Posted 7 February Genau. Learning the hard way is not an option. 0 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 8 February 13 hours ago, JG52 said: There are no mystical properties to electrical work and some people do go on to be excellent electricians or competent DIYers. However, I can assure you I have seen worse things besides a tripped circuit breaker (not a relay). Electricity is unforgiving and any unintentional path to ground can be fatal. Turning the power off in the house before you mess with the wires is always a good idea. As for wire colors and that, beware as your house may have been wired by someone using his own color scheme. At my house all the lights are hooked up with black and yellow-green. On some of them there is a blue wire not connected. 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 8 February 19 hours ago, JG52 said: Electricity is unforgiving and any unintentional path to ground can be fatal. Anything can be fatal. Electricity in the home is very, very rarely fatal. Take into account when viewing the following statistics, that most electricity related deaths in the U.S. are work-place accidents where people are dealing with heavy equipment. Why is everybody so scared of everything? Common sense saves lives. The OP is not going to kill themselves trying to replace a switch in their home! 0 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 8 February 33 minutes ago, toBnruG said: The OP is not going to kill themselves trying to replace a switch in their home! Electricity in the home might be very rarely fatal until you start messing with it with no knowledge or concern for basic safety precautions. You must have some impressive omnipotent powers if you can make this statement with such sureness. I rely on my experience and observations, which includes being a licensed Journeyman Electrician in the U.S., with regards to my previous statement. Even a reasonable amount of caution is no guarantee that accidental death or injury will not happen, but I suppose you know better. 0 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 8 February Statistics, schmatistik... Annually in Germany around 25-30 deaths (non industrial) due to electric shocks. If you dont want to be a statistic, then take due care and don't meddle with what you dont understand. German VDE stats I've seen terrible wiring on US sailing marinas where 110v gets put into the water making it dangerous to swim... But thats going off topic 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 8 February 7 hours ago, toBnruG said: Anything can be fatal. Electricity in the home is very, very rarely fatal. Take into account when viewing the following statistics, that most electricity related deaths in the U.S. are work-place accidents where people are dealing with heavy equipment. Why is everybody so scared of everything? Common sense saves lives. The OP is not going to kill themselves trying to replace a switch in their home! You seem to have conveniently forgotten that in the USA domestic electricity is only 110 volts rather than the much more dangerous 220 volts here in Germany and 240 volts in the UK. Those higher voltages represent a huge "potential difference" in the number of serious injuries caused by an electrical shock, though a much lower risk of electrical fires! 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 8 February 1 hour ago, Shenandoah said: Amps...not voltage. S. Not sure if you were responding to my post but yes the amount of current (amperage) the human body is subject to will determine the damage, both stopping the heart and burning are possible but of course given the same resistance of the body the higher the voltage the greater the current flow. A = V/R Ohms law and all that! 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 9 February I didn't want to create that much of a discussion with my post, although maybe that is what forums are for...? I want to emphasize again that I also think that hard electrical work should be done by electricians, but, as I also said before I am - maybe wrongly - considering this not a complex task. And in defense of myself. I do not like to do things without getting first a clear picture of what is the way to do them. That is why changing that single switch to a double one took me almost a month . I haven't seen this kind of switch before, and the last time I even had open a light switch was like 10 years ago and not in Germany, so I wanted to learn before and do it later. And of course, the doing part just took like 10 minutes. I always try to follow all the security measures I can, I always use rubber globs and I even turn the circuit breaker off just to change lamp bulbs, just in case ! What I would concede is that I do not have all the tools an electrician has, and probably do not know them all, to be honest. For some more context, all the electrical wiring here was done last year, and from what I saw so far, all the correct colors are being used. The only "weird" color I have seen is a black cable that went from one single switch controlling the light and the bathroom ventilator. The one for the ventilator was black. Probably because the electrician wanted to signal the difference. (?) I still haven't done the task because I am still not sure of which color cable is the proper one so I can buy it, and, if anyone also recommends some tool for now and future usage I will probably also buy it. On 07/02/2023, 12:15:37, HH_Sailor said: I think I have to go back to language school. Or jargon classes... Zigbee is the protocol some just-local smart devices use, it is similar to Wifi and even around the same 2.4Ghz Frequency. Sonoff ZMini is the device I want to connect. A Zigbee device working as a bridge con pass data from a Zigbee coordinator to any device outside of the coordinator's reach. 