Smart Garden Light Controller with Sonoff

I could not find any smart garden lighting controller which integrate properly with Home Assistant.

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Smart Garden Light Controller with Sonoff

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Itead Sonoff 4CH PRO

FT232RL FTDI Mini USB to TTL Serial Converter

12V DC PSU - EAGWELL 12V 30A 360W DC

Landscape lights

Low voltage wires

Power cable

Weatherproof outdoor electrical box (if your controller will be outdoor)

Software apps and online services

Home Assistant

MQTT

PlatformIO IDE

Story

I could not find any smart garden lighting controller which integrate properly with Home Assistant. The very few smart controllers on the market were very expensive with a limited feature set. That was the motivation to build my own.

Step 1. Create my wiring diagram

Wiring Diagram

Step 2. Prepare Sonoff, installing Tasmota Software

Many good step-by-step tutorials available on YouTube. Since I was using the Sonoff 4CH Pro my steps were:

Download Tasmota Software

Using atom editor with the platformio-ide extension

Modify the wifi access in the Sonoff/user_config.h file

Connect the Sonoff with the FT232RL FTDI Mini USB to TTL Serial Converter

FTDI wiring

Turn Sonoff into firmware flash mode: connect the GPIO0 pin to the GND with a jumper and then turn on the module. Three lights should be on, if the blue LED indicates a WiFi activity, it means that the module is not in flash mode. We must start again.

Turn on Flash mode

Open the platformio.ini file (located in your downloaded Tasmota software root folder) in atom editor and click the "PlatformIO/Upload" button

Once you get a "Succesful" message just restart your device. Please note, if you test the device only one of the switch will work. That's all right, you need to configure the device first.

Open the IP address of the device in a web browser and set up your Sonoff type and MQTT connection. This will be straightforward.

Step 3. Do all the wiring

Do all the wiring based on the diagram above and install all the parts into the weatherproof outdoor electrical box.

Step 4. Install the electrical box, lights

Install the electrical box, the wires into the ground and the garden lights. I am not going to explain these steps since there are many videos on YouTube how to install outdoor lighting properly.

Step 5. Set up your Home Assistant and your automation

Code

Home Assistant - MQTT config

################################
### Sonoff Switches
################################

  - platform: mqtt
    name: garden1
    state_topic: "cmnd/gardenlight/power1"
    command_topic: "cmnd/gardenlight/power1"
    payload_on: "ON"
    payload_off: "OFF"

  - platform: mqtt
    name: garden2
    state_topic: "cmnd/gardenlight/power2"
    command_topic: "cmnd/gardenlight/power2"
    payload_on: "ON"
    payload_off: "OFF"