HASwitchPlate Project

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 assembled hardware is only part of the overall solution - you will need an automation platform that can send and receive the appropriate MQTT messages for this device to do much for you. The project includes extensive automation examples for Home Assistant and OpenHAB, but one will need to be able to modify the examples provided in order to make this device fully functional in your own environment.

The hardware design as presented here should be complete. Source files for everything included can be found on the GitHub repository and I strongly encourage users to try building their own - it's a fun project to build and complete build documentation is provided! Still, it does require some special tools and I'm hoping to build a handful to help those out who may not have the hardware experience or access to tools to try this device out.

NOTICE TO POTENTIAL BUYERS!

• This device does not switch your lights on and off (but it can help you tell your switches to switch lights on and off)
• Like most smart devices, the HASP needs AC power with neutral and hot.

Please understand that this is not a product you're buying from Best Buy that will automatically do all the things you want it to do. To make any use of this, you're going to need to do some leg work! At a minimum, you're going to need to understand how to use a text editor, edit automations for your home automation platform, and generally deal with this project as if it was a DIY project. It isn't an Apple product, and that's by design. This is a tool for tinkerers and developers and people who want total control over their home and who are willing to dig into some new concepts in order to make it happen. If this doesn't sound like you... that's OK but this project might not be a great fit.

About this product

This device is 3D printed on a well-maintained Prusa I3 Mk2.5S and the results are pretty good. The front surface of every unit will be smooth and high quality. Rear surfaces will be printed at higher speed with slightly lower quality as they will live their life buried in your wall. The end result isn't quite injection molded, but it's close and it should look great on your wall. The front surface, while smooth to the touch, may have small just-barely-visible lines due to the FDM 3D printing process. The front surface and LCD panel can be wiped clean with a damp cloth.

The complete Bill of Materials is available along with links to each product to build your own. Each HASP costs around $35 in raw materials when purchased in large-ish quantities. Building a single device will be closer to $50. The $65 price tag here covers shipping and my time to hand-assemble each device.

Tested in North America only!

This is only shipping to North America, not because I want to be a jerk, but because work boxes are different dimensions around the world and this almost certainly isn't going to work without substantial modification outside of NA. The source files for the PCB and enclosure are available on the GitHub repo, so if you have the time and skill to make a version that will work in your country, feel free to contribute a pull request!