Powered by a battery and detects motion via radar technology, which helps the sensor to be more precise. But the appearance of the Ring Battery Doorbell pro didn’t change, since Ring decided not to bother with updated designs.
What’s new
Ring, one of the leaders in the smart home industry, introduced a new doorbell which runs on batteries. The Ring Battery Doorbell Pro, priced at $229,99 USD was based on the Ring Battery Plus, which released last year. It allows for video with 1536p resolution and the ability to see a person full height. A 3D motion sensor based on a radar instead of a passive IR sensor was also added. The motion sensor update is expected to send out more precise notifications about detecting people specifically. The device received dual-band Wi-Fi, video previews in color, night vision in color and audio with noise removal.
Alternatives
Now Ring has three wireless doorbells with a battery as the power source: the 2nd Gen Video Doorbell for $100, the Battery Plus for $150 and the Battery Pro for $230. The new Pro has almost all the features from the wired Video Doorbell Pro 2. The only features missing are the less useful Alexa Greetings. But the Ring Battery Doorbell Pro looks the same as any other Ring doorbell.
Just like all Ring Doorbells that run on battery, the new one can also be connected to a power source to charge the battery and function with already present wires. If you don’t have a Ring Protect subscription (priced at $3,99/mo), Ring will only provide messages about motion and live view from the Ring app. If you buy the subscription, you will get cloud storage for video, which is triggered on certain events, and smart notifications about people or parcels.
Of course, the Battery Doorbell Pro works with Amazon Alexa, it notifies about visitors through Echo or can translate the live view on the Echo Show display.
Today, we continue setting up voice control in Home Assistant. This time, we will need a small yet cheap device with a speaker and a microphone “on board.” Let’s assume all the initial settings I wrote about here have been applied.
Setting up and flashing firmware on the ATOM Echo
You will need a device which you can buy here and here, approximately, it only costs 13$.
Follow this link, and you will see the “CONNECT” button.
Connect the ATOM Echo to the computer using USB and click the “CONNECT” button.
If you haven’t downloaded the firmware for similar devices, you might not have the USB driver installed. A pop-up window will only show the standard COM-port.
Click “Cancel,” and you will see a pop-up window where you can install the USB driver.
Install the driver for CH342 devices. Only after you do so will the required port show up. Select it and click the “Connect” button.
Select “INSTALL VOICE ASSISTANT.”
The process of flashing the firmware will now start. Do not close the page while the firmware is flashing.
After the installation finishes, click “NEXT.”
You need to enter the credentials of your Wi-Fi network in the next step.
Click “ADD TO HOME ASSISTANT” to add the device. A new window should show up, advising you to add an ESPHome integration if you don’t have it yet.
After you add the device, you can choose a room or zone for the device.
The image below shows the ATOM Echo in the list of ESPhome devices.
In ESPHome, you need to “ADOPT” the ATOM Echo, after which you should update the firmware to the latest version.
You now have all the sensors and control elements in the integration. From the drop-down list, select the language model created earlier, click ATOM Echo button, and give a command to Home Assistant. Everything should work as intended.
Setting up the wake word
With the latest Home Assistant update, you can activate your “smart speaker” without physical intervention. It’s not difficult to do. Open the add-on store (or click the button below).
Install the openWakeWord add-on, and click “Start” afterward. The add-on doesn’t need setting up.
After installing the add-on, open the Integrations settings.
Go to voice assistants and click the one you want to edit.
In the pop-up window, select Wake word engine and the wake word from the list to the right. Click “Update.”
The last thing you should do is check if the wake word is on for the ATOM Echo. After you turn on “Use wake word,” your speaker will light up with a lilac color, which means it’s waiting for your voice command. Below in the drop-down list, you can select a voice assistant the device will use.
In future reviews, I will show how to make a custom wake word, so stay tuned. See you.
For quite a while, we have had smart speakers in our house, allowing us to control appliances with a simple voice command. People who own those devices know that there are some limitations, such as limited support for smart device developers. For some, lack of native language support might also become a problem.
Before we begin the setup process, you must know that to interact with a device using voice commands, the device must “understand” your request – detect your voice and convert it into an understandable format – text. This process is abbreviated as “STT,” or speech-to-text.
Initial settings
Before we begin the setup process, you must know that to interact with a device using voice commands, the device must “understand” your request – detect your voice and convert it into an understandable format – text. This process is abbreviated as “STT,” or speech-to-text.
You will most likely expect a voiced response to your command. The process of voicing the “response” of the device is called TTS, or text-to-speech.
