So I want to share what I did the last few months, yeah you got it right, months! Planning, modelling, getting parts, modelling, parts, modelling, getting equipment, modelling, parts, .... I wanted to start with home automation but all made by myself. I am using mostly iDevices aka iPhone, iPad and my wife has one too so the goal was to use the "Home" app from Apple to control physical devices. I found https://github.com/nfarina/homebridge a while ago and started to use it to control my remote controlled outlets for my 3d printers in connection with http://nodered.org and https://mosquitto.org. My goal was to control my two lights I have in the living room, one above the couch table and one for the dinner table, the two uprights left and right of my couch and the backlights in my glass cabinet where my TV is in. Also I wanted to keep 100% manual control of all devices, for the normal light switch I wanted to keep the covers I already had. I bought this (http://www.ebay.de/itm/371861363419) uprights from eBay a while ago, they are LED and controlled with a single button. I reverse engineered the control circuit, removed the controlling IC and replaced it with an ESP8266 and a DC/DC converter. Here are some pictures of the uplight control and installed to the uplight: After that I took care of the normal switches. I have "Busch & Jäger" (https://www.busch-jaeger.de) covers for my switches and I wanted to keep them. So I ordered an ESP8266 controlled relay from eBay fitting a normal wall mount in Germany. The project is also on Github: https://github.com/JanGoe/esp8266-wifi-relay But I had troubles mounting it behind the standard switch and also using the standard switches designed for 230V will make trouble when using the switch PINs powere with 3.3V from the ESP. So I decided to design my own mount and switch to use Omron micro switches. I attached the STLs for a double switch, I am still up to design a switch for only one relay, which I will need for the other rooms I am planning to remote control.
That's cool I'll have a look into it, thanks for the hint. Maybe an alternative for all the secret and firmware stuff I had to program and configure. So far it is working very well... But the printed hardware has to be done nonetheless...
BTW the LED uplights were dimmable with the one button and I remodeled that function with the ESP. So for the moment I have 100% WAF all devices are still controllable with hardware switches that act just the same as before...
Eeeh, I think you should be able to do that with a blynk slider as long as you can define voltage from a variable. I'm using it that way to specify the position of a servo by remapping 0-255 to 0-180 degrees. Edit: it's using PWM to control the servo so that should work for you too. Contained inside a 3D printed gear attached to the servo horn of course
Dimming is done with PWM. Previously the IC on the board of the uplight did that. I removed the IC and generate the PWM signal now myself with the ESP...
This blynk.... is that the app that want fuel for it's .... scripts? A nice youtube channel for the node-red, ESP stuff is Andreas Spiess he made this iotappstory.com where you can do OTA updates of your ESP devices is case you want to update your programming and you could share your programs.