So I got my hands on a Sonoff dual relay which is controlled by a smart phone app.

Just thought it may help some fellow forum members when tinkering with systems? 

They are available form Communica but I got mine from http://www.smartkit.co.za because they had a grand opening special R200 for a 2 channel relay)

The smart phone app is free to download and I believe you can flash these units and reprogram them however you want.

If you have a look at youtube you will see that some people are using Amazon Alexa to voice control these relays. Also Sonoff has a handy little power meter (single phase small load)

Attached video for demo

I believe there are a couple of pins inside the unit which would allow you to wire in a switch to turn the relay on and off when you dont have WiFi - maybe this could be triggered by an inverter output relay

IMG_2602.mov

I tested it last night, was at a friends house and was on 3G on my cell phone.

I turned on and off without any issues, it was just like I was on my homes WiFi network.

Amazing how technology has advanced and has become so cheap and user friendly!

On 9/14/2017 at 7:35 AM, Noobie said:

So I got my hands on a Sonoff dual relay which is controlled by a smart phone app.

Just thought it may help some fellow forum members when tinkering with systems? 

They are available form Communica but I got mine from http://www.smartkit.co.za because they had a grand opening special R200 for a 2 channel relay)

The smart phone app is free to download and I believe you can flash these units and reprogram them however you want.

If you have a look at youtube you will see that some people are using Amazon Alexa to voice control these relays. Also Sonoff has a handy little power meter (single phase small load)

Attached video for demo

I believe there are a couple of pins inside the unit which would allow you to wire in a switch to turn the relay on and off when you dont have WiFi - maybe this could be triggered by an inverter output relay

IMG_2602.mov

Thank you for this!!!

Jay

Exactly what I have been looking for!!!!

For those who need to switch up to 4 "things", I got the ITE 4CH WIFI RELAY BOARD  from Communica.

http://www.communica.co.za/Catalog/Details/P3950181762

Be careful though, if you overwrite the factory software with your custom code like I did, switching "things" on & off from your cellphone is no longer possible.

Unless someone can send me the link of the original firmware

5 hours ago, Sidewinder said:

Unless someone can send me the link of the original firmware

What firmware did you use? Most of the custom firmware works with MQTT so all you have to do is get a free online mqtt account and subscribe to your account with your phone and you should be home free. 
But with mqtt the options is endless , ask me I have about 10 switches all over the place!

I wrote my own code,....well, lets put it like this, at least i tried, and it is working, sort of....(reading my geyser temp)

I could get MQTT going, but EmonCms would not give me anything, until I read about the fact that one need to enable mqtt_server = true somewhere in one of the emoncms startup files.

Once I did that, all hell broke loose, well,,, ICC reported "Err Uploading data" on the tread page. Took me a full day to get things sort of going again, Still have the ICC error, but at least emoncms is storing all my data again, and mqtt post via emoncms seems to be working nicely. But coding is not my forte.

Cool , seeing that the board is a ESP8266 you could also look at this project 
https://github.com/letscontrolit/ESPEasy
It has a whole host of options on it and if you have surplus gpio ports open chances are you could controls something else as well .  

 

On 9/19/2017 at 7:46 AM, Sidewinder said:

For those who need to switch up to 4 "things", I got the ITE 4CH WIFI RELAY BOARD  from Communica.

http://www.communica.co.za/Catalog/Details/P3950181762

 

Thanks! Ordered three boards.

Can anyone suggest how to make/buy "open" switch panels that can integrate with mqtt?

thanks,

Elbow

@Elbow have a look at this GitHub page .IMO Theo Arends is a legend. Will need to get a programmer to reprogram the switch but the info on the page is quite good. There is also some other firmware available but his seems to be the best I have used.