Smart switch with smart display goes live on Kickstarter
Chinese smart home specialist Sonoff has taken the covers off of the NSPanel – launching the smart switch / smart home controller on crowdfunding site Kickstarter.
Much like the Brilliant Smart Home Controller – but at around a sixth of the price – the Sonoff NSPanel can slot straight into your wall (it’s designed to fit both EU and US light switch back boxes) and offers a range of control methods for your paired Sonoff smart devices.
Sonoff makes an excellent selection of smart switches, lights and sensors and the NSPanel is designed to be the central point for all your Sonoff kit.
Wired into your light circuit (a neutral wire is required for this) there are two buttons that can make your dumb lights smart, by adding connectivity directly to the switch itself, while the 3.5-inch capacitive touch screen provides a gateway for light, heating and scene controls.
With lighting you’ll get a nice color wheel and dimmer sliders; for heating it’s a case of switching on / off heating devices (using a Sonoff switch) rather than thermostat control and for scenes, you can program to your heart’s content using the eWeLink app.
The NSPanel actually has a thermometer built in so as it can kick start a routine based on the temperature and the device also displays additional external data it pulls from the cloud such as local weather reports.
Compatible with both Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, you can also use your voice assistants to control your NSPanel’s linked devices.
I’m actually a big Sonoff user, with an array of switches from the brand hidden in the walls of my house making dumb things smart, and I’ve actually been testing the Sonoff NSPanel for the past few weeks.
It’s a pretty nifty device that, with a price tag of around £40, offers an affordable package for smart home control.
It’s not a seamless affair though. Customising anything through the eWeLink app is clunky and the device itself falls down in a few key areas.
The 480 x 320 screen (which comes in either portrait or landscape) looks – and feels – a bit ‘budget’ and it’s a shame that there’s no direct Zigbee on board; that seems like a no brainer and would make the NSPanel a genuine smart home hub (you can control Sonoff Zigbee devices using a Sonoff Zigbee Bridge and the scenes creator in the appthough.)
It’s also a shame that it only works natively with Sonoff products although we are told that Hue integration is incoming, as is SmartThings and IFTTT; so there could be some expansion outside the native ecosystem.
However, it’s still a good option for giving your smart home control a bit of a visual boost – although I feel it’s only really suited to keen smart home DIY enthusiasts.
A much easier route (albeit without the direct light switch control) for touch screen smart home control – still at a fairly affordable price point – are the likes of the Google Nest Hub or the latest Echo Show 5.
If you do fancy tinkering with Sonoff’s system though, you can nab an NSPanel now for an early bird price of HK$459, which is around £40.
