General > General Technical Chat
Is this a joke? Remote-control light switch
Swainster:
A young engineer that I hired back in the day is the founder of switchbot. They have been very successful in Japan so he's now doing very well for himself. Not bad for such a simple concept.
MLXXXp:
Many (about 40) years ago we had a similar device for our Honeywell round thermostat. You removed the thermostat bezel and this battery operated box had a round cutout with a ring that clamped onto the thermostat dial. The ring was rotated by an electric motor. It had a time-of-day clock, so turned the thermostat into a programmable "setback" thermostat. There were also "up" and "down" buttons that allowed you to manually control the motor, to temporarily override the automatic settings.
It worked well and we used it for many years.
james_s:
It says he's a mechanical engineering student. This is a mechanical solution to the problem and was probably fun to implement.
EPAIII:
Three words:
Garage door opener.
hans:
--- Quote from: AlbertL on March 11, 2022, 10:49:23 pm ---Trying to be positive, I'm going to assume this was a strictly learning exercise in mechanical design: https://www.instructables.com/Remote-Control-Light-Switch-1/
--- End quote ---
Well, looks like a great home automation learning project. It still has the wireless bits on it.. the only thing that's missing is a relay. Instead, he made his own relay with a servo and the existing switch mechanism.
Ideal for rental places or shared rooms where access to electrical wiring is tedious. When moving out, putting back some frontplates is much easier than putting back all the original electrical switches (not to mention you don't have to cut power for a couple of plates if you're careful, e.g. a shared circuit in the student house).
It's obviously not as nicely integrated, can't work without power supply, etc. But whatever, if it works..
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