0 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 10 February On 09/02/2023, 06:30:26, distante said: I still haven't done the task because I am still not sure of which color cable is the proper one so I can buy it, and, if anyone also recommends some tool for now and future usage I will probably also buy it. Knowledge is power. Get yourself one of these if you don't have one already: With the power turned off I always first check that the live wires I'm working with are not live. I skipped this step once, trusting the electrician to have kept all the wiring in one room on the same circuit, and got a nice 240V shock for my troubles. Side-note: it didn't kill me, but I would have happily done without it. With the power on (i.e. when the unit is hanging out of the wall but all wires still screwed in) it's worth checking that everything is what you expect it to be (no wrong colours to confuse you). Gloves are great (which you use already) but you can also check if your screwdrivers are isolated or not. Many are rated to >1000V so that if you do accidentally come into contact with something there will be no shock. 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 10 February On 05/02/2023, 09:55:07, distante said: I want to make a regular light switch "smart" On 05/02/2023, 14:55:14, distante said: Yes, I am sure this one controls just one light. It is for my 3x3mts work room. I'm currently re-wiring my new house and hadn't even considered any sort of smart technology for switches. Does this switch allow you to control it via your smart phone/web interface etc? Are there any other benefits? e.g. timer. Would a smart bulb be an alternative to a smart switch? 0 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 10 February For anyone who doesn't want to do any wiring, be aware you can do one of 2 things: 1. Buy smart light bulbs. Plug in and setup with wifi and a phone app. 2. Some dumb-smart bulbs from Phillips. Simply turn on/off to charge the brightness level. Avoids installing a dimmer switch. However, if you think you have to make every bulb smart, then it is costly if you have many. It might still be much cheaper than an electrician and doable by just about anyone in terms of retrofit. If the electrician will anyway put in the lights, you can use a smart switch. Very useful for timers etc. 0 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 11 February 18 hours ago, toBnruG said: Knowledge is power. Get yourself one of these if you don't have one already: With the power turned off I always first check that the live wires I'm working with are not live. I skipped this step once, trusting the electrician to have kept all the wiring in one room on the same circuit, and got a nice 240V shock for my troubles. Side-note: it didn't kill me, but I would have happily done without it. With the power on (i.e. when the unit is hanging out of the wall but all wires still screwed in) it's worth checking that everything is what you expect it to be (no wrong colours to confuse you). Gloves are great (which you use already) but you can also check if your screwdrivers are isolated or not. Many are rated to >1000V so that if you do accidentally come into contact with something there will be no shock. I completely forgot about a multimeter!! I had one in my days of audio school when I build an audio amplifier! (and, no, I do not remember how I did it! ) But yes I have to buy another and probably some tool to peel cables correctly instead of just using a cutter blade. I didn't know that screwdrivers are rated, but now that you say it, it makes sense. I will check it in the future 0 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 11 February 29 minutes ago, distante said: But yes I have to buy another and probably some tool to peel cables correctly instead of just using a cutter blade. You may want to consider buying a neon screwdriver which lights up when it touches something live, they cost peanuts and are much simpler to use than a multimeter, only one connection which will show you what will give you a shock if it lights up (won't work if you are wearing rubber gloves though) not only that it is also a useful small screwdriver. https://www.obi.de/messwerkzeuge-strompruefer/lux-spannungspruefer-set-classic-2-teilig-140-mm-190-mm/p/7600471 0 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 11 February 20 hours ago, agathaaa said: I'm currently re-wiring my new house and hadn't even considered any sort of smart technology for switches. Does this switch allow you to control it via your smart phone/web interface etc? Are there any other benefits? e.g. timer. Would a smart bulb be an alternative to a smart switch? The main problem with smart Bulbs is that they still depend on the wall switch, so, if someone turned the wall switch off, the bulb is not functional. Plus a switch like this one can allow other devices on my network to reach the central Zigbee router. (A-la wifi extensor). There are also switches like this one that uses WiFi but... (Disclaimer: Rant from something starting with "smart home" things ahead.) My first smart devices where WiFi temperature and humidity sensors, there I learned that most manufacturers try to sell their pseudo-ecosystem, (pseudo because most of them piggyback