This is brand new to me so bear with me… first off the ORB-ZBW1L Zigbee Smart Wall Switch (no neutral required).This is a neat looking wall switch.Sonoff also sent me 2-way and 3-way adaptor plates.
These will vary in different countries, mine are for Spain.Looks pretty standard to me – indeed this looks like it contains a variation on another Sonoff no-neutral switch – not sure I want to take it apart to find out and of course it will work with the eWeLink app, but let’s see if at this stage it will work with Zigbee2MQTT? There are only two connections: one live, the other to the load.Sonoff state that the minimal load can’t be less than 3 watts – which makes sense given that these devices draw a slight load to function.
Nothing new there apart from look and feel? To test, I put the switch between a power plug and a 12W LED light… and tried manual on-off – no dice.There’s a green light flashing at the back of the switch – I guess it needs pairing first.In at the deep end – add it to Zigbee2MQTT.
After a typical set of weird messages – I noted “accepting join from device 0xc4xxxxx85c” – I went in and subsituted a friendly name – zbw1l – AHAH, I knew it – a Sonoff ZB MINI inside..See my article about the ZB Mini and you’ll get all the information – but really, this was remarkably easy.And now the on-off button works and of course – Zigbee2MQTT control – WELL, that was easy.
The Zigbee2MQTT I’m using is the version added and maintained within Home Assistant with the spiffy new interface but of course you can use Zigbee2MQTT on a Raspberry Pi and control with Node-Red or whatever.If none of that interests you, there’s always the eWeLink app.Control from anywhere but you need a hub – Sonoff also offer various hubs.
I already know that ZB-MINI works and I like this new visual interface.A light on the switch would have been nice but you can’t have everything it seems.Mounting screws are provided.
I have the Orb-MW1 Matter over WiFi Wall Switch and the Orb-RBS – Matter over WiFi Roller Shutter Wall Switch – I’ll talk about them soon.Same look and feel.By the look of it, what we have here is existing Sonoff modules embedded in lovely new wall switches casings.
Very quickly – The Orb-Rm1 – is Sonoff’s MiniR4M-E (and responds as such) in the new Orb casing – same as the Orb-ZBW1L.So – the front is identical to the previous device and around the back – we have: Simple – adding this unit (which unlike the Orb-ZBW1L) DOES need neutral to the eWeLink app again takes seconds – simply scan the QR code with the app – which then asks which WiFi access point to use – and that’s it – done.The Orb-Rm1 is a simple local/remote on-off switch with optional timers, schedules and loop timers.
For me, the Orb-ZBW1L is more practical because it doesn’t require neutral – but if you have neutral available at the wll switch location then it’s fine.For Home Assistant integration, I simply had to go into the HA eWeLink integration, ADD DEVICE, enter my eWeLink email and password – done – added.Both the device and it’s status sensor were added to HA.
