Low voltage wall plate switch? Does it exist?

Hardware
1

The switch for my fireplace looks like a traditional wall switch, but it’s low voltage, doesn’t have any power source. I am trying to find a solution where I can keep the look of a traditional switch on the wall but have it be either wifi or rf so I can integrate it with HA. Is there a solution for this? I’m having trouble finding anything.

2

The Shelly 1 works on 12V DC or 24 to 60V DC.

You can use your existing switch plate.

https://shelly.cloud/shelly1-open-source/

3

Should have checked this before. I’m only getting 5v so I don’t think this will work.

4

You could use any ESP board (like the Wemos D1 mini) and a 5V relay with esphome.

Esphome is very simple to get started with. All devices you connect are configured with a yaml file then esphome compiles and uploads it to the board.

There’s an esphome addon for hassio.
Esphome has an API that talks to home assistant. It supports discovery and over the air programming (once you have programmed the device serially). There are tonnes of other sensors too. You need a switch (relay) and binary sensor (your wall plate switch) but you could also add a temperature sensor or a status LED for example.

5

Thanks Tom. This confirms the route I will ultimately go down after seeing this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhs8VSzBamI. I plan on using a temperature sensor as the trigger also. I’ve got some automations going with motion sensors already, so that part of it should be easy enough.

6

I highly recommend you look into esphome instead of using that arduino sketch. You will find it very easy to pick up and possibly invaluable for other sensors around your house. e.g. have a look at this example you could adapt:

esphome:   
  name: sp_bed_dht
  platform: ESP8266 # your chosen ESP board here
  board: d1_mini

wifi: # your wifi info here
  ssid: 'WAPLO'
  password: !secret wifi_pwd
  manual_ip: # optional but recommended
    static_ip: 10.1.1.81
    gateway: 10.1.1.1
    subnet: 255.255.255.0

api:
  password: !secret api_password # use the API to talk with home assistant. The password is optional

logger: # view real time logs in the esphome addon

ota:
  password: !secret esp_pwd # over the air programming, again optional password

binary_sensor:
  - platform: status
    name: "Spare Bedroom DHT Status"  # a status binary sensor you can use in home assistant  (on-line / off-line) to alert you if you lose contact with it.

  - platform: gpio # example of an input switch
    pin:
      number: D7
      mode: INPUT_PULLUP
      inverted: true
    name: "Spare Bed Lamp Switch"
    filters:
      - delayed_on: 10ms # bit of debouncing for the switch contacts
      - delayed_off: 10ms

light:
  - platform: binary  # a light defined from the output below
    name: "Spare Bed Switch LED"
    output: sp_bed_led

output:
  - platform: gpio # an output 
    id: sp_bed_led
    pin:
      number: D6

sensor:
  - platform: wifi_signal # see how good your sensor's wifi reception is in home assistant
    name: "Spare Bedroom DHT WiFi Signal"
    update_interval: 15s
    filters:
      - sliding_window_moving_average:
          window_size: 15
          send_every: 15
          send_first_at: 15

  - platform: dht # DHT22 temperature and humidity sensor with some averaging
    pin: D5
    model: DHT22
    update_interval: 15s
    temperature:
      name: "Spare Bedroom Temperature"
      filters:
        - sliding_window_moving_average:
            window_size: 15
            send_every: 15
            send_first_at: 15
    humidity:
      name: "Spare Bedroom Humidity"
      filters:
        - sliding_window_moving_average:
            window_size: 15
            send_every: 15
            send_first_at: 15

Pretty simple eh?

7

Tom, ESPHome is something that I’ve not really looked into, but it is intriguing. I was actually going to upload Tasmota to the ESP board and not mess with getting into Arduino programming/sketches (I’ve done this before with a Sonoff RF bridge so there’s no real learning curve there).

I’ve done some reading up on ESPHome and I’d like to dip my toes in, so to speak, but I’m a little unsure of how I would go about connecting to a device. I’m running HA (Not HassIO) as a Docker container in an Ubuntu VM in HyperV. This means that I don’t have USB mapping/pass-through available if I ran ESPHome on the same VM.

If I’m reading the documentation correctly, I could install ESPHome on the Windows 10 HyperV host using Python (do you know if it runs under Python 3.x or just 2.7? I only have 3.7 installed) and that way I could do the initial configuration/firmware upload to an ESP device and then control it OTA after that. I would lose access to the dashboard (looks like only runs in *nix platform).

I’m also unsure of how devices configured in ESPHome integrate with HA. I don’t see anything that says something like “To point your ESPHome to HA, do this____”.

I think I need to Google a bit more before I consider the ESPHome route. I do appreciate you showing it to me though. Seems like a pretty useful tool for ESP based devices.

8

Here’s another vote for ESPHome.
Simple, fast, easy and extremely reliable.