into the Tuya plaftorm), wifi devices require a constant internet connection to work because the route they have is Phone -> Internet (Tuya/Manufacturer) Platform -> Smart device (and back). This has 3 big problems: If the internet is down (or slow) your device works just as a paperweight. The device has full access to your network so you just have to trust they do not have any open security exploits. Each manufacturer has their own app, so if you use two kinds of lights in one room, you can not sync them to do the same stuff with the same trigger (except maybe time) ❌ There is no fix for point 1., ✅ For point 2, you can create a guest network, where devices can not talk between themselves (Fritbox routers can do this) ❌ There is no fix for point 3. Now I am going in another direction, which takes a little bit more work at the start, but it is more flexible. I am using Home Assistant running in an old Rasberry Pi 3 as the main brain of my Smart Home Project. It has several "integrations" that allow me to see and control several things in my house in a centralized way. For example, I have an automation that triggers some tasks when I arrive home using the official Fritbox Tools integration and checking that my phone is connected to my local network. Just recently I attached a Sonoff Zigbee Dongle to the Rasberry and created a "Zigbee network". Now I can control Zigbee devices with Home Assistant and trigger also automation using their state or actions. The Zigbee protocol is used by several devices, even some that also offer their own apps or cloud solutions. For example, Lidl sells Silvercrest devices that support ZigBee. Also, several Phillips Hue devices use ZigBee and there is an official Integration for them. 0 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 11 February 2 hours ago, keith2011 said: You may want to consider buying a neon screwdriver which lights up when it touches something live, they cost peanuts and are much simpler to use than a multimeter, only one connection which will show you what will give you a shock if it lights up (won't work if you are wearing rubber gloves though) not only that it is also a useful small screwdriver. https://www.obi.de/messwerkzeuge-strompruefer/lux-spannungspruefer-set-classic-2-teilig-140-mm-190-mm/p/7600471 Oh, have one of those... but just with a sharp head. I think it came with my tool set... but have never used it! 0 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 11 February 1 hour ago, keith2011 said: You may want to consider buying a neon screwdriver which lights up when it touches something live, they cost peanuts and are much simpler to use than a multimeter, only one connection which will show you what will give you a shock if it lights up (won't work if you are wearing rubber gloves though) not only that it is also a useful small screwdriver. To be clear, the neon screwdrivers work by using the person as the return path to ground. Fortunately, the current flow is very low, but the possibility for false negatives exists if the person is not properly grounded. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 11 February 1 hour ago, JG52 said: To be clear, the neon screwdrivers work by using the person as the return path to ground. Fortunately, the current flow is very low, but the possibility for false negatives exists if the person is not properly grounded. Just tested mine and standing on a pvc floor with rubber soled shoes on it still lights up and gave a clear indication when I stuck it in the live terminal of a socket, not as bright as when I touched ground with my other hand but still more than sufficient to give warning, they are very sensitive and reliable. My concern is someone who is untrained or not familiar with a digital multimeter is, I believe, much more at risk at making a dangerous mistake using it, (is the correct setting selected, are the both probes making good contact and are they not broken and last but not least is there life still in the batteries). First thing I always do when using a multimeter is check the probes for continuity as they are notoriously unreliable (even the more expensive ones) and it is very easy to forget to turn if off after using it a month ago and the batteries are dead. Best advice I believe is to use a neon screwdriver wear rubber soled shoes and keep one hand behind your back, if unsure get a professional. 0 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Posted 8 March So, just as update. Finally got the time and I. Did. It. Thank you for your comments here, both the "yay" and "nay". Yes, I know it it isn't a big deal sir some, and too big for others, but I like I said on the open post, I haven't had anyone from whom learn this "home" stuff besides what I have seen in the school, so well, I am little bit happier today. On the extra plus side, I learned a lot, and remembered a lot of my electronics class (even build a little prototype for a vibration detector using an ESP32 board). BTW I was overworrying about the cables that go into S1/S2 on the sonoff. They are lower voltage (3V) so the phase never pass there, I marked them with a total weird cable and put labels there. My next goal is to remove the power of one of my two way switches and just use them to control another sonoff to turn the light, so I can convert an, stupid installed, 2 way switch into a 3 way switch (plus app control) Here the icon of my light control in Home Assistant, which of course, also still works with the wall switch. 😁 4 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
