SwitchBot tools in ioBroker

SwitchBot started with a small switch called Bot and became very popular. With this switch, almost any device with a physical switch can be made smart. Later, more and more Smart Home products were offered.

The SwitchBot app

To use SwitchBot devices, we must first install the SwitchBot app on our Android or iOS smartphone. After installing the application, register a free user account, follow the instructions in the application.

SwitchBot devices can be controlled via Bluetooth (BLE) via the app. If we want to use our SwitchBot devices remotely, we need a Hub that provides a gateway to the Internet via Wi-Fi.

With SwitchBot Hub Mini or SwitchBot Hub 2, we can connect to SwitchBot Cloud, then we can connect Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri, IFTTT, etc. with services.

Connect e.g. a SwitchBot Hub Mini to a USB power adapter/charger of at least 5V/1A. On the SwitchBot app’s home screen, tap the “Add a Device” button.

On the next page, tap the Hub Mini button that appears. Follow the instructions, enter the data required for the Wi-Fi connection. We’re done with that. Our new device appears on the home screen.

Our SwitchBot Hub Mini device can be used to replace several infrared remote controls, so our devices can even be controlled with voice commands. Add e.g. a TV remote control.

On the home screen, touch our “Hub Mini xx” (or whatever we named it) device. On the next page, tap the “Add remote control” button, then select the “TV” button. On the next page, select the “Smart Matching” option. Follow the instructions that appear.

If everything is fine, the icon of the set TV remote control will appear on the home screen.

If we want to control our devices with voice commands, e.g. With Alexa, enable the SwitchBot Smart Skill in the Amazon Alexa app. It should also work with Google or Siri assistants.

Installing SwitchBot-Hub in ioBroker

To control SwitchBot devices via ioBroker, you need the SwitchBot-Hub adapter. Go to the “Adapters” Panel of ioBroker and enter the search term SwitchBot in the search box.

If there are no results, we need to install it from the Github repository. To do this, switch to expert mode (click on the black head icon in the upper horizontal menu)

The head icon turns green and the Github icon appears below, click on it.

In the pop-up window, select the “Custom” tab and paste the link below and click the “Install” button.

https://github.com/DrozmotiX/ioBroker.switchbot-hub

After successful installation, add an instance.

When the copy of the SwitchBot-Hub adapter is ready, the associated settings window will appear. A token must be entered here.

Open the SwitchBot application on your phone and tap the “Profile” item in the bottom menu. Here, select the “Preferences” submenu. Now tap on the “App Version” menu item 10 times, then a new menu item “DeveloperOptions” will appear. In this menu item, you can find the token we need to set up the ioBroker SwitchBot-Hub adapter.

Copy the token and save the setting.

Soon the data points appeared on the “Objects” page under switchbot-hub.0. We can then control our SwitchBot devices through ioBroker.

More SwitchBot tools