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Sonoff Wireless Switch Family Gets a $3 IP66 Waterproof Enclosure

ESP8266 powered ITEAD Studio Sonoff wireless switches have been popular because they are inexpensive, highly customizable thanks to work from the community leading to open source projects such as ESPurna and Sonoff-Tasmota, and come fully packaged so you don’t need to make your own case for it. That works well for indoor projects, but if you needed to control outdoors lights, gate, water pump, etc… you had to protect the device from humidity/rain. That may not be necessary anymore as the company is now selling Sonoff Basic with an IP66 waterproof enclosure for $7.75, or the case only for $2.90.Sonoff waterproof case: Ingress Protection Rating – IP66 Material – PC V0 Dimensions – 132.2 x 68.7 x 50.1mm (See details) Weight – 145.0g IP66 rating is not suitable for prolonged immersion, but it should be good to protect against rain or high humidity. The box ships with two standardized PG7 […]

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Tronxy X3S 3D Printer Review – Part 2: Upgraded Heatbed and RAMPS Board

Karl here. So the bed I mentioned in the first part of Tronxy X3S review is not very good. It took about 10-11 minutes to heat up to 60 deg Celsius. I also mentioned I was going to upgrade the board to a RAMPS board. Today we are going to look at both these upgrades. New Heated Bed I can take no credit for this one but I wanted to pass this along. Folger tech sells a 12v 280w heated bed stick on pad. I picked this up for $20, but is now $22. In order to do this upgrade you will need a MOSFET, 12V/30A power supply, and of course the pad above. Super easy installation. Remove the bed and stick on the self adhesive pad centered. Replace the power supply with new one. Should be self explanatory. In order to power this bed a MOSFET is needed. A […]

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Sonoff B1 Smart Light Bulb Review – Part 1 : eWeLink Android App and Teardown

ITEAD Studio has a popular family of home automation devices call Sonoff with WiFi switches, smart sockets, RF to WiFi bridges and so on. All WiFi devices are based on Espressif ESP8266 or ESP8285, and while the company provide a stock firmware working with eWelink app, at least two communities have formed around Sonoff and other similar devices providing two open source firmware alternatives: ESPurna and Sonoff-Tasmota. The company has sent me Sonoff B1 smart RGB light bulb for review. Today, I’ll check out the light with eWelink app for Android, and do a teardown, before trying one of the open source firmware in the second part of the review. Sonoff B1 Unboxing Some Chinese products come in a blank cardboard boxes, but Sonoff’s light bulb comes with in a nice looking retail package that would look good on store’s shelves. One of the side lists the specifications with an […]

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ESPurna Firmware Now Supports Power Meters “Augmented” with ESP8266 Modules/Boards

Sonoff-Tasmota and ESPurna are the two main open source firmware used in home automation devices, such as Sonoff wireless switches, based on Espressif ESP8266 WiSoC. Xose Pérez – aka Tinkerman – has recently purchased “dumb” power meters / kill-a-watt meters, added WiFi to them with ESP-01 module and Wemos D1 mini board, and implemented support in ESPurna firmware leveraging earlier reverse-engineering work by Karl Hagström. The power meter above looks exactly like the one I’ve been using for review for over two years, and has been more more reliable than other models, such as Broadlink SP2 (with built-in WiFi) that gave up on me after a few months. Xose actually noticed that old and newer models of the power meters were based on different solutions. Karl’s meter relied on ECH1560, while Xose’s new meter was instead based on Vango V9261F, which has a public datasheet, and was already being worked on by […]

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Sonoff Wireless Switches & Light Bulbs Now Work With Google Home

ITEAD Studio Sonoff wireless switches can be controlled by voice commands using Amazon Alexa or Google Home, but so far, the latter was only possible by emulating Belkin Wemo switch in alternative open source firmwares such as ESPurna or Sonoff-Tasmota. For people who don’t want to update the firmware themselves, and instead prefer to use the stock firmware with eWelink mobile app, the manufacturer has now announced support for Google Home, on top of the already supported Amazon Alexa service. The instructions are explained in details in ITEAD’s blog post, but basically, you need to start Google Home app in your mobile, select your Google Home device, go to Home Control to add Devices, select Smart We Link, login to eWelink with your username/phone number and password, name the devices you want to control and you’re done. You should now be able to control devices or rooms with voice commands […]

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$23 Sonoff 4CH Pro 4-Channels WiFi & RF Switch Ships in a DIN Rail Enclosure

ITEAD Studio’s Sonoff family is a collection of really useful and inexpensive home automation devices which have been featured multiple times on CNX Software with either to stock firmware and eWelink app, or open source firmware developed by the community. I’m using a Sonoff TH16 to control a water pump, a Sonoff Pow to monitor my office’s power consumption, and Karl used some Sonoff switches to control his lights at home. The company has now launched Sonoff 4CH Pro with 4 relays that can be controlled with buttons on the unit, WiFi, or RF remote controls, and comes in a DIN Rail enclosure. Sonoff 4CH Pro switch specifications: Connectivity – ESP8266 WiFi module and 433 MHz receiver Relays – 4x HUIKE 230V/10A relays (max 2200W per relays) with NC and NO connection Configuration –  K5 & S6 switch for mode selection; K6 switch for time selection (0.5 to 4s) Misc […]

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Karl’s Home Automation Project – Part 1: Home Assistant & YAML, MQTT, Sonoff, and Xmas Lights

Karl here. I am here to write about my home automation project. First thing I want to say is that I am very cost conscious and I don’t mind putting in extra effort into the setup of things to keep costs down. I did invest a lot of time and had to do a lot of reading to get my project going. It took while and I received a lot of groans from my wife while testing. I am still in the process of tweaking things. I started watching a series of videos on YouTube from Bruh Automation. He introduced me to Home Assistant. It got me really excited. He uses a Raspberry Pi as a server but I already had a Wintel Pro CX-W8 Smart TV Box which I use as a server. I run 3 Minecraft Servers, Emby Server, iSpyConnect DVR (2 IP Cameras), Unifi wifi controller, and […]

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