The HA SwitchPlate is a user-programmable LCD touchscreen you can mount into a standard North American work box in place of a light switch. It connects to your home automation system over WiFi to send and receive MQTT messages in response to user interactions on the screen or events happening in your home. The result is an attractive and highly-customizable controller for your home automation system which you can build yourself!
The HA SwitchPlate ("HASP") utilizes a Nextion 2.4" LCD Touchscreen display mounted in a 3D-printed enclosure as a touchscreen panel for home control and information display. An ESP8266-based microcontroller provides WiFi connectivity and system control. The project has been developed to integrate with Home Assistant and OpenHAB but should be compatible with any other MQTT-enabled automation platform such as Domoticz, Node-Red, Wink, SmartThings, Vera, HomeKit, etc.
The Arduino code for the ESP8266 provides a generic gateway between MQTT and the Nextion instruction set. A basic Nextion HMI display file has been included with several pages of various layouts to provide user controls or to present information in response to MQTT messages sent to the device.
As this build requires some specialist skills and tools, I will occasionally be offering assembled devices for sale here.
To build a simple version of this project you will minimally need the Nextion display and the WeMos D1 Mini, 4 jumper wires, and a USB cable to power both devices.
A complete build that's ready to install will require the following components:
- Nextion 2.4" LCD Touchscreen display
- WeMos D1 Mini ESP8266 WiFi microcontroller
- 3D printed switch plate
- 3D printed rear cover
- Mean Well IRM-03-5 AC to 5VDC Power supply
- PCB
- 2N3904 NPN Transistor
- 1k Ohm Resistor
- 4pin 2.54mm JST-XH PCB header
- Rubber grommet
- 6" each of white and black 300V 18AWG stranded power cables
- Two M2 self-tapping 6MM screws (or just any 4-6mm M2 screws) to mount PCB in rear enclosure
- Four 20mm M2 flathead screws and four 3mm M2 threaded inserts to fasten both halves of the enclosure together
Check out the documentation to get started building your own HA SwitchPlate.