In Home Assistant, two separate add-ons are responsible for STT and TTS – Whisper and Piper. Go to the add-on store and install both add-ons.
After installing, don’t click the start button yet – there’s still something to set up. Go to Whisper’s settings tab and select the language that you wish to use.
In Piper’s settings, choose the language and voice that would respond to you.
If, for Home Assistant, you use a single-board computer like a Raspberry Pi, you should select the “extra-low” voice. At the end of the title, you will see “x_low,” which stands for “extra_low.” Here, and further in the article, I choose my native language – Ukrainian. You can select any language from the list. The language list, just like the voice list, is regularly updated.
Now, you can click the start button for both add-ons. After some time, they will finish loading. You can check the event log to make sure. You should also checkmark “Watchdog” and “Start on boot” on the first tab, which allows the add-ons to start automatically alongside Home Assistant and after an emergency stop.
Go to the integrations list in settings (or click the “MY” button below.)
Here, you only need to click the “Configure” buttons. The “Wyoming Protocol” integration will appear, which combines Piper and Whisper.
Setting up voice control
Go to “Settings” -> “Voice assistants” (Or click on the “MY” button below).
You might have noticed there’s a voice assistant in the list that already speaks English, but we need to add our own, which understands and speaks Ukrainian (or your native language). So, click the “Add Assistant” button.
From the pop-up window where you can select language from both the SST and the TTS, choose the TTS voice down.
Usually, these settings are enough for most users. Reboot Home Assistant. After reboot, in the upper-right corner of Lovelace, a speech bubble icon should have appeared, just like in the picture below.
Click on the icon. A window should pop up where you can give commands.
You can choose an assistant from the list, including the one you created earlier. If your device is missing a microphone or you can’t speak, you can still enter a request using text.
If you’re facing problems speaking to the assistant, try adding the following to your “configuration.yaml” file.
conversation:
Don’t forget to reboot Home Assistant.
Possible issues and some recommendations
You have set up a voice assistant that does not require Internet access to work. The advantage is that it works locally regardless of the network status. However, there are still significant disadvantages. Voice recognition isn’t always perfect. I can only assume that the voice recognition quality depends on CPU load. The image below shows the result of the low-quality voice recognition.
The second disadvantage concerns the voice model. As of writing this, only one voice model existed for Ukrainian – lada x-low, and it’s so horrible that you don’t even want to turn it on.
There is a solution that removes both cons – Home Assistant Cloud. Of course, it’s not run locally anymore. Home Assistant Cloud is a service with a monthly subscription that is very useful since it doesn’t include just voice assistants. Also, Ukrainians can use the service free of charge since the full-scale invasion.
After you connect “the cloud,” select Home Assistant Cloud in the voice assistance settings, and the voice recognition quality and the voice will pleasantly surprise you.
If you use the voice assistant with multiple languages at once, you should create aliases for devices and rooms. It could be names in different languages or different cases. Below is an example of different aliases.
The image below shows the result of adding aliases.
How to set up the voice assistant on an Android phone
You may have already used Google Assistant by holding the “Home” button. You can change the default assistant app from the settings. Before that, update your Home Assistant to the latest version.
On your Android phone, go to Settings and select “Apps.”
Select “Choose default apps.”
Select “Digital assistant app.”
Select the top button.
From the app list, choose Home Assistant and confirm your choice.
Close the settings. Now, your default voice assistant app is Home Assistant.
You can now control your smart devices using voice (or text) commands from your phone and your computer.
Also, in the HA settings, you might need to activate voice control for the specific device, but only if you have turned it off earlier.
In one of my reviews, I will show you how to make a cheap smart speaker with the Home Assistant’s voice assistant. The article will be a logical part 2 of today’s review.
You can track the Sun in the standard Home Assistant integration. The integration creates an object with two possible states: above_horizon, bellow_horizon, and several other attributes such as elevation, azimuth, next_dawn, next_dusk. You can use these states as a trigger or condition for automations in your smart home. An example of an automation idea is “turn on the light at the front door 30 minutes after sunset”.
You can also track the Moon in Home Assistant. This integration creates an entity that provides you with the current moon phase, such as new_moon, full_moon, waxing_crescent, waning_crescent, etc. But whether this information is useful for the average user is a good question. Probably not, but some people may find it as such. For someone who is into home automation, the best thing they can do is to create a dashboard and maybe set up a few automations
Setting up the Sun Integration.
Go to Home Assistant.
Click Settings on the side panel.
Choose “Devices and Settings” in the configuration.
In the lower right corner, click “Add Integration”.
Find “Sun” in the list.
