I came across this blog today. Has anyone done something similiar, hacked it and installed a esp8266 or radio to get signals into OH?
Hi,
I looked at it and I don’t be too positiv. As a lot of china products they are not designed verry well. They look good at the beginning and do what they promis - switching lights on and off - but when you dig deeper… you are disappointed. (like I am with my miLights)
Nice they can be controlled with a radio remote control (better than the IR controlled ones but working on 488 mhz … not much better.
The remote only sends toggle commands and not on/off so your system has to always know if the light is on or off.
There is no feedback or bidirectional communication. So you can’t be shure if a command reachet the switch. And you can’t send the command twice - because of the toggle behaviour.
And if you think on more than one switch in the room you will face more problems like if the on position is on or off - if depends on the sate of the other switches. Then you have to sense mains power … difficult and dangerous. If you have pulse switched relays installed (mostly when you have more than 2 switches … (Thats the problem I’m currently dealing with- I have the idea, the plan and the parts but currently no time to test it)
The only use can be: use the nice glass plate and perhaps the sensor board and throw the rest away (perhaps unsolder the relay) and do the rest yourself.
You can find reverse engineering info here http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=153525.0
Perhaps an expert can write an alternative firmware for the mcu but I think it is not worth the effort because of the 488mhz radio interface.
You can also find a lot of demos on YouTube
I’m too not willing to pay 40 - 50€ for a intelligent connected IOT light switch, so we have to keep looking.
Chris