My DIY weather resistant Wi-Fi switch – 1 Month Later!

Florida Winter Weather
Last month, I put together some inexpensive Tuya based Wi-Fi smart switches and put them in a water resistant case.  Put them around the lawn to run the holiday lights and now I am back after a month to see how they held up to the outdoors.  During the month they were out there, they were exposed to all the Florida elements we have down here.  Rain, sun, heat and bugs.  Yeah, Bugs are an element in my world. 😉
IMG_4028
The basic components of this project were:

I’ll skip to the end and tell you that they held up great.  I did have one of them trip my GFCI outlet (I will explain more about that in the video below) but no real issues or damage.  In fact, I am so pleased with this weekend project that I am not only going to definitely use these again for the holiday lighting but I am also actively looking for other things outside I can use them for.  Initially, I think I can use them to replace my flaky ZWAVE landscape light controllers.  The Wi-Fi connections just seemed so solid.  This is definitely also due to my extensive use of the Ubiquiti Access Points around the house.
One of the really nice features of these Tuya based switches is the energy monitoring.  I was able to see from a switch by switch basis, the usage of the Christmas lights.  For my setup (which included, 2 wreaths, about 6 Bush web lighting and 2 mini Christmas trees), the overall usage was about 5KWs a day.

RYUP9626_Moment RYUP9626_Moment2
Being able to monitor the current, power and voltage going through the plugs was also a really nice feature.  I wish I was able to see stats for groups of switches but as far as I can tell, You can only do it per switch.  I think I can push that data to Home Assistant and then use Grafana to produce some very cool reports.  For the year round landscape lights, this would be some great information to record and tweet out. (@BearStoneHA)
If you haven’t read the original post for this project, check it out at
http://vcloudinfo.com/2018/12/how-to-waterproof-your-outdoor-smart.html
Enjoy the video!
Happy Automating!
Carlo

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