Follow the instructions on the screen to finish.
Or, to finish the setup, click the button below.
Setting up the Moon integration.
Go to Home Assistant.
Click Settings on the side panel.
Choose “Devices and Settings” in the configuration.
In the lower right corner, click “Add Integration”.
Find “Moon” in the list.
Follow the instructions on the screen to finish.
Or, to finish setup, click the button below.
Usage of the Sun integration.
Sun integration can be very useful. You can use it in many automations as a trigger. For example, we can use it as a condition to turn on the light on the terrace, but only after sunset. We would not want the light to turn on when we go outside during the day. The trigger can be a motion detector signal.
alias: Terrace Lights ON
description: 'Turn ON Terrace Lights After Sunset'
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id: binary_sensor.terrace
from: 'off'
to: 'on'
condition:
- condition: sun
after: sunset
after_offset: '20'
action:
- service: light.turn_on
target:
entity_id: light.terrace_lights
We can also use it directly as a trigger to turn on the backlights and turn them off at sunrise:
alias: Walkway Lights
description: 'Turn on Porch Lights After Sunset'
trigger:
- platform: sun
event: sunset
action:
- service: light.turn_on
target:
entity_id: light.porch_lights
alias: Walkway Lights
description: 'Turn Off Porch Lights At Sunrise'
trigger:
- platform: sun
event: sunrise
action:
- service: light.turn_off
target:
entity_id: light.porch_lights
Sun display on the information panel.
There is a wonderful Sun Card. We can use it to depict the Sun’s position in the sky. The card can also show some additional information. You can find this card in HACS, and it is most convenient to install it from there.
Similarly, the moon phases are also usable as trigger automations. Although the average user may not find the integration useful, some people will come up with a good use case for it. As an example, we will create an automation that will notify astronomers when there is a full moon so that they can go outside and enjoy this spectacle:
alias: Full Moon
description: 'Notify Me When It`s a Full Moon'
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id:
- sensor.moon
to: full_moon
action:
- service: notify.mobile_app
data:
title: Full Moon!
message: It's a Full Moon Outside!
This automation will notify you with a notification on your phone
Moon display on the information panel.
Do you use Mushroom Cards? If so, the Sun and Moon information can look good on its Mushrooms-Chips Card. For example:
To create a more visually appealing card we will use custom:stack-in-card. We will also download .png images that HA user “bthoven” provided in the topic..
First, download the .png images here and upload them to your Home Assistant server. I have placed them in the folder www/images/MoonPhases, which corresponds to /local/images/MoonPhases in your browser. You can use Samba Share and Studio Code Server to upload them to the folder. Then we create a custom entity image card that will show the corresponding moon image during each phase.
But first, let’s create a sensor that, as a parameter, will transmit the image of the moon phase depending on the state of the main sensor (sensor.moon_phase).
For more appeal, upload the image moon_bg.jpg to the same folder. This will be the background of the card with moon phases. I have an image of a tree against the evening sky, but you can choose an image of your choice.
Now create a card in your dashboard. You can see the sample code in my GitHub here.
As you can see, the card shows the parameter {{ state_attr(entity, ‘entity_picture’) }}, which passes the sensor as the image address. Below, there are two Mushrooms – Chips elements on the card – the time to the nearest moonrise and moonset. I take these parameters from the AstroWeather integration, which can also be found in HACS.
Echo and Echo dot 4th Gen speakers from Amazon will soon act as mesh hotspots for Eero Wi-Fi routers.
There are already a lot of Echo and Echo Dot smart speakers with Alexa in smart homes and apartments. Recently, Amazon-owned Eero plans to use these speakers as mesh Wi-Fi amplifiers.
The new feature was announced at Amazon’s fall conference.
This opportunity was announced at Amazon’s fall event where many of the company’s new products were also presented. The feature will arrive on October 20th as a free software update for the fourth-generation Amazon Echo and the just-announced fifth-generation Echo. Soon, the update will also roll out to the Echo Dot and Echo Dot fourth-generation watch.
Once you’ve installed the Eero app, you’ll need to link your home network to your Amazon account and enable this built-in Eero feature. Now your smart speakers can relay the Wi-Fi signal from any Eero mesh router at speeds up to 100 Mbps, which effectively turns the speaker into a Wi-Fi signal booster.
To work, link the Eero Network to an Amazon account through the Eero app, and Eero will automatically detect compatible Echo devices. Then, in the Eero app, you can manage the functions separately for each device. Reportedly, if you have two Echo Dots used as a stereo pair, they cannot be Wi-Fi hotspots. This technology uses the same radio frequencies as access point technology. Therefore, you will have to choose which function to use.
