Please help me understand the SONOFF Mini

Dairyfarmer said:
Over R1000 before delivery, duty and VAT. Banggood is less than R1000 all in. Ok you may have to wait an extra week for delivery.
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No delivery fees or duties. They're being hand carried over from the US.
 
Amazon R1033.82 with shipping and R0.00 tax. Odd. Not even an estimated tax deposit?
R1844.40 for 20. Also no tax.
Banggood R963.69 with shipping and tax included.
 
Hi Guys !


Thanks so much for the responses, You guys are awesome!! I’m going to read them all now and try to understand it , Sorry for my late response , life just caught up with me this week sigh... Anyhow :)

I believe all my light switches may have a live / neutral and ground wire in there ,Im not 100 per cent sure but that is a possibility ? (Maybe someone can have a look at my pictures and confirm? ) im not sure what is what , there’s a blue / red and green wire in each box . I have attached a picture of a switch in one of the bedrooms, this is a two way switch so there's two of these in the room .

I cant really replace the switches to the sonoff switch as , there's just to many in the house and it wouldn't go well with the house anyway, the brand of switch we currently have is Vimar . On some of those switches we have dimmers (i won’t be using the mini on those) I have noticed that the ground switch is never used though.

I can’t place the mini at the light itself, some of the rooms have multiple down lights in the ceilings, and some are literally inside the concrete ceilings. The best place for me to fit them is behind the actual switch .

I have attached pictures of some of the switches and of the back part of one of the switches which is a two way switch in one of the bedrooms .
 

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The only wires that have a definite use are the green/yellow wires for an earth. The rest is a mess!
In the one pic there is a wire passing between two conduits which could be a neutral. All the other wires appear to be live wires and for the two way. Photos are not clear enough to positively I'd the live and loads.
 
Geoff.D said:
The only wires that have a definite use are the green/yellow wires for an earth. The rest is a mess!
In the one pic there is a wire passing between two conduits which could be a neutral. All the other wires appear to be live wires and for the two way. Photos are not clear enough to positively I'd the live and loads.
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Let me see if I can take another photo
 
Here are close up of the wires , and the wires going into the switch itself . This room has a two way switch so one by the door and the other by the bedside.
 

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Yeah that black cable passing directly between the 2 conduits looks like it is the neutral.

So it is short, but it is there at least. Interesting way of doing it.
 
Tinuva said:
Yeah that black cable passing directly between the 2 conduits looks like it is the neutral.

So it is short, but it is there at least. Interesting way of doing it.
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Yes that is the neutral. The other blue wires are for the two way switch, should have all been red or some other colour NOT blue!
But so typical of the work done by contractors and developers building mass housing.
And that neutral! Another example of totally unacceptable, shoddy workmanship.
You may have to try and pull it a bit to see if there is any slack available. Good luck.
 
Geoff.D said:
Yes that is the neutral. The other blue wires are for the two way switch, should have all been red or some other colour NOT blue!
But so typical of the work done by contractors and developers building mass housing.
And that neutral! Another example of totally unacceptable, shoddy workmanship.
You may have to try and pull it a bit to see if there is any slack available. Good luck.
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My house is old.. 40 odd years. When I was pulling neutrals for my light switches all the live wires post switches were blue. So live from db to switch is red and live from switch to light is blue.
 
abudabi said:
My house is old.. 40 odd years. When I was pulling neutrals for my light switches all the live wires post switches were blue. So live from db to switch is red and live from switch to light is blue.
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No not correct. Live from the DB to the switch is red. So is live from the switch to the light fitting. Neutral from the DB to the switch is black. Neutral from the switch to the light fitting is blue. Live is not AFC to regs ever to be blue.
My house is 42 years old and ALL the wiring complied with that stand are with every switch box equipped with a terminated neutral, NOT pulled through like in the above example.
 
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Im not an Electrician lol so dont really know if things are done properly or not , Most or I would say 70 % of the structure of my house is about 60 years old , all the wiring and electrics had been changed though after the renovation , the house used square plugs with fuses in them and metal dial type switches ( Used to love the feel of those switches when they went click) for the lights before the renovation , anyway we had a really large construction firm and prominent architect ( Have done really really large projects in Durban) renovate this house for us so all that stuff ( plumbing , electrical etc) was left to them. Shocking to hear that the work was shoddy , I wonder what those other projects must be like , but in all honesty, I wouldn't even know if they were doing it correctly now if I had seen them do this today as a new installation .

Im happy though that there is a nutral wire in the box , does this mean I wont have to run that wire ? I can easily wire up the sonoff mini without having to run extra wiring to the main breaker box?
 
zippy320 said:
Im happy though that there is a nutral wire in the box , does this mean I wont have to run that wire ? I can easily wire up the sonoff mini without having to run extra wiring to the main breaker box?
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I put in a few over the weekend and just put the Mini up in the ceiling where the switch wire comes off the wire to the fitting. Very simple. I also have a wifi AP in my ceiling so the comms are very good.
 
the us wall switches are nice AF, but they are 4 times the price.

edit: my bad not the mini being 4 times cheaper, a regular basic
 
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Managed to use one today - put it in the base of a lamp my kid keeps leaving on. I think I'll keep a couple more but sell the rest. With more than 50% of the light switches already being Sonoffs I'll continue along those lines.

Before I rip them all out before we move back to the US...
 
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