Sonoff 4Ch R2 - Shed Upgrade

looking back in the history not only has it mean three and a half years since I started this YouTube channel it also means well this control panel for want of a better term is also three and a half years because this actually debuted in I think it was actually my second ever video and you know what it's done really well obviously had a few changes as a couple of holes here but no one have wires going through them and these panel meters clearly well they've been removed some time ago and in fact this one here doesn't seem to work at all the time has worked well that some of the LEDs on these switches have given up those two those both on but the LEDs aren't illuminating anymore and this ammeter over here is well a bit loose to say the least but other than that I can't really complain but now it's 2019 perhaps it's time for a facelift and a few more mod cons should we say now you may remember in the past I've used one of these here in the shed and this is the Sun off s V this is the safe voltage version of the Sun off basic switch which is just a single relay just switches one device but it connects up to your Wi-Fi and forms part of a home automation system there's all sorts different devices now from the sawn-off brand but this is one of the most basic a 12 to 24 volt switch which is based around the esp8266 you can see the antenna there and there's just a single button on it there are a couple of breakouts of the GPIO on this version which is quite handy but this one works off 12 or 24 up to 24 volts and can switch the same voltage but these aren't particularly practical because there's just one relay on it so I found a bigger brother and in fact a new to me at least probably son of 4-channel Pro r2 and this one comes in this box here and as you can see from the box which comes out upside down it's well it's a four channel pro son off system and straightaway down at the bottom you can see although it can work on well ninety to 264 volts ac there's also a five to 24 volt DC input which is actually broken out to a two point one five point five mill jack and then there are four relay connections under here what each relay has a common a normally open and a normally connected connector so yes this is a four channel version that will work at the the same voltage as I use in the shed here twelve volts and I think this might be a lot neater to replace a few of those switches and that timer on my control panel now the manual is fairly brief to be honest because it works in the same way as all the other son off devices when they come out with the Box you download this app ie we link from the Apple or Android store and you connect it to your Wi-Fi and well I've covered that in another video and I don't intend to cover it again now but the manual does show the internals of the sawn-off for channel pro so clearly they do expect you to get inside this because there is a clearing button a work mode switch a delay line switch so there are various parameters you can set on the inside of this device and their values here are set out in these tables so without further ado let's get inside there I'll just for recess screws to remove to get into the unit but I'll do that in a second but from the back here we can see there is this slot inside the case and these two clips which lift up and that is of course so that this can be mounted on the din rail and here some standard din rail and I don't know if that's what makes this unit pro because obviously din rail is used in quite a lot of electrical installations and here in the shed holding up my 7s 20 P pack so that is pretty useful I think with the four screws remove the top just pops straight off and there's the inside the four buttons on the left hand side for relays across the bottom and looking at those relays straightaway they're branded golden GH 1 C 5 l 10 amps 250 volts 12 amps 125 volts and no mention of DC whatsoever which is a bit of a shame because I was hoping to use them to switch DC but to be honest I'm only probably pulling one or two amps 12 volts so I suspect they'll be okay perhaps I'll look up the datasheet later but yeah that 12a sorry 5 to 24 volt input wasn't it there's the AC input there which does seem to have plenty of protections on it a fuse etc there and there's also some holes cut in the PCB here to separate the low and the high voltage so that looks well pretty good I'd suggest 4 LEDs down the right-hand side for the status of those outputs there's the esp8266 and it's antenna up there but there's also another microcontroller there that is a stm32 and presumably that controls some of the other functionality in here because also there's this piece of wire which I suspect is the antenna for the 433 megahertz well communication on here as well and there's a crystal there six point seven four five eight megahertz I'm guessing because you can also buy an RF remote for these as well which I have also done and I think that most refined yes Perry does and you get an ACD ABCD sorry button for the four different relays so you can communicate with this over four three three megahertz as well and all this came with a battery in it that's pretty good so four buttons there for relays and so you can control your loads using a key fob your mobile phone or tablet or what have you over the Wi-Fi all the buttons on the front so this is pretty versatile one thing I am very interested in is finding out how much this Sun of use is just idly sitting there how much current it consumes while it's not doing anything so I've got my Porter pal meter here and if I put in the Sun off and there's a blue LED flashing down there and looking at this meter we can see well it's consuming about 50 milliamps which is quite high isn't it I guess the Wi-Fi is busy transmitting there at the moment and perhaps that might reduce but yeah my batteries are starting at 12 point 6 volts which isn't too bad at this time in the evening but 50 milliamps sir we'll have to see if well we're happy with that and what happens when we pull in those relays as well so if I turn them on press the button you can hear the click well that's