Weaver says Echo hotspots have some latency (ping) because the access point is a network node. But he notes that the delay should be minimal — “a couple of milliseconds.”
“A lot of users have outdoor surveillance cameras or maybe a chromecast that hides behind the TV box and tries to catch a better signal,” said Nick Weaver, co-founder, and CEO of Eero. Such devices can help fill in blind spots.
At the same time, Weaver said that users shouldn’t expect the same speed as an Eero repeater.
Echo devices can add up to 90 square meters of coverage per device to an existing network at speeds of up to 100 Mbps. That’s more than enough for 4K video or HD video calls.
“You will always have better productivity from a specially made network device”, – said Weaver.
You’ll be able to set up Eero Internet Backup in the Eero app and decide which devices will use the backup network during a failure.
Eero Built-In isn’t the only new software update that Eero users should know. There’s also Eero Internet Backup, a new premium feature that allows homes with Eero routers to share a separate Wi-Fi hotspot with their home network.
If you lose internet, the hotspot will connect, and your home devices will stay online. Once the failure is over, the access point will deactivate, and your traffic will return to the Eero network you use. The feature will work with any hotspot or backup Wi-Fi network, including mobile hotspots and 4G (5G) hotspots.
In addition to Eero Internet Backup, the $10/month Eero Plus subscription gives you additional features, including advanced parental controls and network statistics, as well as subscriptions to 1Password, Malwarebytes antivirus, and Encrypt.me VPN service.
Today, I want to show you a rather interesting and perspective device from a well-known Chinese brand. Should you buy it today? You can read this article to learn about its pros and cons.
SONOFF MINI Extreme Wi-Fi Smart Switch – or MiniR4M – is almost entirely a carbon copy of the MiniR4. Visually, it’s only distinguishable by the plating color on the contacts. It’s green here.
Disassembling the MiniR4M
The build of both devices is also almost identical, the only difference being the controller microcircuit. The previous device has Esp32-DOWD installed, but this one has Esp32-C3.
View from the relay’s side.
The PCB looks like this. The contacts are well-soldered, and the power tracks have a proficient cross-section. Note that the L In and S1 contacts used to connect the relay are interconnected. So, take safety precautions when connecting the device to a 220v network since the relay will have a high voltage.
How to add the MiniR4M to your smart home with eWeLink
Let’s start with the native app for Sonoff devices since you’ll only be able to upgrade its firmware and unlink the relay from the switch in said app.
In the image below, you can see the pros and cons of using the device with different smart home apps compared to eWeLink.
So, let’s hook the MiniR4M to the wires and connect it to the network. Here are multiple possible ways to connect it.
In my case, I connected the Shelly switch (actually a button) to the S1 and S2 connectors, the cable to L In and N, and the lamp to L Out and N.
After its first boot, after a few seconds, a pop-up to add the device to SmartThings has already appeared on my phone. Since I decided to add it to eWeLink first, I closed this pop-up.
So, after the device turns on, an LED will start blinking with a “2 short, 1 long” pattern, which means the device is in pairing mode. If that doesn’t happen, hold the button on the case for ten seconds. The phone should discover the new device. Also, connect your phone to a 2.4GHz network since the MiniR4M does not support 5GHz. One of the steps is entering the password to your Wi-Fi network. Just follow the steps on the screen.
After you add the device to the app, you can control and set it up. On the main screen, only the on/off setting is visible, but there’s way more in the app. From the settings, I’m highlighting “Switch Mode” – here, you can choose the switch type, which you will connect to the relay. In my case, it’s “Pulse Mode.” If you have a regular switch, select “Edge Mode.” In the settings, you can also disconnect the switch from the relay, change the device’s behavior during power loss, turn off the LED, etc.
This amount of features should be enough for the average user, but since Sonoff positions this device as a Matter device, it should work in multiple smart home apps. By default, just as I thought, MiniR4M is a cloud device. So, let’s try to add this device to other systems using the Matter protocol.
And here is where the fun begins…
Attempts to add the MiniR4M to Home Assistant
To clarify, when writing this review, the device received a 1.0.1 firmware update, and the eWeLink app got a 5.0.1 update. So, while reading this text, all the bugs may have already been fixed.
So, to add a Matter device to a compatible smart home system, you must have a QR code. It’s already there on MiniR4M’s case, and it’s also there on the box the device came in. But hypothetically, let’s imagine that the box was already thrown away, and the device was installed on a mounting box that’s inaccessible. Here, the stock app comes to our aid, which can generate the QR code required to pair the device to Home Assistant.
