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? 2 connections only, one being live, the other to the load.Sonoff state that the minimal load can’t be less that 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 sustituted 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 DEAD easy.And now the on-off button works and of course – Zigbee2MQTT control – WELL, that was easy.
That 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 do various hubs.I already know that ZB-MINI works and I like this new visual interface.
A light on the switch would have been neat 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.
