Roboticized Light Switch for Home Automation

Today I'm showing you how I solved the super annoying problem of automating my lights, when it's not possible to change out the light switch or switch to smart bulbs. The solution was to make a roboticized cover which makes my dumb light switch a lot smarter!

First of all I recommend you watch the video to see the development process and the final light switch in action.

For the last few years I've been doing various home automation upgrades to my apartment to make it a lot smarter, but there's always been one glaring issue I couldn't solve: Automating my ceiling lights.

Because I rent the apartment I'm limited in the changes I can do to it. At first I looked for smart bulbs to install in my ceiling spotlights, but because there's so many of them it would be really expensive. Adding to the cost factor is that the special type of light bulb connector couldn't be found with smart home capabilities in my country, so I would have to import the light bulbs. This would significantly increase the cost as well as make it really cumbersome every time one the bulbs burnt out and I needed to change them.

The alternative would be to install a smart switch, which in my opinion would be a lot smarter regardless of the cost and availability of connected light bulbs. But yet again, I couldn't make any permanent changes to the apartment and this includes operating on mains voltage and changing out the light switch.

While I loved the smart home upgrades I could do they acted as a painful reminder of the upgrade I wanted, but couldn't have. I could live in home automation limbo no longer and decided to solve the problem the best way I know how to, by making a robot.

Click here to see the experimentation and development process for the project.

Here's my github repo with all files I developed for the project.