I found this cheap smart WiFi switch on one of my favourite Chinese sites: the Sonoff Basic:

Sonoff Basic

And I thought: for a fiver, I’m not risking much, and it can supposedly be re-flashed with MQTT which I’ve grown found of recently (see Smart Christmas Baubles or Back-lit House Number if you want to know why).

Once received, I saw that indeed there was a header that could be used to flash the firmware. After a bit of search and from some of my readings on the Home-Assistant community site, I settled on the Tasmota firmware.

Now I have to say, at first the Tasmota Github website is quite daunting and complex, bit of a case of too much information kills information, but I eventually managed to get through it.

As I’m using Arduino IDE, I’ll trace the steps I had to follow in case someone else like me is a bit stuck.

First of all, I had to solder header pins on the Sonoff board to connect it to a PC and upload the new firmware. You’ll find everything you need to know in here

Then there were a few things that I had to do aside from downloading the code off Github. Now I have to plea guilty a bit as I simply downloaded the latest version and tried straight away. I say “guilty a bit” as it wasn’t obvious at first that there were more steps to follow when using Arduino IDE. So it’s worth following them else you may get the same error as I did: `MQTT_MAX_PACKET_SIZE is too small in libraries/PubSubClient/src/PubSubClient.h, increase it to at least 1000`

So here is the info: Arduino IDE

Once all that is done, flashing is a bit of a breeze (though I had to swap the RX and TX connectors on my 3.3V FTDI USB-to-Serial Programmer else it would fail to connect)

Once flashed, it was very easy to add it to Home-Assistant, especially when following info from the Github

Best of all is the control page when browsing to the Sonoff’s IP address:

Tasmota

I will definitely get more of these switches at this price.

My next project will be to add a DHT12 to it as it’s possible to wire one directly to the GPIO14 (on the header so easy) to add temperature and humidity data…

While I’m perfectly happy with the H801 LED Strip controller’s abilities, there were a few niggles that I didn’t like:

• The controller would always advertise as an access point, allowing “anyone” to connect as long as they knew the default SSID password (88888888)
• Communication is 1 way with no feedback
• The script I wrote to go through the colour spectrum was ran off the server and basically sending a command to the H801 over the WiFi network every 0.1 sec
• I had to create an on/off switch as well as 3 sliders to select the (RGB) LED colour

Knowing the H801 is based on the ESP8266 chip and programmable, I looked for a better solution and finally settled on corbanmailloux solution for the following reasons:

• The H801 is no longer an access point, making it more difficult to hack
• it’s MQTT “enabled” and offers 2 way communication
• It’s Home-Assistant compatible, and already includes support for RGB attributes via a colour picker and other effects
• It already has the function to loop through the colour spectrum; actually it has 2 of them at different speeds, plus the possibility to time colour transitions and a flash feature, for notifications for example

MQTT JSON Light on Home-Assistant

I used the code off the mqtt_esp8266_rgb folder. The only things I had to change in config.h were:

• LED colour pins to be compatible with the H801:

  #define CONFIG_PIN_RED 15
  #define CONFIG_PIN_GREEN 13
  #define CONFIG_PIN_BLUE 12

• change the WiFi settings and the MQTT settings

Because I use cloudmqtt, I also changed the MQTT port in the main `mqtt_esp8266_rgb.ino` file:

client.setServer(mqtt_server, 16306);

I followed the instructions on corbanmailloux git page to install Arduino and the relevant libraries, and I used the esptool from micropython to upload the firmware

I’ve now had enough time to play with my Kello and I’ve done enough integrations to share some updates.

Now Kello doesn’t have an API per se, but there are a few commands that can be used to communicate with it.

This enabled me to created a Kello interface on Home-Assistant so I can control my Kello remotely. Bonus: I can even do this when I’m not home.

The main interface is this one:

Kello on Home-Assistant

And here are some of the functions that I’ve achieved:

• When I stop the alarm, I then get greeted with the weather forecast for the day as well as estimated time to go to work
• I can play various radio stations, change the volume
• If for any reason the Kello loses WiFi connection, I get a notification email
• When I leave home, or when I set the house mode to “Holidays”, all alarms get deactivated
• When I reach home or when the house mode is no longer set to “Holidays”, all alarms are enabled

Here is a list of the commands I used to achieve the above:

Volume:

printf "\n0p40xx\r" | nc [Kello's IP Address] 4444

Where xx is the volume in hex (Dec from 0 to 100, so 0x00 to 0x64 in hex)

Muting all Alarms:

printf "\n0p231\r" | nc [Kello's IP Address] 4444

Unmuting all Alarms:

printf "\n0d231\r" | nc [Kello's IP Address] 4444

Play (online) Media:

printf "\n0p41uri:http\:\/\/cdn.us1.sunup.co\/files\/music\/sounds\/fireside.ogg\r" | nc [Kello's IP Address] 4444

Stop Media:

printf "\n0d41\r" | nc [Kello's IP Address] 4444

And don’t forget the IFTTT Integration for more automation, check my previous post on how do to this.

