe there is a better solution that someone may have some knowledge of.
Do you have electrical outlets close to each one of the four doors?
Unless you use a battery-powered contact sensor, you will need to have a nearby outlet. In addition, there may be an issue of aesthetics regarding the wiring of the sensor and the, potentially distant, outlet.
FWIW, there are inexpensive battery-operated contact sensors available. The primary decision is selecting an RF standard to use.
433MHz devices are the least expensive but, if RF security is an issue, they use an unencrypted protocol and don’t acknowledge received commands. Next in price is ZigBee (Sonoff recently introduced a line of inexpensive ZigBee sensors), operating in the 2.4 GHz range, which use an open-standard encrypted protocol that acknowledges receipt of commands (and more). There’s also zwave which runs around 912 MHz (varies according to some country standards) and tends to be slightly more expensive and also use an encrypted protocol and acknowledgement.
All three require an RF transceiver of some kind (the terminology varies from one technology to another) in order to receive and send RF commands.
@123, no I don’t have outlets close to these 4 doors. The magnetic reed switches are already install in the door frames and the 2 wires for each switch already run down to my server rack in my basement. So my preference would be to NOT purchase any switches per say, but to connect these wires up to sensors like I did with my sonoff SV. I just through maybe there was a device that had multiple connection points that would allow me to create 4 sensors in one device. But it sounds like you can get a 4 pack of nodemcu devices for only $17.00 so it sounds like that might work if I flash them with ESPhome.
Yeah, but you only need 1. There are plenty of pins you can use, so all 4 sensors can go on a single nodemcu. Means you have 3 others to play with lol.
As an alternative you can also use an arduino, connect magnetic reed switch cables to pins of arduino and write a simple ino for that (with MQTT maybe). You also will need an ethernet shield for that. Most reliable and stable way if you ask me… A friend of mine made 20 magnetic reed switches connected to an arduino mega with ethernet shield on domoticz. Much more stable than all of my wireless solutions. Use the already existing magnetic switch cables…
A clone arduino mega and ethernet shield costs about 17-18 USD.
EDIT: You can use Mysensors integration for that simple.ino, without radio, only cable connection. It will simplify things.
I second (or is it third…) the vote for the NodeMCU’s. I use them for everything I can. I think i’ve got over a dozen of them around the house for different things and I just bought four more for more projects I’ve got planned.
I fourth the nodemcu. I too have a dozen of not more scattered around. My alarm feeds two, each room has one for motion/temp/humidity/lux, I have some outside for lighting, I have one for scanning NFC tags and access control. These things are addictive.
3.3 volts could be too low voltage if the wires are rather long and have voltage drop becomes an issue. Then some additional hardware would be required.
Or then use then reed switch as pull down switch for the input pin.
Take the esp8266 or esp32 with usb on board so it is very easy to flash. Nodemcu is a good option.
Thanks for the advice. I have 4 nodemcu’s on order, I will attempt to incorporate all 4 switches into one nodemcu. Then like you say, 3 left over for more fun(hehehe).