Hi! Today we’re going to talk about the Adaprox
Fingerbot, a small but powerful device that can turn your traditional appliances into
smart devices. And the best part is, you can connect it to
Home Assistant using Zigbee. In this video, I’ll show you how the Fingerbot
works and how to set up and use the Fingerbot with Home Assistant. Let’s dive into this! A
couple of months back, I published this video in which I showed some Switchbot products
and how you can use them in your home. One of those products was the Switchbot bot
that can be used to automate dumb devices in your house. Today I’m going to show you a device that
looks a lot like the Switchbot Bot, but has one big advantage that the Switchbot Bot does
not have! This Fingerbot that is sent to me by Adaprox,
is a small robotic finger that can press buttons, switches, and other physical controls on your
appliances. It’s powered by a CR-2 battery and can be
controlled through a mobile app. You can even set up schedules and automations
to make your appliances work on their own. At the end of the video, I will give you my
opinion about these kinds of devices. The Adaprox Fingerbot can be connected using
the Linkoze Smart Gateway or straight into Home Assistant. The Linkoze Smart Gateway can be used to connect
Bluetooth and Zigbee devices so that you can control them with the MeshHub app. To connect the Fingerbot to the Linkoze Hub,
you need to install the MeshHub app on your phone. You have to scan the QR code on the package
to add the Hub to the app. After the Hub is found, you need to enter
your Wi-Fi credentials to connect the Hub to your network. After that, you can add the Fingerbot to the
app by putting it in pairing mode and adding it as a Zigbee device. When the Fingerbot is added to the app, you
can control it using the app and change a lot of settings. You can select different modes. The click mode just clicks a button. The switch mode switches the button down and
up and in the program mode, you should be able to program several actions one after
the other. I couldn’t get the program mode to work
myself. It seems that there was a little bug in the
app when I tested it. What I like about this Fingebot is that it
has a touch button on it, so that you can also control it with your finger and you do
not always need to use the app to control it. You can turn that off using the touch control
toggle. And there are options to set the down and
up movement percentages so that the Fingerbot doesn’t apply too much pressure on the knob
of your device. When you connect the Fingerbot to Home Assistant,
it will lose all the settings that you have set up in the app and you cannot configure
those settings in Home Assistant. To connect the Fingerbot to Home Assistant,
you’ll need a Zigbee stick, such as the Sonoff Dongle P or the SkyConnect. Watch this video about the SkyConnect if you
didn’t already. I tested the Fingerbot on Zigbee2MQTT and
ZHA and it works with both. Check out the links in the description for
tutorials on how to install Zigbee2MQTT or ZHA in Home Assistant. Let’s set the Fingerbot up in ZHA for this
tutorial. Open the Home Assistant interface and go to
Settings -> Devices & Services Click Add Integration. Click Add Zigbee Device. Press and hold the reset button on the Fingerbot
until the LED flashes rapidly. When the Fingerbot is detected, change the
device name. Your Fingerbot is now connected to Home Assistant. You can check if it works by going to Settings
> Devices And Services. Click on the devices Tab and select the Adaprox
Fingerbot. If everything went well, you can toggle the
switch now. You can add the Fingerbot in a couple of ways
to Home Assistant. You can add it as a switch on your dashboard
or create an automation for it. You can, for instance, start your coffee maker
with it as soon as you enter the kitchen between 8 and 8:30 AM. So, how does this Fingerbot compare to the
Switchbot bot? Both devices do the job they have to do. The plus for this Fingerbot is that it uses
Zigbee which is a big plus for me. Switchbot uses BlueTooth at the moment. There is also a Bluetooth version of the Fingerbot,
but I don’t like Bluetooth that much because of the limited range and slow speed response
when I use this in Home Assistant. This Fingerbot is really fast because of the
fact that it uses Zigbee. Adaprox sent me two samples of the Zigbee
Fingerbot and when I tested the Fingerbot, the mechanism of one of them broke. The finger was not pushing down enough anymore
after that. I am not sure if this was because of the fact
that this was a testing unit, but it seems that the mechanism of the Switchbot bot is
sturdier than the one from this Adaprox Fingerbot. The other sample worked just fine and I had
no issues with it. Speed matters to me, so I replaced my Switchbot
bot with this one to control the power button of my PC. And now, the downside… Although I really like these kinds of bots,
I am having difficulties finding good use cases for them. In my house all lights are Zigbee lights,
so these bots do not work for my light switches. My washing machine and dryer have capacitive
touch buttons and these bots do now work with such buttons. And my coffee machine does have capacitive
touch buttons as well, so again, these bots do not work for me here. The only use case that I can think of is to
use these bots for an old-fashioned washing machine with push buttons. I guess it will work for appliances like that. But maybe I’m wrong and there a more use
cases for these bots. Let me know in the comments what use cases
you can think of. That’s it for today’s video! I hope you found this tutorial helpful and
that you’re now able to use the Fingerbot with Home Assistant using Zigbee. With the Fingerbot, you can make your appliances
smart and automate your home to make your life easier. There are links in the description below where
you can buy it. Don’t forget to give this video a thumbs
up and subscribe to my channel to help the channel grow! Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you in
the next video! Bye bye!
