Hacking into smart switches to add more features

In 2020 i had bought a smart plug and used it for my living room but after only a few months the manufacturer had removed features. Features they used to sell me the smart plug in the first place. This is what pushed me to try and find alternative ways to use theses devices to go around the newly imposed limitations.

This is when i stumbled upon a wireless hack. But guess what the manufacturer did? They tried blocking the wireless hack to make things harder for users to disconnect their newly purchased device from their servers. Its kind of disturbing how they sell you a device but thy it to their own infrastructure. Collecting our personnal data and removing features along the way. This is why id did this video. But also why i am sharing with you the method i had to employ to flash the chips to get Tasmota on them.

What is the use for Tasmota?

Tasmota is an alternative open source firmware for ESP8266 and ESP32 chips that is on GitHub. The oldest version i could find dates back to 2018.  It was originally made available by Theo Arends but there is now many other contributors to the project.

Tasmota allows you to make easy configurations using a webUI, It has over the air firmware updates capabilities, And you can make automations using timers or rules, it is expandable and you can control it entirely locally using many protocols, including MQTT, HTTP, Serial or KNX (also called Konnex).

This unlocks many possibilities.

Like controling one switch from another. Like i’m doing in my kitchen. Where we have a switch at one end and we are controlling it via a double press on another switch.

Transforming a switch into a timer is also another good reason why i use Tasmota. Like i’m doing in my bathroom. One press on the switch turns the fan on for 15 minutes. Two presses turns the fan on for 30 minutes. Holding the button down turns the fan off and overrides the automations for 30 minutes.

There is also use cases for smart plugs. Where mesuring power consuption allows some automations to happen. Like having Alexa report that my dumb washer is done washing or counting how many Keurigs cups are left in the house.

I could go on with the use cases for quite some time but i’ll rather talk about theses in more details in future videos.

Now if you want to learn more on how you can open the Martin Jerry Smart Switch. You can watch the video in the upper Right corner.

Thank you for watching and until next time goodbye.