I have recently taken the plunge and jumped on the kickstarter wagon for the first time.
I successfully backed up a project called Kello.
And after months of anticipation, I finally received the product: a smart alarm clock:

Kello

Now not only does this alarm look good, but it’s also WiFi and IFTTT enabled and for me that was the major sales point. The plan was to integrate it with my automation setup.

I’ve only had it for about a month and already I’m really impressed with its prowess. The first thing I did was to connect it to IFTTT.

At the time of writing IFTTT is only a beta feature access needs to be requested ([email protected]). They are really responsive and I was granted access within 24h via the use of the TestFlight app on iOS

IFTTT integration currently offers 4 triggers:

• alarm_start: triggers when an alarm starts ringing.
• alarm_snooze: triggers when you press snooze.
• alarm_stop: triggers when you stop the alarm.
• alarm_soon_-1440, ..., alarm_soon_-120, alarm_soon_-6: the number on the right is the number of seconds before the alarm rings. Only use multiples of 60, up to 1440 seconds (24 minutes) before the alarm rings.

The other interesting bit is that the device can programatically be made to play online content with a one line piece of code:

printf "\n0p41uri:http\:\/\/cdn.us1.sunup.co\/files\/music\/sounds\/fireside.ogg\r" | nc 192.168.x.x 4444

The URL can be adjusted to play any online content (I’ve not tested all formats). The IP address needs to be the Kello’s IP address (best to set it to static on your router’s DHCP settings)

Armed with the above, I wanted to adjust my weather greeting script so as to play the audio on the Kello. The idea is to have the Kello play its set alarm sound to wake me up, then when I stop the alarm, a rule is triggered to play the weather forecast for the day (I pressed the stop button so I’m awake enough to pay attention to the forecast)

Here is how I did it.

1. IFTTT:
   1. Go to http://www.ifttt.com/maker_webhooks.
   2. Press on the gear icon on the top right of your screen.
   3. Copy your webhook ID (the text after ‘http://make.ifttt.com/use/’).
2. Home Assistant:
   1. Add the IFTTT integration to your configuration:
      
   2. Don’t forget to copy/save your webhook URL, you’ll need this later
   3. Add a new shell command to your configuration.yaml file. Replace the IP with your Kello’s IP address and replace the URL with the address of the weather forecast sound file you want to play (this is created and uploaded separately)

      shell_command:
      weather_on_kello: printf "\n0p41uri:http\:\/\/cdn.us1.sunup.co\/files\/music\/sounds\/fireside.ogg\r" | nc 192.168.x.x 4444

3. Kello App:
   1. Go to the settings.
   2. Press ‘IFTTT’.
   3. Paste your webhook ID.
4.  IFTTT:
   1. Create a new Applet.
   2. For the if THIS condition, choose Webhooks.
   3. Click on Receive a web request
   4. For the Event Name, choose one of the event as listed earlier on. I chose alarm_stop
   5. Click on Create trigger
   6. For the then THAT action, choose Webhooks.
   7. Click on Make a web request
   8. Enter the following details:
      1. URL: your Home Assistant IFTTT Webhook (you will get this when you setup the IFTTT Integration in HA, see 2.1 above)
      2. Method: POST
      3. Content Type: application/json
      4. Body: { “action”: “somekeywordgoeshere”}
   9. Click on Create action
5. Home Assistant Automation:
   1. Create a new automation. The needed trigger will be:

  trigger:
    - platform: event
      event_type: ifttt_webhook_received
      event_data:
        action: somekeywordgoeshere

(*): To be able to receive events from IFTTT, your Home Assistant instance needs to be accessible from the web. This can be achieved by forwarding port 8123 from your router to the device running Home Assistant.

My next “project” is to mute or stop an alarm from playing if for any reason I’m not home so I don’t disturb anyone. Check this post to see how I did it