SonOff Low Cost Wifi Switches for Home Automation

air

Also I never said it was exclusively intended for use with blinds, hopefully you are familiar of the concept of an example.

2011

air wrote: »

Inching was absolutely intended for blinds, motors etc, the clue is in the name!

Says who???
Why would the manufacturer want to limit it's application, it makes no sense??
There is a reason that it can be set to longer durations than blinds would require.

air

2011 wrote: »

Says who???
Why would the manufacturer want to limit it's application, it makes no sense??
There is a reason that it can be set to longer durations than blinds would require.

Who said the manufacturer wanted to limit it's application?
You're jumping to an awful lot of conclusions and doing a lot of misquoting since you jumped in here.

I'm just giving background as to how the feature came about to help explain why there could be limitations in the software around it.
From a quick search I found the following definition of inching:

The definition of jogging or inching as described by NEMA is “the quickly repeated closure of a circuit to start a motor from rest for the purpose of accomplisiing small movements of the driven machine.”

I acknowledge and welcome the fact that Itead have responded to user feedback and extended the time limit on it to allow for alternate applications.

However the fact remains that the feature was introduced to allow for control of motorised doors, blinds and the like that require momentary operation.

2011

air wrote: »

Also I never said it was exclusively intended for use with blinds

I read it that you were suggesting this, now I see that you are not

Who said the manufacturer wanted to limit it's application?

You said Inching is really intended for motorised blinds this sounded limiting to me.

air

If you need further convincing, you can feel free to take a look at the inching specs here:
https://www.sonoff.in/Sonoff-4CH-Pro-4Gang-Inching-Self-locking-Interlock-WiFi-RF-Smart-Switch
You can see that at one time the maximum inching duration was 4 seconds.
The intention was to be able to tap the button within the app to run the likes of blinds things up and down in small controlled increments.

air

2011 wrote: »

I read it that you were suggesting this, now I see that you are not

You said Inching is really intended for motorised blinds this sounded limiting to me.

What a perfect example of quoting out of context you have provided us with.

If only you had quoted me completely, readers could see that what I actually said was:
Inching is really intended for motorised blinds and the likes.

Motorised blinds is just one of a limitless number of possible applications that would benefit from inching type control.

Honestly I'd report you were it not for the fact that you are the moderator.

I don't see what value any of this is adding to the thread.

2011

air wrote: »

What a perfect example of quoting out of context you have provided us with.

If only you had quoted me completely, readers could see that what I actually said was:
Inching is really intended for motorised blinds and the likes.

Calm down, it was a simple misunderstanding. My bad.
I did not consider a boiler or immersion to qualify as "the likes".

Honestly I'd report you were it not for the fact that you are the moderator.

Being a mod doesn't make me any less likely to misinterpret a post than anyone else. You should always report anyone that you think deserves reporting

I don't see what value any of this is adding to the thread.

You are right, sorry!

air

2011 wrote: »

Calm down, it was a simple misunderstanding. My bad.

We all misunderstand occasionally and my own initial reply could have been better written, I was on my phone outdoors.
The selective quoting however just added insult to injury to be honest.

2011 wrote: »

I did not consider a boiler or immersion to qualify as "the likes".

Nor would I, the use of the inching function for these applications is typical feature creep.

This feature was never originally intended to be used for this type of application, hence it's limitations in those use cases.

I was explaining the original basis for an inching function to help explain why the developers would not have not included state restoration upon power on.

The function was originally included for motor drives etc.

A user that had it hooked up to a garage door for example wouldn't be happy if they left home during a power cut and came home to find the door wide open due to a mistaken power on setting.
No motive controller would ever be configured to be powered on following a mains failure.

Bruthal

Inching control would likely be motor control based alright. Later uses as heating boost etc are likely due to user requests for longer times.

I have not used any microcontrollers which did not have their own clocks of one sort or another. Crystal oscillation counters etc. Its needed for the operation of the chip. So time based functions can run independent of connection to internet.

The inching function goes into off position on power loss and reset even if the device is set to power on when powered up, as would be expected for normal inching uses.

Bruthal

air wrote: »

In totally offline mode it would have no means of the knowing how long the inching had run.
It has very little memory on board and all the history etc is stored on the server.

The inching runs perfectly fine if the device loses contact with the internet while an inching command is ongoing, or even if the network disappears.

If you mean by totally offline, that if the device powers off, then it is still easy to keep note of a timer status by writing it to the chip eprom, but no need anyway, as the inching would not want to continue on repowering up.

