I have a number of Airwick Freshmatic Autosprayers in my house. For those that do not know what these are, they are automatic air freshener dispensers which spray at a pre-set time interval.
I wanted to integrate with Home Assistant with the following requirements:
- To remove the built in time schedule and instead use smart triggers to prolong the life of the canister
- Visually, the external appearance of the unit should remain unchanged
- The unit should remain battery powered
- The unit should integrate using Zigbee (as I felt using wifi would conflict with the previous requirement of using battery power)
To complete this build you’ll need the following bill of materials:
- Air Wick Freshmatic unit
- Zigbee Fingerbot device
- Spare wire
- Single core copper wire
And tools:
- Drill with small drill bit
- Soldering Iron
- Knife
- Hot Glue Gun
Steps:
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Pair the Fingerbot to your Zigbee network (this can be done later however is advisable to do up front)
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Disassemble the Fingerbot device and remove the circuit board
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Remove the yellow wire and copper contact pad from the JST plug as this will be unused
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Extend each of the wires from the Fingerbot circuit board
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Disassemble the Airwick unit. This needs to be drilled via 3 points from the top of the unit to slide apart
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Remove the circuit board from the Airwick unit and cut the traces from the motor contacts and to the battery terminals to isolate them
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Solder the Fingerbot wires to the Airwick circuit board (Please note motor positive is on the left…despite me using a red wire to extend the motor negative). If you get this polarity in reverse, you’ll find the unit doesn’t spray as it is applying the torque in the wrong direction
- Use hot glue to secure the Fingerbot circuit board to the side of the Airwick internals and stop the wires from moving around
- Slide the Airwick internals back into the main unit. You can choose to secure it with a dab of glue but I found when it is assembled with the can, that nothing moves around. As a result I preferred to keep it unglued for future disassembly as needed
- Create an adapter of sorts to bridge the gap between the CR2 battery (extracted from your Fingerbot) and the battery terminals. I used a small piece of tube with a copper wire wrapped around it
- In the Zigbee configuration, change the Fingerbot settings to the following
Controlling the unit:
A single flick of the switch (on/off) will cause the trigger of the Airwick arm to engage/disengage. As a result if you want to trigger the unit, you need to send 2 commands, one to spray and a further one to disengage. Otherwise you’ll find it only sprays every other time
Area for further investigation:
I have purchased some 3.3v relays and have found that the Fingerbot device is also able to trigger these. As a result, the Fingerbot may be a very versatile device which can be modded to activate multiple products, even where they have alternative power sources.
