My advice, place it near your light or anything hide away near the thing you want to control.

The DB is too cramp for the sonoff.

Wiring is much more easy at the device side than the DB for sonoff.

pasang and forget .....what do you want to play summore?

I always have this kind of thinking that smart home thing or high tech thing have many thing to play around. Squeeze around.

Otherwise people put so much effort on it, not just for pasang and forget.

I have a more complicated thinking.

smart home is fun if you have controller and other sensors, for example,

1. Turn on car porch lights when some body in and only at night or sky is dark
2. Turn on lights/aircond when you come back home, and turn on amp to play classical music
3. Turn off all lights/appliances except fridge when nobody at home

but its called home automation - means everything automatic....no need to mess around....

I know it fun. But I m tired with the maintenance. Troubleshoot with the device that not work.

Now concentrate on power saving and converting light to dc led.

I think I mess around too much.

Some how I expecting too much from a simple "smart thing".

Messy wiring in my brain.

Home automation is smart home key features

If you want it to be simple, you need to pay a premium price, control4, apple homekit probably will make it simple

Actually I m old thinking.

Smart home now is pretty easy to install now. Less wiring and smaller.

I always follow smarthome tech. Even don't feel like to install in my home.

I am controlling down light at plaster ceiling, that is why feel a bit hassle if do it near the light.

The smart home is not about the control device over app, is the preset if .. then.. else condition that make your home smarter. Now we have 2 platforms amazon echo and apple home to mix use of varies smart devices. And the cost will be lower. Forget about control4 unless you staying in mansion.

Amazon echo (alexa) is not really a smart home hub, it can't do IF-THEN-ELSE, you needs IFTTT to integrate with Alexa. Amazon is a voice assistant, it simplify the trigger of series actions.

on the other hand, Smartthings has smart app that can do any logical operations that enable any kind of home automation.

So still need android for bridge? I thought it can be skipped when using with smartthings

For your TC2 switch, it does have 2 differrent commands right?
If the lights are already turned off & if you were to send off command again on the broadlink app/alexa.
Would it simply turn on the lights or it still remains off?

The light will on

1. It is possible to use broadlink without Android RM bridge, but, it needs to run python to send commands, and python integration with smartthings is not straight forward, so I don't use it.

2. It will remain off, for broadlink TC2, each on/off commands has different RF code, so when it is off, sending off command won't trigger it on, likewise, if it is on, sending on command won't trigger it off.

This post has been edited by Kiding: Apr 29 2017, 09:22 PM

Broadlink TC2 is using RF433Mhz one way signal transmit. If the software status is on, then someone physically switched off the light, the status in the software still remain as ON. There are no such as different RF code, broadlink RM pro can support RF433MHz, IR and RF315mhz

Why you guys sound like so difficult for a smart home?

I thought nowaday is pretty easy to install and operate ?

It is mayb broadlink by china, smartthing by korean, echo dot by amazon american, they have own ego. 😂 They dont communicate & we need to work around for them to put together.

You guys create the problem out or what?

I watched many smart home YouTube and mostly are pretty simple to do and operate.

Watch a lot this guy in YouTube --> DIY smart home guy. He review, teach to install a lot of smart home device. Doesn't look complicated.

Another is superhouseTV by Jonathan oxer. He is more hardcore.

Different Manufacturers use different wireless protocol (I m referring to the wireless Smarthome) , Zigbee+, Z-wave (different country different bandwith),Enocean, digitalize RF433 Mhz, RF433Mhz (normal RF, just like your ceiling fan remote control) RF315 Mhz.

Even fall under same wireless protocol, different chip manufacturer have different performance, like NXP, Qualcomm etc.

For a consumer now have to choose a smart home device that can work pretty well on its own apk, api and also can integrate with other platform.

Now the most popular platform is Amazon Echo and Apple homekit.

So you have to puzzle out what you would like to have for your smart home.

This aim not create the problems, you have to think that your smart devices are work for your family, unless you are single (you will find out that most of the feature in the smart home like pointing to a house that only have one human being )