Smart ceiling light fixtures on the budget
I have been working on this for some time now. It took me ages to get to the working prototype of ESP8266 smart ceiling light, mostly because I had no knowledge about electronics. Each time I wanted to do something, I had to open up Google and read few pages. Then it was Lua Script, and then some more. If you don’t know, the ESP8288 is a cheap WIFI module that let’s you do pretty cool things with it. The learning curve is steep, but here is what I have so far.
ESP8266 smart ceiling light
This is the v3 of the prototype, it’s clunky, not all the features are working just yet, but it confirmed my idea that you can retrofit WIFI lights without killing the manual switching. What’s even more awesome, this will work with any type of wiring. I had many ups and downs during this project. Nearly gave up completely when I discovered that UK light wiring is so much different to what we did back home. Fortunately, I Googled some more and I came up with some working solutions.
Functions:
- design that can be retrofitted to any lighting solution
- works with standing lamps, ceiling fittings, mains sockets, pumps, garage doors etc
- WIFI enabled access (for timers, voice control, web access and more)
- ability to hook up sensors
Now the best part. All this is available in sub $10 per room. The prototype is big, but all of them are. The final design should be slightly bigger than a matchbox. I will be covering the design in details later, once all the functions are available.
Please note this is very much work in progress. Once past the prototyping stage, I will make this look funky.