interesting isn't it before we've attached anything whatsoever with the 4 LEDs on the relays pulled in we're using 200 milliamps that's two and a half Watts that's well that's more than I would have hoped to be honest now out of the box the RF remote does not work with the sawn-off 4-channel so were two parrots you have to double-click quickly the channel and then press the button and that has now paired that button with that channel and that's working well but of course the B button is not doing anything to C or the D button either so actually you could potentially use this across different units and only have one of the channels being controlled by this RF remote and another unit being controlled by the B button you can seem to be able to mix and match so that's quite nice I think but yes you do need to a double click the channel and then press the button that you're attaching and then it works excellent and I think this button here in the middle clears that memory so if you press and hold for a few seconds hopefully that will clear the memory of presumably this s/t microcontroller and then yes Ableton doesn't do anything again so double click double flash press that button yeah that seems pretty straightforward and seems to work quite nicely I've zoomed in a bit closer here so that we can see the settings on these switches to look at the various different modes we can place these relays into and that is all explained here in this table but there's three modes interlocked self walking and inching and from the brief explanation I found while I was a little bit confused what each of those meant so first things first s-six is set to one which means it's in this self locking or inching mode and with all of these dips which is set to on well that means it's in self rocking mode just as we saw before if I press real a1 it turned on the compress real a2 and that will turn on as well and I can independently control these relays so that is self-locking mode now there is a note in the manual to disconnect the power before changing these switches so that's exactly what I will do now with s60 we're in interlock mode so if I press the first relay that should turn on but if I press this second relay well it flips over it turns off the first one and turned on the second one and that's the same for all the LEDs when you turn on another Tory relay it turns off any of the other relay so you can only have one on at any one time and to turn that one off while you just press the button again and all of them are off but yes primarily the interlock mode means that only one can be on at any one time so if I disconnect the power again switch s6 back over to one and we'll turn channel one on this dip switch over here to off and replace the power now we're in the inching mode I believe or should i say at least relay one channel one is in the inching mode the other three relays are still in the self rocking mode so what's the difference well in entry mode I can turn on the first relay and it stays on and I can independently turn these over relays on and off because they're not in the inching mode currently but this relay should automatically switch itself off there it goes just on the right moment and that's because the other dip switch here is set to all zeros which means there is a time delay of 16 seconds so when I press relay 1 now it will turn on for 16 seconds and then switch off so that can be handy I guess for a door contact or something like that but now I'm going to remove the power and turn all these back to where they were so that this works in its default out of the box mode when I attach it to the wall now in the shed well I think I've decided at the moment at least I'm going to leave these switches in place the ones that do all the lights here in the shed two of them I'm not going to obviously transfer to the Sun off because there are six channels here as it were and I only got four on the Sun off but I'm not going to mount it here for the moment call me sentimental if you will at the moment it's mounted there above the control panel and I just need start getting loads wired in so I just need to disconnect the wires from the back of these switches and work out a way of getting them into these relays now the wires connect to the back of these switches on these crimp terminals and I'm gonna leave them on because I might go back to using switches we'll see so I've made up these cables now with another crimped on terminal which will easily just plug into there and then that's just got a bit of bear wire here on the end and that will go into my relay in the Sun off so I just need a bit of tape around here to insulate it and make sure it's not going to touch anything it shouldn't and then I think that will be okay for now now the son of 4-channel pro is up on the wall I have power and it's connected to the Wi-Fi and here's my first load this is going to be tricky where the one hand isn't it yeah I'm not gonna be able to do this one-handed so there we have it three loads connected with the positive going into the common pin on each of the relays and then the load connected to the normally open pin and that should work fine as you can see channel 2 is on and that's giving us some light but channel 1 can switch on and turn on another light as well so that seems to be working well I should point out that each of these coming into those Cohen pin each one has its own individual fuse so this should be relatively safe so for completeness I will just show that I can obviously turn these lights on and off using the e we link app and over the Wi-Fi and that's great because you wouldn't believe how many times I lock up this shed and think did I switch those lights off well now I can just check the app hopefully you've enjoyed this video if you did give me a thumbs up subscribe down below comment if you can and I will see you next time thanks for watching you

Channel: Adam Welch

Views: 34,159

Rating: 4.9076481 out of 5

Keywords: Sonoff, WiFi, RF, RF443, Smart Hom, Smart Switch, 12v, 24v

Id: OBFwfzne5KE

Length: 16min 28sec (988 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 28 2019