As the topic mostly says, how do you your Christmas things?
I just put a few small trees outside with leds in, and going to use openHab to control those.
To do the actual switching on and off, I took one of my old projects which use an ESP8266-01, and got the power supply it needs on board, along with a relay.
It might not be the smallest one, but I can’t get my own cases injection molded, so this is what I had to work with. And I don’t think it looks that bad either.
I just use a couple of old analog outlet timers to turn everything on and off. This year the plug I use to control the lamp is closer to where the tree will go so I might use a plug replicator and use that to control the trees. For me it isn’t worth the expense to buy controllers just for the Christmas lights.
I only did mine this way, because I already had all the parts for it laying around. Originally these were designed as temperature loggers, and I added a place to put a relay too, just because there were so much room left, and then I could use them for more things… Like in this case.
I had some 433Mhz sockets left so i created a wlan to 433Mhz bridge: https://www.mikrocontroller.net/topic/349219#4044716
This bridge can receive my 433Mhz sensors with RFM12 and can send out commands for that 433Mhz sockets.
If you want switching feedback, you can use any other openHAB-controlled intermediate plug like a ZWave one or those of the MAX! series (if you have it for your thermostats).
I have a spare FGRGBWM Fibaro ZWave LED controller (50€) that allows to attach a 12 or 24V supply. It can control 4 LED strips (or one color strip plus another white one). Should work with any LED chain, and you can reuse it after christmas
You can also take a look at http://www.rfxcom.com/ . It can be attached using a plain USB port and does not need any drivers on linux level. Integration with Openhab is also simple. I use it to control pretty cheap Intertechno Switches and also my Roller Shutters.
