Wireless UPB: New life for old home automation

The devices can emulate either of two Simply Automated dimmers, the US140T single-channel or US2240 dual channel.

I most often use use the '140; its feature set works nicely for window shades, for instance, so that it receives links to set the dim level == open/closure level. Since there's the WUPB bridge, this means my existing wall switches can send to the shades and don't know any better.

The '140 also works well for motion/occupancy sensors, so that it *sends* links when it senses, to the existing light switches. These have timer links that go off after a short delay, but the occupancies reset the timer each time they sense a person (and occasionally a cat.) Due to the aforementioned feline helpers, the occupancies also have links to disable them, so they're on schedules that turn them on after sunset until we go to bed, and then turn them off at sunrise as they aren't needed when there's natural light.

Due to the size of my UPB deployment (several dozen line devices), I set up a separate WiFI network on its own subnet and VLAN. Each device uses a static IP on that subnet matching its UPB device ID (that is, UPB device 12 uses IP address my.sub.net.12.) I found it much easier to keep the static IP to device mapping than to mess with DHCP; this way if you have connectivity issues you can just ping your.sub.net.deviceid and know you should be getting that target.

For smaller deployment or to start with, you could just assign your devices and bridge static IP's on your existing subnet. Also unless you are a network admin extraordinaire (I am not!) I do not recommend VLAN's.

I use an RPi for MQTT because I had an RPi running other stuff, so it was no additional hassle. There is an MQTT broker for ESP32, but it uses ESP-IDF, not the Arduino IDE, so I don't know anything about it. Maybe you have one already for your home automation, otherwise, setting that up is left as the proverbial exercise to the reader.

The MQTT topic is "home/UPBtraffic" and can be changed in the ESP32UPBsecrets.h if that annoys you.

Images are an in-wall occupancy sensor next to a factory Simply Automated US140, a motor unit that sits on the end of a window shade, and a coupla external occupancy sensors, one using an AM312 IR sensor, the other using an LD2410 radar sensor, and finally the insides of the shade motor unit.

In other words, all COTS hardware with an ESP32 inside. Lot of 3D printed bits, some magic indistinguishable from technology, but all Make-able.