I finally, FINALLY, got around to putting the parts for my home automation light switches up on the new SuperHouse online store. I thought it would be easy: just put up four products, with 1, 2, 3, or 4 buttons. But then I realised that Australian wall plates don’t suit many people, so I have to make them available as kits to fit into different types of wall plates. Then I realised that people may want different colour buttons, so I have to separate the breakouts from the buttons.
I’m in China visiting electronics parts suppliers and factories as part of the HardworX Shenzhen Innovation Tour, but today I left the famous Huaqiangbei electronics markets to spend some time at Maker Faire Shenzhen, the second largest Maker Faire in the world. This video shows a few of the makers exhibiting their projects. The faire itself stretches across a huge area and uses many buildings, and the basketball courts shown in this video are just one tiny corner of the event.
I’ve now arrived in Shenzhen, China, which is the electronics capital of the world. I’m busy recording video and taking photos so that I can show everyone what it’s like here in the most high-tech city in the world.
This was the view from my hotel room window when I arrived last night:
Click the image for a larger version. It’s worth it!
The octagonal building you can see to the left that disappears above the top of the photo is SEG Plaza, the heart and soul of the electronics industry here. Every other commercial building you can see in that photo (and going out many blocks in every direction) is directly related to electronics manufacturing. There are entire buildings full of nothing but LED vendors. Buildings for case manufacturers. Buildings for cell phone parts. Buildings for LCD panels, both bare (OEM) and retail ready, and every stage in between.
If you’re interested in electronics and you haven’t heard of Shenzhen or the Huaqiangbei markets before, the next few videos that I upload will be eye-opening.
In the last episode I showed you how to make an Arduino based, rack-mount home automation light switch controller. This time I’m showing you how to make the switches themselves.
More online documentation will follow soon: I’m about to jump on a plane to China so I’m starting this upload before I leave, and I’ll have to do the rest later!
For many years now my friend Karl von Moller has been interviewing people within the Australian electronics industry to build a picture of the state of the industry, and to report on where it’s going.
The latest chapter is now up on YouTube. It features many local engineers and Makers, including myself, so you can see what I looked like when I briefly had the start of a beard! Karl will be travelling to Shenzhen, China with me at the end of next week, and this episode is a prelude to what will be reported back after that trip. The video thumbnail is actually me watching my DIY pick-and-place machine populating an ESP-8266 based PCB, and much of the background footage (including footage of Angus from Espressif working on that same board) was recorded in my lab.
I’m finally taking the step of adding an online store to the SuperHouse site to make it easier to share parts for my projects. I often have people ask where they can buy boards I’ve designed for the projects in SuperHouse, so now I’ll be able to list them for sale.
I get the same comment over and over again about my home automation system: “Why didn’t you just put an ESP8266 in it and use WiFi? You’re living in the past! Wires make it so hard!”
Not so fast, my friend. This video explains why in many situations, wires beat wireless.
My home automation light switches have gone through a series of versions, starting with very complicated switches that all had Ethernet built in. Over time I’ve simplified the system so now the light switches themselves are electrically very simple: they’re just illuminated buttons on a breakout board with an RJ45 connector, and absolutely nothing else in them.
The switches connect to a pair of centralised light switch controllers over Cat-5 cable, so that it can detect when the buttons have been pressed and report events to MQTT.
In this episode I show some of the previous versions of my light switches, and then show how I built an Arduino based light switch controller.
There’s also a general introduction to the I/O breakout schema that I use at I/O Breakout. I’ll probably cover this in detail in a future episode because the same breakout shield will be used in other projects.
The light switches themselves are just illuminated buttons on a breakout board, mounted on a standard wall plate. The 4-button panel uses all 4 available data lines. The 3 and 2 button panels simply use fewer data lines. Click on the schematic for a larger version:
I didn’t spend much time in this episode explaining the current version of my light switches because I’m going to cover it in much more detail in the future. This episode is mostly about the controller.
Addendum: Chris Aitken has written a handy library to detect different button press events, such as single-press, double-press, and press-hold. This could be used to extend the functionality of the button controller significantly. Check it out: github.com/caitken-com/MultiFunctionButton
After years of using cheap lino cutting mats from the $2 shop, I’ve finally put proper ESD mat down on my electronics benches.
I wanted to use a nice blue mat, but Dave Jones (@eevblog) had a bad experience with discoloration so I decided to try plain grey instead. Hopefully this won’t end up going a strange green colour like Dave’s.
I got the mat from Oritech in Sydney. Their full range is listed here:
