The NEW Sonoff iHost Good Dwelling Hub

Simply one other Zigbee Bridge? or Bluetooth bridge? No, this appears to be like WAY extra attention-grabbing. My eagerly-awaited Sonoff iHOST arrived within the put up this morning together with a 32GB Kingston “Choose Plus” microSD.

Now I’m not going to open it up and likelihood damaging it – fortunately NotEnoughTech as accomplished and so from speaking to Mat I do know that the unit has BT5.2, an inner CR2032 battery, can act as a Zigbee hub and has WiFi and 100Mbps (adequate for IOT) Ethernet – although proper now the WiFi is outwardly not working. There’s additionally a USB connector on the again in addition to the USB-C energy connector. The principle board inside is marked AI-Bridge Base Board V1.2.

And as you possibly can see – the unit is fairly. From opening the field onwards the preliminary impression is, properly, spectacular.

The iHOST can be utilized with or with out a eWeLink acount!!

Right here’s a photograph of the again – I’ve inserted the Kingston microSD into the unit which additionally has a USB-C enter for energy (lead equipped however not an precise energy provide), Ethernet connection and customary USB connector.

This cheap unit can act as a smarthome hub together with Zigbee, preserve an area database, function an area rule engine and it has an Open API interface for integrating into a 3rd occasion system.

Not having but plugged the iHost into Ethernet – and noting it had not began up any form of entry level of it’s personal, I went off to thee Sonoff web site and grabbed iHost Tutorial.rar

So now, with certainly one of Sonoff’s movies at hand, I plugged in my Ethernet cable to the iHOST and nearly instantly that pretty pink mild turned BLUE. At this level I realised there are a bunch of buttons on TOP of iHOST and certainly one of them glowed blue as properly. That might be the ability button.

The directions stated that the consumer ought to now go to the ihost.native web page and log in. At this level I merely switched to English and logged on, making a password within the course of.

WELL that was straightforward. At this level – the iHOST field was conscious of my Ethernet (not Wifi) – no gadgets, no “rooms”.

Subsequent.. Hyperlink iHost to my eWeLink account.. SETTINGS… See the LINK NOW textual content on the fitting…

Achieved – utilizing my electronic mail and password for my eWeLink account. Not entiely certain how I used to be now any higher off. Ah, a brand new machine appeared in my account on the cellphone eWeLink APP… iHOST with no sub-devices.

I may FEEL an improve approaching – i can by no means resist. iHost got here with firmware 1.0.0 and I famous NEW over on the fitting. v1.4.1 – proper – I’ll have that. A few minutes later…. success. My iHOST thought it was thrilling too – I may hear it within the background over on the different finish of my workplace.

The principle web page of iHost within the eWeLink APP nonetheless stated “Extra options coming quickly”.

For including new Zigbee gadgets, you need to use the pairing button on the iHost (subsequent to the ability button on the highest) or utilizing the online console as above. Sonoff have movies to take you thru all of this…. “Appropriate with Zigbee customary protocol gadgets”.

You can too add RTSP cameras on the identical LAN.

I find it irresistible – “machine can completely run on the LAN with no concern of the unstable cloud” – says the corporate who present a cloud service…. anyway I agree with the precept 100%.

If this pursuits you thus far, I actually suggest grabbing that .RAR file above with all their brief movies freely obtainable. I feel within the very close to future this machine may properly be a game-changer.

I’ll be updating this entry as I be taught extra however earlier than I am going, I simply occur to have a random AliExpress Zigbee temperature and humidity sensor I do know works as I’ve had it hooked into Zigbee2MQTT.

By merely long-pressing the reset button on the sensor, it SHOULD as an alternative pair with iHOST.

Let’s give it a go.. if all else fails I can at all times pair it again up with my essential Zigbee community.

“Add Zigbee System” (ensuring my essential Zigbee community has ADD machine turned OFF).

WELL, THAT’S a very good begin..

Or maybe not. iHOST reveals the temperature and humidity of the brand new machine as 0 and says the battery is simply 10% – flawed – it’s model new… not the perfect begin, Sonoff…. I’ll simply put that machine again into my Pi-and-zigbee2MQTT community.

Extra on this later – I’ll await the subsequent firmware replace.