I used Xiaomi door/window sensors to convert my light switches into remotes for my smart bulbs.
That is excellent. Thanks.
Edit: changing the battery will be a bit of a PITA. But at least you have a battery sensor!
This is fantastic! Very impressed with the ingenuity. Im moving to a new house soon and this could be a simple and cheap way to re-use existing light switches. Thanks for the write-up
I had a very similar problem but with few more limitations - only live wires (no neutral) and using the standard European wall outlets, which leave very little room for anything else. I also believe in the progressive enchantment philosophy, so what I came up with is this:
- Replaced the original switch with a 433MHz one and connected the wires like you.
- For the lamp side I opted to use Sonoff RF, which I connected directly to the the wires coming from the ceiling powering it, and then connected the Relay output to the lamp. It is a basic IKEA Melodi, which have plenty of space in the ceiling bulge.
- Once flashed with TASMOTA, it was easy to integrate it in my HA and make the lamp smart.
- I paired the wall switch with the RF module and now I have independent way of managing it, which is changing the state properly in my HA without having to handle it in a special way.
The RF can be paired with multiple switches, so you can keep the multiway setups in rooms/hallways. As a bonus, you can also have a new functionality of one switch controlling multiple devices, even of different type, by just pairing it, without additional software setup.
The best part is, that it works even if the HA or WiFi fails. It’s a fail-safe in case of any outages, except electrical. Which is the best option I can came up with regard to our shared philosophy
As for the drawbacks - the switch is momentary instead of toggle, so the feel is very different initially. What makes it worse though, is that there is a slight delay of about a second after the press until the state is changed. It seems to be limitation of the RF protocol but it might also be how the firmware handles it. Haven’t got the time to check in depth.
My long term goal is to find a small enough circuit that can fit in existing wall switches and make the following change to it. This way the change will not be as big in the eyes of the non-technical people.
Sorry to rave on about this, but I was looking recently for zigbee chipsets to build my own switches or whatever, so this is very timely. Every chipset seems to come from Texas Instruments and be very complicated. A solution like the ESP 8266 but for zigbee would be really good.
Take a look at similar solution that I posted some time ago: Transform your existing wall switch to intelligent switch based on Xiaomi and Sonoff
Can this solution be used to connect the sensor straight into a 2 prong US outlet using a plug?
No, the magic smoke will come out of the sensor, and probably you too.
Yeah, nobody likes to see the magic smoke…
Can it be modified to work this way?