Completing a circuit with battery switch

That's probably why no company has gone out and made one yet. :smiley:

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Just need the right company with a foothold in the business already, such as IKEA or Philips. I'd never try to make a business out of something like a Zigbee shade, but when you're talking their volumes, as niche product has a much lower risk factor.

There is business side issue in bringing product into market. As a hobbyist, I have no comments.

Technically, there is its own challenge. I found a "bistable" valve. It worked well for what I need with the valve. For op needs, we also need to find a good "bistable" relay as well for this to work. Bistable relay maintain its state without any power. The power is needed only during state transitions.

If you use 2000maH battery capacity (recharge-able NiMH or Akaline), your typical arduino relay (nob bistable) would not work. It will consume a few miliamps while it is in latched state. You will only get a few months of usage at best. Using lithium is not an option as well since lithium with its protection circuit is already use tens of micro-amp of self discharge.

In order to bring battery life time to years, on average, you need to bring the whole system to use current in tens of micro amp on average.

It is reasonably easy with modern MCU today to bring your current consumption to tens of micro-amp level of usage. However, with the whole system with the relay, network radio, power regulator, and etc, it is still quite of a kungfu to achieve micro-amp current usage as a whole. People who does the timer hose (orbit) has done so for very long time. They have the expertise. But, it is still quite a challenge for mom and pop hobbyist.

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Close. It's Zigbee. If you can power an LED, you can change the state of a latching circuit.

https://www.joybuy.com/product/650228043.html#tab-detail

That’s a good find! This could be hackable... no idea if it would work with Hubitat though...

Yes, that's the unknown. Have to buy one and take a chance. Looking for a lower price now. Even if it does pair and stays connected, I can't write drivers or code at all for that matter. So if there isn't anyone with that ability interested in this too, then I end up with a very expensive battery powered light.

@BobbyD any ideas if this device might work with hubitat ?

Maybe I can somehow detach the buzzer which can be triggered on demand and wire up some sort of relay...

What do you tube ?

If you don't want to wait 35 days for shipping and don't mind paying $3 more, it's also available on Amazon.

EDIT: Sorry, that's the wifi version. #amazonfail

That's a ST arrival sensor, right? If you beep it constantly, it' doesn't last all that long. And if you want to maintain the connection to your battery, you'd need to hold the beep on, which the buzzer on that won't do.

I ended up using an IKEA color bulb at the lowest level dark orange instead. Works fine so I don’t need to mess with battery devices.

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How did you go about using the bulb to complete a circuit?

Oops, replied to the wrong thread. I was looking for a battery powered Zigbee light. Only Semi-related. For the lighting application I needed the IKEA bulbs worked out. For the battery powered switch, probably what Iman’s son built is one of the better solutions. Hubdino with a latching circuit should work well too.

Hubduino won't work with a battery. Hubduino keeps the radio on 100% of the time so your battery would be dead in about an hour. The reason there are no battery powered switches is that in order for them to receive commands, they have to keep their radios on. That's kind of the point.

Wouldn't you call this an example of a battery powered switch?
https://www.joybuy.com/product/650228043.html#tab-detail
And this?
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Orbit-Iris-Hose-Faucet-Water-Timer-Works-With-Iris/50140356

So examples exist and stateless switches do not have significant draw, so it can be accomplished quite easily. It must be out there. We're missing something or the obvious idea is lost on everyone.

Actually no. Because #1, i don't know the response time on the Orbit. If it takes 10 seconds to turn on then it is turning on every 10 seconds long enough to checkin with the hub, which is what batter powered motion sensors do to report temp anyway. That its a switch in any sense of the word.
and #2, I don't know the battery life on that $36 light from some chinese company I've never heard of. If you want to buy me one, I'll report back how they are at being controlled and how long the batteries last. Also, it says that it is controllable through a PIR. How do you know you can turn it on with Zigbee? You might only be able to change the color that the device will use when the pir triggers it to be on.

image

So, no, I would not call this light a zigbee switch.

And the more I look at the orbit, the only thing you can control with the wifi units are their time schedules. And you have to have a hub connected to your network. So, that is where the timer lies which is what you are interacting with, not the device itself.

Now that I look at it a second time, I agree. It sounds as though it may be a connection for the motion sensor or status. Last one if you're more currious than I about the Orbit response time.

Well, from the back of the device:
image

You cannot turn the host on on-demand except for manually on the device itself. You can simply set schedules and bypass automatically if rain is called for. That means that the device checks in every so many hours or minutes and is not a constant on connection you need for an actual switch. Thank you for proving my point. :smiley:

And a door lock? That seems to engage a motor. Why not a solid state relay?

How many batteries do you have in your door lock? I also don't have a smart lock so i don't know the response time on those either. If it is waking up to check in every minute, then that's 60 seconds of delay for a switch.

Don't you think that if there was an easy way to do it that folks would have come up with one? It would eliminate all of these switches having to have a neutral. If it's not powering from the mains voltage then there's no need for the switch to have a neutral, just line and load. But all of these switches do have to have a neutral because they have to be powered off mains because they are power hungry.

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:neutral_face: What self respecting home automation enthusiast doesn't have a smart lock? :wink:

That's innovation in a nut shell.