For that, in the app (in the device’s plugin), click the “Enable Pairing Mode” button. In response, we get a pop-up with the QR code and, take note, two underscores without numbers. Meanwhile, the device goes into pairing mode, followed by the LED (two short and one long flash).
For convenience, I printed the screenshot with the QR code and will now attempt to use it to add the MiniR4M to Home Assistant. On the phone, in the Home Assistant app, open “Settings” – “Devices & Services,” then click the “+” button below and select the first option – “Add Matter device.” After a few seconds, the camera app will open, and we must scan the QR code. After we do that, we get an error. The device refuses to connect.
But there’s more. After returning to the eWeLink app, the MiniR4M is offline. To work with it, reset the device to factory settings. For that, hold down the button on the case for 10 seconds. But, of course, you need physical access to the device.
Adding the device to Home Assistant while bypassing eWeLink
Since we already know how to add Matter devices, no additional problems should arise. Hold the button and eventually scan the QR code on the case or the box. The QR code that you printed before serves no use anymore. The device should connect without problems in two tries at most.
In Home Assistant’s Matter integration, the device will use a “Switch” entity by default. You can always change it to a different one, for example, Light. The next part is like always – use the device however you want in Home Assistant with nearly instantaneous response time.
Home Assistant’s Matter integration has a setback. We can’t, at least not in the current version of the Matter integration, “share” the device with a different smart home system. But how does Google Home combat this issue?
Adding the MiniR4M to Google Home
Just like before, put the device into pairing mode by holding the button on the case for 10 seconds. Of course, this will reset the device to factory settings. Theoretically, after that, your phone should “discover” the device and show the corresponding pop-up. All you have to do from there is click the “Add” button and scan the QR code.
If that doesn’t happen, open Google Home. In the second tab, click the “Add +” button, then select “New Device” – “Next.” In the window that opens, select “Matter-enabled device.” Scan the QR code and wait. All left to do is select the room and name the device.
From Google Home, you can turn the device on and off.
But the fun part is that from the app, you can generate a working QR or a pairing code to connect with other systems (or to save it for later). Apart from that, you can directly add the device to pre-installed smart home systems without opening the QR code scanner.
Conclusions
In my opinion, the first Matter device from Sonoff came out interesting and perspective. According to the retailer’s vision, there should be “an out-of-the-box cross-platform experience.” But, considering the device is still recent, it doesn’t work as well as the end user would think. Even in eWeLink, the relay can ignore commands for half a minute. Bugs with QR code generation only bring more inconveniences. Hopefully, firmware updates will make the “fever” go away.
Maybe someone is waiting to install a custom firmware, like ESPHome or Tasmota. Sorry to disappoint, but according to the regulations for Matter devices, the bootloader is locked, which means you can’t change the firmware other than through OTA updates.
So, I can’t recommend this device despite considering its low price, at least for now.
This article is my adaptation of the story of enthusiast in smart homes who calls himself blakadder. His experience is below, and I used his materials in the article. Link to the original article by blakadder
Warning: I used a device from the pre-production batch, which was provided to me free of charge by Sonoff. Some of its elements may change with the official release.
For now, you can buy NSPanel Pro with a discount before the opening of sales in the Itead store.
After the shock and disappointment of the firmware release and the September update, I decided to go further. The easiest way to do this is with Android Debug Bridge.
Dissasemble
Remove the panel from the base. Remove the two screws on the back panel and then carefully detach the back plate starting from this point.
Now unscrew the small screws, the ones circled in red. Remove the harness from the touch panel and disconnect the connector to lift the PCB.
Connect the USB cable to the computer.
Install ADB drivers
Download the ADB drivers and install them.
When NSPanel Pro connects to the computer via USB, a new device should appear in the Device Manager.
Download Android platform tools and extract the contents into a folder. Open a command prompt and navigate to this folder. In my case, it’s at D:\adb.
Providing access to ADB
Run adb devices -l . It will list all connected devices with additional information.
D:\adb>adb devices -l
List of devices attached
F061512302021100016 device product:px30_evb model:px30_evb device:px30_evb transport_id:3
Run adb tcpip 5555, command to configure NSPanel Pro to listen for TCP/IP connections on port 5555.
D:\adb>adb tcpip 5555
restarting in TCP mode port: 5555
Now you can connect to NSPanel Pro wirelessly. If you do not know the IP address, type adb shell ip -o a to find it out.
Try this while you are still connected via USB to ensure everything works.
