I’ve got an antique lamp that needs a new switch knob, but then scope-creep happened and now I want to “smartify” it. I started off thinking that, since it has a metal body, I’d install a capacitive touch switch, but now it’s escalated to wanting to put an ESP8266 or ESP32 in it to handle the capacitive sensing, Home Assistant connectivity/control, and maybe even switching to some kind of low-voltage RGBW LED instead of a 120VAC Edison-base bulb (especially since I suspect I’d need some kind of antenna sticking out the top, since the metal lamp body would presumably otherwise block the ESP32’s signal).
The lamp, BTW:
(Apparently it’s a Genie lamp by Laurel Lamp Company, in case anybody cares. Also, the lamp shown is the same model, but it’s not my picture.)
I’m aware that the “easy” way would probably be to just screw a smart light bulb into the socket and wiring I already have, but (a) I’m picky about both avoiding “clouds” and using FOSS firmware, and I don’t feel like sorting through the junk on Amazon to figure out which ones can be flashed with ESPHome, and more practically (b) that wouldn’t let me turn it on and off just by touching the lamp body, which is what sent me down this rabbit-hole in the first place.
Anyway, I know this sort of thing can be done, but I’m not completely sure how. I know I could figure it out myself eventually, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask for advice in case somebody happens to be able to rattle off part numbers for the whole BOM off the top of their head, or knows exactly the right ESPHome howto to point me towards, or something like that. Any advice is welcome!
(In case it’s relevant: my level of experience is that I programmed an Arduino to run neopixels (WS2812 RGB addressable LEDs) once, I’ve flashed ESPHome on some Sonoff S31 smart switches, and I’m a software engineer by trade but have never worked on anything IoT related professionally.)
Is there a reason you wouldn’t want to just get a zigbee/zwave/wifi smart outlet switch?
That’s what I’m doing now (with one of my Sonoff S31s flashed with ESPHome), since I can’t use the mechanical switch. It’s not ideal because I would like to be able to turn the lamp on and off at the lamp (but in a “smart” way rather than mechanical) and the smart outlet switch is down behind a dresser where I can’t easily reach it.
The only real way I’ve found of doing stuff like this is another smart button or switch nearby. I use my buttons for whole groups of lights and toggles based on current state and whether you short/long/double click the button.
A single ESP32 dev board and a 120VAC-> 5V power supply module should be all the hardware necessary to read a touch sensor, talk to Home Assistant, and control RGBW LEDs. I figured the tricky bits would be (a) the software to get the three different functions to all run at the same time (I’m hoping that ESPHome might reduce that to a “configuration” problem instead of a “programming” one), and (b) finding a nice, bright, RGBW LED in a suitable form factor (one that isn’t a smart light bulb, but instead replaces the lamp socket itself).
I’m not really interested in solutions that require multiple microcontrollers or that aren’t actually better than using a smart switch or smart bulb.
