digiblurDIY

Check out these two videos we did on Zigbee fundamentals - Video #1 - Video #2   I reviewed the Sonoff Zigbee Bridge a few months ago in a video and was excited to see it had an ESP82xx chipset onboard.  This meant there was a glimmer of hope it could be flashed with open source local control firmware such as Tasmota !  That time has come!  The genius developers with Tasmota have done their magic again.  An inexpensive device you can add to Home Assistant as a Zigbee controller.  No YAML, no custom plugins, no MQTT.  One of the major advantages is being able to place it closer to your Zigbee devices which is especially helpful if you have your Home Assistant box in the basement or buried back in some closet.  Behold the ZHA Integration below. UPDATE March 2021:  iTead also is now selling their  USB 3.0 dongle  that uses the same chip as the Zigbee Bridge.  It is preflashed with correct firmware out of the box that can also b...

In an upcoming video on the DIY Smart Home series, we planned to "smartify" the garage door and, of course, it had to be local control without all the fees and ever changing nonsense and security issues that the cloud brings.  One option we picked up was using the Sonoff SV to try, but as an alternative the Moes version of the garage door opener is easy to install.  Out of the box it does come with Tuya/Smart Life firmware, but of course we wanted to get rid of that, and put open source local control software such as Tasmota on it.  Moes Garage Door Opener on Amazon At first glance you might be thinking that someone simply took a Sonoff basic, added a couple wires, and repackaged it; unfortunately that isn't true.  If it was as easy as a Sonoff Basic, we probably wouldn't be writing this article on how to get it to work with Tasmota.  It does have a Tuya module inside, and as of the writing of this article, Tuya-Convert does work on the device.  But before...

Two switches shown in the video: Martin Jerry Switch Martin Jerry Dimmer Did a rather short (sarcasm) live stream showing the process to break open the smart switch, identify features, flash tasmota, setup the template, etc. It was my first time doing this switch model and first time doing the real live stream. I also showed the bonus of the very cool new dimmer switch I've been working with on and off. It's very close and works out of the box right now as it is with a few Tasmota rules. Had a lot of fun and let me know if you'd like to see more of these (hopefully shorter next time!)