D:\adb>
adb connect 10.1.1.144
connected to 10.1.1.144:5555
Reassemble the panel and connect it to the power supply. After booting, run adb connect [ip_address].
Using ADB
With ADB, you have a powerful tool to control your NSPanel Pro. You can install and uninstall applications, get a list of running processes, free memory, and even gain root access.
Here is a list of ADB commands you can use on your NSPanel Pro.
It is handy to simulate pressing the “Home” button using adb shell input keyevent 3.
To make working with NSPanel easier, you need to change the default launcher, the eWeLink control panel, to a more familiar one. I chose Lawnchchair because of its small size. Download the APK to the adb folder and install it on NSPanel Pro using ADB.
Set the default launcher in Settings – Apps & notifications – Advanced – Default apps and set Lawnchair as “Home app.”
To enable the navigation bar, go to Settings – Display and turn on “show status bar.”
Now you can freely navigate the user interface.
Home Assistant
You can install the Home Assistant Companion app, but I have connection problems, probably because of the old WebView component used in the system. The same goes for the Fully Kiosk browser, which complains that WebView is too old.
But you can still access the Home Assistant dashboard through the browser. Download Chromium for Android and install it using the ADB command adb install chromium-106.0.5228.0.apk (version number may be different).
It will take some time because the apk file is big! You can run it using the launcher or using adb shell monkey – p org.chromium.chrome 1
It will complain about the lack of Google Play services. Ignore the message. Enter the Home Assistant URL and open it.
After going to the Home Assistant dashboard, tap the three dots and add the page to the home screen.
Pressing the icon opens the full-screen mode of the Home Assistant dashboard.
Capabilities
This solution is not perfect, but it’s what I’ve managed so far. The best option would be to reach out to Itead en masse and demand HA Companion or Fully Kiosk Browser support out-of-the-box. They get more sales, we get more features, it’s a win-win scenario, and now we know it’s possible. At the very least, demand that they update WebView to a compatible version. Tweet them at https://twitter.com/ITeadstudio, email them at support@itead.cc, or use the contact form!
Poking around in the adb environment revealed things like mosquitto, bash scripts to interact with the Zigbee module, RS485 traces, relay 1, relay 2, and possibly more. I hope that more developers who understand Android will fully unlock this device.
In one of my previous articles, I introduced you to a way to flash NSPanel for better compatibility with Home Assistant. We used ESPhome as a basis, which controlled the ESP32 controller. But we left the firmware of the device screen unchanged, which allowed us not to change the appearance. In turn, the screen with the microcontroller “communicated” with each other using the NSPanel Protocol.
I suppose that someone may not like the standard NSPanel interface. Perhaps you will not even be satisfied with the limited number of screens. Let me remind you that you can switch interface screens using swipes. There are only three of them.
That is why today, I offer you a way to change the NSPanel interface to an alternative one called NSPanel Lovelace UI.
Preparing and flashing NSPanel
I chose Tasmota as the main firmware in NSPanel Lovelace UI. Although it is possible to add an ESPHome component, I didn’t succeed with ESPHome and decided to configure Tasmota. That’s why I’ll tell you about this particular firmware.
So, let’s start with flashing Tasmota firmware to the ESP32 controller in NSPanel. If you, like me, have already installed ESPHome on this device, the easiest way is to “update” over the air (OTA). Go to the NSPanel web interface, select the previously downloaded firmware file from your computer at the bottom of the page and click “Update.” After about a minute, the device will reboot with the new Tasmota firmware.
upload firmware Esphome
If you still have the original “factory new” firmware, you will have to disassemble the NSPanel and download the Tasmota firmware using a USB device, sometimes called a TTL converter. I already told you how to do it in this article.
After flashing and rebooting the device, the microcontroller will not connect to your Wi-Fi because it does not know anything about it yet. It will create its own open Wi-Fi access point with the word Tasmota in the name. Then, connect your smartphone to the network and enter the address 192.168.4.1 in your browser, the temporary address of our NSPanel. Here you can choose your Wi-Fi network and save your password. Save the settings. After rebooting, the NSPanel will connect to your Wi-Fi. I highly recommend specifying a static address for our device in the router settings.
Configuring NSPanel with Tasmota firmware
The first thing to do is to specify a device template for Tasmota. To do this, go to the device’s IP address in the browser. In “Configuration,” click Configure Other and paste the following template code:
In Tasmota, go to Consoles > Manage File System and download the previously specified file.
Reboot your NSPanel.