Stoner

I use it on a couple of things to replicate a button press.

It's perfect for access control release mechanisms to open locks or to open an electric gate.


Interesting I had a situation similar to what we are talking about here.

Years ago I had a lightwaverf relay to open my gate.

I'd it hooked up to Alexa.

It ran a schedule of

Open gate+ 3 sec timer+ close gate

The Alexa channel could access lightwaverf sequences so in this case one command ran three instructions from the lightwaverf hub to the lightwaverf relay.


Anyway it worked, I never really used it, it was more about doing it I guess.


I took out the Alexa speaker and moved to Google speakers.

The Google access to the lightwaverf channel was inferior to Alexa's. It could access schedules . So you had to tell it to open and tell it to close again.

I forgot all about it. I was getting some work done on the gate and the engineer disabled it, he was struggling with something holding the contact open, a problem with my work due to a cloud based reset from lightwaverf that changed the state of the relay and held the gate closed.

Anyway that was then.


I replaced it with a sonoff.

At the time the Low voltage sonoff was not available. I have some of them now, but you can slice the boards on the older gen 1 sonoff units to make them volt free on the output.

Mains in with volt free out.

Anyway long story short.

One instruction is sent to the sonoff.

This turns on the gate, runs an internal timer for 2 seconds and then closes the gate.

So it's fine for this type of thing

It's also fine for iot operations like using your ring doorbell to turn on a security light for 30 seconds.

It's great as with stringify gone and Google messing with home assistant it's nice that the hardware has its own timers.

It can only work with this on or off. You can't operate it like a regular sonoff with on off control. So if you want a timer you are stuck with it

It definitely only needs one instruction to run. Once activated it does not need to connect to the server or a hub like lightwaverf does to turn off.

When it is powered down mid timer, it does not continue mid timer when it gets power back. It acts as if all timers have timed out.

air

Bruthal wrote: »

The inching runs perfectly fine if the device loses contact with the internet while an inching command is ongoing, or even if the network disappears.

Yes I would expect so, I was talking about the limitations when power is lost.

Bruthal wrote: »

If you mean by totally offline, that if the device powers off, then it is still easy to keep note of a timer status by writing it to the chip eprom, .

Of course, but Itead are really running close to the wire in terms of the available memory on the boards as far as I know.

Bruthal wrote: »

but no need anyway, as the inching would not want to continue on repowering up

Exactly, this was my main point. I only got into the details as I was forced to provide an argument to explain that the inching function was intended for ... inching.

thatwilldopig

Off topic but does anyone have issues with devices going off line intermittently. Open app try to turn off light, device offline comes back online 60 seconds or so later.?

Bruthal

thatwilldopig wrote: »

Off topic but does anyone have issues with devices going off line intermittently. Open app try to turn off light, device offline comes back online 60 seconds or so later.?

The odd time but not much. You could try changing wifi channel. An app on phone can show the channels in use nearby.

whowantstwoknow

Hi all,

I'm wondering if these would be any use for the following set up... I have an old av receiver. I'd like to turn this on/off when the android box is turned on/off. The box sends power to its USB ports when on. So can I do something from that to control the receiver?

Thanks
W.

Stoner

whowantstwoknow wrote:

I'm wondering if these would be any use for the following set up... I have an old av receiver. I'd like to turn this on/off when the android box is turned on/off. The box sends power to its USB ports when on. So can I do something from that to control the receiver?

So trigger is ??
Power off on the Android box

And the action output is a sonoff mains switching the mains to the amplifier?

Stoner

Not sure how to do it with USB, or how an AV receiver is getting USB power from an Android box. Anyway I must have it wrong.

Do you mean that the fact that power is present at the USB ports could be a trigger itself ?

But if you've a sonoff on a 13 amp fused at 10 amps 4 gang extension lead.

You could have an iot button press of some sort to turn it on and off.

Or do it from your phone or voice assistant, or add an IFTT button press on your phone to Power on and off both at the same time.

whowantstwoknow

Basically the power to the receiver is controlled by a switch. Only when power is detected from the Android box USB port is the switched closed and thus powering the receiver.

Thanks
W.

Villan11

Anyone know how to update devices for daylight savings? My timers are all an hour out.

antietam1

Anyone still using Sonoff, got the new th elite with the lcd? screen.

Not bad at €19

VinLieger

Looking to get a wifi immersion switch replacement for my bath/sink and immersion on/off switch, ive read previously sonoff is a possibility but have no idea what I need to get any help appreciated.