When the home automation bug bit, the first project I set my sights on was to wire up my ET DC Blue Advanced garage door opener with a smart switch. A friend of mine has undertaken a similar project and suggested I try a the Sonoff DC12V/5-32V Wireless WiFi Smart Switch Inching/Self-Locking Module.
Disclaimer: I am not an electrician and if you are not one either then you should get your electrician to carry out all steps of this installation.
The Sonoff DC12V/5-32V Wireless WiFi Smart Switch is the perfect because it supports inching (more on that later), it can be powered by 5V USB mini or a 7V to 32V DC supply and the relay switch can switch a variety of different voltages. From what I understand, the relay is rated for AC:90 – 250V and DC:0 – 30V. These voltages seem to be confirmed by the text on the blue relay but you should probably double check this. I got mine of Amazon here.
I am now going to take you through the steps that I took to wire the Sonoff DC12V/5-32V Wireless WiFi Smart Switch to my ET DC Blue Advanced garage door opener.
Step 1
Before you connect your Sonoff switch to your garage motor it is probably best to pair the switch with the eWeLink app. That way you won’t have to do any troubleshooting at the top of a ladder in the garage! Next you can name the Sonoff switch and make sure that Inching in turned on. Inching with make the Sonoff switch turn on and then automatically turn off after a predefined amount of time. In this case, you can set the Inching duration to 0.5 seconds. This will correctly trigger your ET DC Blue Advanced to open your garage door opener in the same way your garage remote would.
Step 2
The second step involves reviewing the manual and specifically the wiring diagram for the ET DC Blue Advanced or equivalent garage opener. You can view the full ET DC Blue Advanced installation manual here.
From the diagram below, you can see that the Sonoff switch is the equivalent of an ‘Aditional Receiver’ in this diagram. So the ‘Normally Open’ terminal of the Sonoff would be wired to the BT pin on the garage opener and the ‘Com’ terminal of the Sonoff to the GND pin on the garage opener.
Step 3
As the Sonoff switch can be powered by a 7V to 32V DC supply, I wired it up to the garage motor’s 24V DC power supply. That way it will be powered by the garage motors 24V battery if the power cut or a switch tripped. The garage motors +24V pin should be wired to the positive on the Sonoff and the GND pin on the garage opener to the negative on the Sonoff. See diagram below and the Sonoff diagram at the top of the article.
Notes
As you can see below, I wired the Sonoff to the gate motor with light telephone cabling. From what I understand, they will not be carrying much current in this setup.
Home Assistant
You can just stick to using Sonoff’s eWeLink app to control the garage opener and this works really well. I however decided to begin my journey with Home Assistant so I integrated the switch into my Home Assistant setup.
Rather than flashing the Sonoff switch with Tasmota, I managed to get integrated by using the Sonoff LAN integration found on the HACS (Home Assistant Community Store). This allows me to control all my Sonoff devices on my LAN with Home Assistant. This solution does not require an internet connection as communication is directly with the Sonoff device rather than via the eWeLink servers 🙂