Home Automation

The Wyze Cam is a very clever and small camera that connects to your WIFI and can be viewed from your mobile.

The Wyze Sense works with the Wyze Cam just like a door sensor, registering when the door is open or close.

You can configure the Wyze Sense to alert you via a push notification to your phone when:

- The door is being opened;

- The door is being closed;

- The door has been open for X minutes; and

- The door has been closed for X minutes.

The Wyze Sense has 2 pieces that need to connect in order to register a close connection.

In some cases, like my garage door, it wasn't possible to position the sensors in such a way to make connection when the garage door was closed.
I ended up putting the Wyze Sense on a hinch that falls away when the door opens and connects when the door closes.

Unfortunately, the Wyze Sense is not waterproof. It was designed to be for indoor applications.

By chance, a 29" bicycle tube is exactly the same size as the Wyze Sense.
I ended up wrapping the sense in the tube and it still works fine even in the rain.

The Sonoff switch works like a normal switch you have to power an appliance, but instead of manully switching it yourself you use a mobile app to switch appliances on and off.

The application has many functions e.g. a scheduler to switch appliances on and off at certain times or, with the Sonoff inching feature you can automatically switch the appliance off after some time.

Without wiring to any motor:

Both of these systems are controlled by a cheap Sonoff Switch.

To integrate with existing systems like a garage door motor or gate motor, you need to know what wires to connect to what parts.
This to me was always risky. I didn't want to end up replacing a very expensive motor because of a hobby I was trying out.

I therefor thought that if I could integrate with the remote that is already programmed to open the door, the worse that could happen, was the replacement of a remote and not an expensive motor.

So I opened up my remote and had a look at the button you press to open the gate.
Most buttons will look something like this:
To explain how the buttons work consider this picture:
If you press down on the button, it will connect the 2 red legs and the 2 purple legs.
So all we need to do is to connect either the red or the purple legs manually, without pressing the button. This is where we are using the Sonoff switch.
But the sonoff switch by default has a power output. We don't want a power output to go to the remote. We only want to open or close the connection to the red or purple lines.
There is only one extra component required in order to do that. It is called a Relay switch that you can pick up at any electrical shop.
How a relay works, consider this drawing:


A relay has 2 modes. Normally Open or Normally Closed.
Normally open - means that the connection will be open if you don't give power to the relay and close when you do.
Normally close - means that the connection will be closed if you don't give it power to the relay and open when you do.

We need the 2 pins on that switch to be open (not connected) until we want to switch it, then those 2 pins need to close (connect). So we will configure it in a normally open mode as the diagram shows.

Here is the full wiring diagram:


For 2 applications like the garage and the gate you will need 2 Sonoff switches and 2 relays connecting to the 2 buttons.

Because you want the button to be pressed and released after a second, you need to use the Inching feature on the Sonoff to do that.

Don't let the picture below scare you. I just allowed a lot of wiring in a small box.

With a single remote button using a DIY sonoff board:

The DIY sonoff board is not packaged like the normal Sonoff switch and you need some soldering to get it working.
The advantage of this is that you don't need any relay's. You will set the board in a Relay mode and wire it directly to the button as per the above project.

Consider the wiring diagram:

In the video below im using a sonoff contact switch, but I will explain below how to use a Wyze Sense to do the same thing.
Wyze just have so many features you can use for this application.

I have a generator that we use when we have power custs.
The problem was always to know when the power is back on because my entire home is running of the generator

I noticed that in South Africa we have a law that states that the switchover switch for a generator must have a light indicating the main power is on or off.

The Wyze sens basiclly consist of a glass tube with 1 borken wire inside. When a magnet is close to the tube, the wire connects, when it is taken away, the wire inside the tube disconnects.
This is the way the Wyze sense knows if the (door) is closed or not.

What we can do is to have a relay, powered by the main light, swithing the Wayze Sense.
Once we have the Wyze sense registering the change, we can have the Wyze app do anything like sending a push notification to my phone or sounding an alarm like the video above, indicating the mains power is back on.
Consider the wiring diagram: