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Easy automation with Sonoff and Javascript

2021-01-04 by

Turn on and off your old electric heater with code. You can save money and lower CO2 with a bit of Javascript.


Easy automation with Sonoff and Javascript

Sonoff

Sonoff is a company that builds smart and cheap components (5$ - 40$), compatible with IFTTT softwares. Some competitors of Sonoff are first Shelly, but also Horsky, Kankun.... But in terms of Javascript, I only found something similar with Kankun, but was published 3 years ago. So don't count on it.

This blogpost will present Skydiver's ewelink npm module that worked great immediately.

Because I work on the heater, I bought the TH-16 version : with a 16 Amperes capacity with temperature sensor for 15$. Be careful to use the Sonoff TH Sensor-AM2301, other sensors are not working as well.

Sonoff basic

eWeLink, IFTTT, Alexa...

Now it's dirty. Though your mileage may vary, it's not working the right way for me. No way to put Alexa or similar at home.

The ewelink app (android or iOS) is needed and allows the Internet to find your device. You create an account on eWeLink, and they will register your device. Then you have a few options to set the switch on and off. But there are a lot of limitations. Either it's controlled by a min/max temperature, either by time triggers. Given a time, it will force on or off. It's not bad but not enough, with a poor UX.

My android phone and iPad have both eWeLink installed.

Both Sonoff tempratures differs

Well, you understand why I don't want to lean on the app .... Hopefully the results I get from the code are more consistent.

IFTTT means IF This Then That. It's not an open protocol, but more a private Saas tool much like Zapier. There is an Http API that allows us to control the devices. It's quite hard to follow, especially on how to access the device with your rights.

The code and the setup

The goal is to power on Lili's room, based on some constraints. If temperature is below 18 AND if it's the right moment of the right day, then turn it on. If not turn it off.

I just installed ewelink-api and dotenv packages, the latter to avoid hard coded passwords. There is some closed code about how to parse the ewelink responses.

require('dotenv').config()
const ewelink = require('ewelink-api')

const devices = {
    lili: process.env.LILI
}

const connection = new ewelink({
    email: process.env.EMAIL,
    password: process.env.PASSWORD,
    region: process.env.REGION // eu, us ....
})

let intervalId;
connection.getDevices().then(()=> intervalId = setInterval(work, 15*60*1000))

async function work() {
    try {
        const {temperature, power} = await liliStatus()

        if (temperature < 18 && !power && timeAndDayToPowerOn()) {
            console.log({temperature, power},"Powering lili on");
            await connection.setDevicePowerState(devices.lili, 'on')
        }else{
            if(power){
                console.log({temperature, power},"Powering lili off");
                await connection.setDevicePowerState(devices.lili, 'off')
            }else{
                console.log({temperature, power},"Nothing to do");
            }
        }
    } catch (e) {
        console.error(e)
    }
}

That's almost all the logic needed. More details are on this gist, that will probably improve this code.

So far so good.

The device is far from the wi-fi box, but it's still working.

up and running

Next step are to deploy this on Clever Cloud or similar. Maybe remove the loop from the setInterval function and run a GCP Function (aka lambda) with a cron.

Fun fact: if you keep setInterval in your cloud Function, you may thousands of dollars in stacked running lambdas.

The instructions are not stored on the device itself. It waits for external inputs to trigger on /off. I should save money, but the problem is that heat will depend on weather and now also on clouds.

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