Hi all. I live in an old apartment and looking behind my wall switches just confused me enough to believe I had a Neutral in there. It has one blue wire and one brown (plus Ground, but no connected). So I ordered a MiniR2, connected blue to N and brown to L In and the Sonoff powered up and paired.
It was after that and after my brain came back to life while trying to figure out how to connect the lamp now, that I realised I had a wire missing: the real Neutral. My installation is just one switched Live and the Neutral is in the fixtures only. Sonoff stayed on and did not blow up.
Soooo…have seen the videos with Diodes and whatnot. But since I´m only after using the Sonoff as a thing to keep my orignal switches and keep my wife less confused with Hue remotes, bascially not using the Sonoff to switch load, but to act as a Zigbee switch, I was wondering: would it be feasable to connect blue and brown (which is just one wire with different colors) with a Wago and piggyback the Sonoff from the Wago? Essentially feeding it with just Live and nothing else.
I do not intent to switch a load. I want to keep my Hues one all the time anyway.
No device can be powered with just with live so you need the weak N through the lamp. Post a simple scheme how you think to wire your setup.
Where is that ground wire connected? To actual Earth?
The ground wire is not connected anywhere. It just sitting there in the wall. There is no ground wire at the fixture. It is sort of a typical thing for old german installations when i comes to light fixtures.
As far as I can tell the blue and brown wire in my wall is just ONE wire. The wall switch just connects them when swtiched. Or acts as a breaker if off. The real Neutral is at the fixture. Also typical for old installations.
As I said: one end of the wire went into N, the other into L In on the Sonoff.
If you have ground wire not connected to anywhere, you could use it to bring N to your sonoff ?
Since I do not know where the ground wire is going to I wouldn´t touch it. Might make something become Live without knowing.
There are jsut 3 wires in the wall. If I ignore ground I´m left with two. I connect those and light turns on. That´s what the wall switch normally does. Disregard the color of the wires for the moment.
So how can you say it’s not connected to anywhere??
The ground does not show up at the fixture. There might be a junction box somewhere in the wall, but I can´t see it.
I think what I have is called “switched live”. Happens in old homes all the time. The physical switch just connects the Live wire and the Neutral starts at the fixture itself and goes to the breaker box mabye.
here is a pic I found which is the current situation.in that image … where the switch is shown … I wired the Sonoff in. One end to N, the other to L1 In.
Yes, that’s normal wiring scheme.
So don’t write you have extra wire connected to anywhere if you don’t know the other end.
Like you see from the image, if lamp is not connected to L, it can pass N to Sonoff through the lamp.
So what is your plan with the lamp?
What am I missing? I had the swtich in the image replaced with the Sonoff.
The L Out remained unused and the lamp was off.
Your N and L are inverted.
As far as you keep the lamp in place and don’t use it you are good to go.
I think you need the ZBMINI L2, not the R2. Or you could “permanently” close the circuit and use something like the Sonoff MATE to sense when the switch is toggled.
What you mean “inverted”? The lamp did not turn on btw.
Edit: you mean the old switch is just switching the neutral side?
Yeah I got a couple of those and a few alternatives to play around with.
The line on the left going to Sonoff is Neutral??
It is “the wire” that´s in my wall. I have a simple On/Off Switch in the wall. I took the two wires going in the switch (one is blue, the other is brown) and connected them to the Sonoff.
In a standard config Blue should be Neutral and Brown should be Live.
But I think that the cable colors are irrelevant here.
I guess I´ll have to find the distribution box in the wall to see where each wire goes. Maybe I can trace the unused ground wire and use it as Neutral. A bit unusual and I should not forget about it 
when the next tenant moves in in a few years.
Correct.
If you don’t have multimeter to verify your wires, you really are just guessing everything here. I’m not a person telling you “oh my god, don’t touch anything, you will die, call electrician”. But be careful, don’t assume too much. For measured values you can always ask here.