Few months ago I was writing about the Broadlink RM3 mini in this article. The big news is that nows supports the Amazon "Alexa" voice control. So saying "Alexa, change to channel 77 on Television" will change your TV to channel 77. You can also rename your favorite channel to a specific name and call it like this: "Alexa, change to channel Sport on Television" and the Broadcom RM3 mini will do that for you. To have all this features you need to install this application from Google Play ( I don't know for iPhone) and make sure you have the latest version of firmware on your Broadlink RM3 mini. If you have an STB Like I have and you are using your TV just as a panel you need to assign the virtual remote buttons to your STB remote buttons. After that everything will work fine. The last step is to add the "BroadLink Remote Control" skill to your Alexa app and do start a device discovery.
BroadLink RM3 mini
What I miss from the previous e-Control application is the possibility to share the configuration of devices with other phones.
Tthere is a special offer on SONOFF module on Banggood from today until 10th of January. You can buy the module for under $6, $5.99 ( 5.79 if you order it from mobile application). The SONOFF module is produced by Itead.cc and can be used with their mobile app eWeLink or you can write your own software. The core of the module is the ESP8266 and is connected to a 5V relay capable of 10A ( I will not bet on that)
I already ordered few of them and I am planning to put my own software so in the end I can : -on/off the relay from my mobile app -give a vocal command to trigger it on/off with Amazons echo dot 2 help -set cron task for relay. The promotion will end in January so if you are reading this post after this date it may be outdated ,but you can check the Itead.cc site.
Since Amazon's Echo Dot 2 can control the Belkin's WeMos why not emulate it with this Esp8266 . ESP after is connected to the WiFi network will start an UDP server on address 239.255.255.250 port 1900 and an HTTP server on its own IP address and port 80. Alexa on "Alexa, discover my devices " will send UDP on multicast address/port and the ESP will reply with its configuration (IP/PORT). Echo Dot 2 will get the setup.xml from ESP on provided IP and Port. From now on the Echo cand send SendBinaryState command that will end up in trigger a GPIO. SSDP protocol is used in the discovery part.
And a video controlling 2 GPIOs with on one ESP8266.