Updating the Nextion screen firmware on NSPanel
Now let’s update the screen firmware. To do this, in Tasmota, go to Consoles > Console and, depending on the version, use one of the following commands:
EU Version: FlashNextion http://nspanel.pky.eu/lui-release.tft
US Version Portrait: FlashNextion http://nspanel.pky.eu/lui-us-p-release.tft
US Version Landscape: FlashNextion http://nspanel.pky.eu/lui-us-l-release.tft
Press “Enter.” The firmware download and screen flashing will start. Depending on the network speed, the process may take five minutes. Wait until the download is finished and reboot the device.
Setting up Home Assistant
Installing the AppDaemon plugin
The easiest way to install AppDaemon is through the Home Assistant Supervisor Add-on Store. It will connect automatically to your Home Assistant instance.
Adding the babel package to AppDaemon (optional)
To localize the interface (date in your language), add the babel package to your AppDaemon. In the AppDaemon settings tab, in the python packages field, enter the text “babel” and save the settings.
Installing Studio Code Server and Home Assistant Community Store
To configure the NSPanel Lovelace UI, you will need to edit the apps.yaml file. Editing yaml files will be more convenient in the Studio Code Server interface.
HACS is the Home Assistant community store that will allow you to easily update integrations and community automation through the Home Assistant web user interface. You will get notified about updates. You can install them by simply clicking a button. I already wrote about how to install HACS in my previous articles.
Install Lovelace AppDaemon Backend Application
Click on the Home Assistant web interface on the left menu bar on HACS.
Click “Automations” on the right panel.
In the lower right corner, click “Explore & download repositories.”
Type NSPanel and click NSPanel Lovelace UI Backend in the list that appears.
In the bottom right corner of the panel, click “Download this repository with HACS.”
Now a confirmation panel will appear. Click “Download” and wait for the download.
You now installed The Backend Application, and HACS will notify you when updates are available.
Configure MQTT on Tasmota and in AppDaemon configuration
First, set up a connection to your MQTT server in Tasmota.
Please fill in the “Topic” field as it will be in the configuration. Change “Topic” to something unique for your device, you’ll need it later in the appdaemon/apps.yaml settings.
Now configure the MQTT connection in the AppDaemon configuration file. Please add your MQTT server configuration, user, and password to appdaemon.yaml. Then restart the AppDaemon container after adding the MQTT configuration. You will find this file here: config/appdaemon/appdeamon.yaml
secrets: /config/secrets.yaml
Specify tasmota_your_mqtt_topic according to the topic used in the Tasmota MQTT configuration.
If your settings and configuration are correct, you should see the following screens on NSPanel:
Getting acquainted with an example of a complete NSPanel Lovelace UI configuration
Below, under the spoiler, you will find the full text from my NSPanel configuration file. Also, look at the images of several interface screens of my particular configuration. You can see the screensaver screen with the weather in the header of this article.
That’s it for today. See you!
P.S.
After pressing the switch button, the relay response time of the device with Tasmota firmware became a little longer than it was with ESPhome. Perhaps the reason is that NSPanel is waiting for a command to turn on the relay from Home Assistant. At the same time, in ESPHome, all the “magic” happens only in the device without waiting for a response from Home Assistant.
I changed Tasmota on the NSPanel and installed ESPhome with the Lovelace UI component. You can find the ESPhome configuration file in my GitHub repository at this link. I changed Tasmota on the NSPanel and installed ESPhome with the Lovelace UI component. You can find the ESPhome configuration file in my GitHub repository at this link. Now the switches are working quite lively and, frankly speaking, it is more familiar to me to configure ESPhome.
The owners of Mac computers can now not only control Philips Hue lighting by using voice commands or apps on their iPhones. There’s a new way now since the famous Hue Essentials, which launched onto Windows earlier, is now also available for Mac users.
You can download the app from the App Store for free though some features will be missing in the free version. You need to buy “premium” to get access to all features. The price of “premium” features is $6.12. Buying additional lighting scenes or support for multiple connected hubs at a time is also possible.
However, if you were using Hue Essentials earlier on an Apple device and made in-app purchases, you can restore them on a Mac since it is a universal app for iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and now Mac.
Controlling from the app should be the same as using an iPad. The UI is identical, excluding the side panel.
For now, I can’t tell you about my personal experience with the Mac version since Hue Essentials keeps crashing after launching without any errors. Since this also happens on another Mac, we’re assuming this is a common bug that will hopefully get fixed soon.
