Sonoff Basic Touch Wall Switch In Wall

thingiverse

Edit 02/10/2018 - Added Touch-Decora(paddle)-Touch wall plate as I needed one anyhow. There have been some nice designs for converting a Sonoff Basic into a wall switch using different activation methods and toggle switch versions. See the "remix from" links for some sources. I remixed some of those to make a push button version, found here https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2703968, and have used that for some time. Even though Sonoff makes a touch plate version of their switch, I thought it would be fun to make my own version using Heltec HTTM-SCG capacitive touch switches that are about $3.40 US each. Along with a $6.00 Sonoff basic and a little plastic you end up with an under $10 US touch wifi wall switch. Plus you get to design your own wall plate if you want and make it unique. The box is a remix of a couple different versions out there. The core back of the box has been reused by a few designs, and any version of that should be usable if the front panel clips on, although I've included one here. The front plate is a remix / mix up of some others using the eared faceplate that I like better. The opening has been expanded to clear the touch switch that needs to be mounted to the switch cover panel. This makes it a little bit of a hassle to install but it works better as the touch switch needs to be flush up against the cover from my experiences. I use a basic connector off the Sonoff programming header that picks up 3.3v, GPIO14 and ground and connect that to the touch switch with standard Dupont connectors. From my experience, you WILL need a 10K pull DOWN resistor between GPIO14 and ground to hold the pin low when not activated since the touch switch pulls things high to activate and doesn't seem to pull the pin down. Otherwise I was getting flaky controls from my experience at least. Firmware wise anything that can be programmed to use GPIO14 as an input HIGH should work. I use my own MQTT firmware version in all my switches that allows different uses of GPIO14 as desired, but the standard pre-compiled versions should work. You may need to jumper the temporary action pins on the back of the touch switch unless you want the normal stay on / stay off output. See the spec sheet on the touch switch for details. One downside is you do need to have a custom cover plate but I've included some options here for single, dual and triple installs. These are jumbo jr sizes to cover a little more around the switch. I use a bit of hot glue to hold the touch switch to the plate but you could melt the plastic tabs a bit as well I would imagine. So far I like how this works better than a toggle or push button and will slowly replace the front plates and box fronts with touch switches around my house. Enjoy -Stephen