Today, I want to acquaint you with an intriguing device. It’s a Wi-Fi relay based on the ESP8266 controller, which is why it will be easy to add to your smart home. In the articles on the site, you have already come across devices from other companies that use ESP32\ESP8266 (for example, Sonoff.) ( 1, 2, 3 )
Shelly is a pretty new yet powerful startup from Bulgaria. The company’s devices earn a lot of European and Americal quality certificates, as well as various awards in the smart home field. Shelly has a market on AliExpress and its internet shop with prices in Euros. It has cheap delivery almost worldwide.
Today, this company has a powerful production. Shelly produces a wide range of relays, lighting devices, meters, switches and sockets, wireless buttons, and all kinds of sensors for the smart home.
The hardware part of Shelly 1
You can use Shelly 1 for both remote controlling your outlets and lighting. The advantage here is that you can control the lighting remotely (using an app) and the usual switch simultaneously.
As you can see in the photo, the device is compact. The main task in its development was to make sure that the device fits into an outlet box with an outlet or switch body. Let’s look at how engineers succeeded in this task. Below, there are two outlet boxes for plasterboard, one being deeper.
As you can see, in the first photo with a smaller outlet box, the body of an outlet or a switch will protrude about three to four millimeters. Take this into account when buying electrical before repairs. Also, find a place for wires. I must say, I used a standard outlet. There are also those whose body is slightly distant from the plane of the wall.
If you use switches, pay attention to the flex switch I already wrote about, its interior is very compact, and the switch won’t “look” out of the outlet box.
We see a deeper outlet box in use in the second photo. When using a case of similar size, there shouldn’t be any problems with free space for Shelly 1. Besides, you can place Shelly 1 in a regular mounting box.
One of Shelly 1’s wiring diagrams can be like this:
When mounting, note that the relay of the device can take up to 16A. As you already understood, you don’t need the switch to control the relay. Terminals “0” and “I” are relay outputs, and such contacts are named “dry” sometimes. It is because they don’t connect to the main logic circuit of the device. In theory, you can connect devices with a low supply voltage to such contacts and control the supply of voltage to such devices using Shelly 1. The supply voltage on the Shelly 1 relay should apply to the terminals “L” and “N.”
The device’s power supply voltage range is extreme, from 110V to 240V alternating current or 24-60V direct current. You can also change the power mode using a jumper on the case, and then the power supply voltage will be 12V DC. The jumper is under the plug, and getting to it can be quite hard.
There is a connector nearby where you can download custom firmware for Shelly 1, but I don’t think there’s much point in doing that. The fact is that Shelly allows you to unpair your devices from your cloud and enable local management. Such actions make it possible to control Shelly 1 from alternative smart home management systems, such as Home Assistant. In addition, you can control the relay even from the browser.
Configuring and managing devices in the Shelly app
Firstly, download and install the official Shelly application on your smartphone. Then register your account, which allows you to manage Shelly devices from anywhere in the world where there is access to the network.
To set up and add the device to your home, connect the wires as shown in the photo below.
Once turned on, Shelly 1 will create its Wi-Fi hotspot, and you can now connect and configure your device. To do this, select the “Add device” item in the menu. Once detected, you will see it in the list. Then you can add it to the necessary room or change the picture of the device.
To go to Shelly 1’s settings, click on its image in the “room window.” As you can see, the list of possible parameters is big. We can use the timer and schedule of the device. Below, in the “Cloud” section, we can disconnect the device from the cloud. In the “Settings” section, you will find the settings of Shelly 1 regarding the device behavior after power loss. There are four options for the status after power-on: “on”, “off”. “save state after power consumption”, and “according to the state of the switch”. In my opinion, this is a unique and quite useful feature. In addition, in the settings, there is an opportunity to indicate which switch you will use, keyboard (button, flex), or regular.
It is also interesting that we can choose what our relay will control, for example, an outlet or lighting.
In the settings, we can also reboot the device, remove it or reset it to factory settings.
Shelly 1’s web interface
To access the web interface of Shelly 1, you need to know its IP address. To do this, you can look at the address in the router settings. But, to not do it every time, you should set a static IP address for the device. The interface of the page is a bit like the interface of the application, but in my opinion, a larger computer screen will be more comfortable.
There are even more settings here than in the mobile version. One of the more interesting points in the web interface is the ability to enable and configure MQTT. But you are warned that turning it on will disable the cloud connection, which is not a huge loss when the possibility of controlling the device in alternative smart home systems appears.
Shelly 1 and Home Assistant
As soon as the Shelly device appears on your local network, Home Assistant will immediately “see” it.
All you have to do is confirm the configuration settings and choose a room for the device. By the way, the device that “flies” into Home Assistant is the same device you selected in the Shelly app. Now you can control the device with Home Assistant and the response time is almost instantaneous.
