This is brand new to me, so bear with me… First off, the ORB-ZBW1L Zigbee Smart Wall Switch (no neutral required).
This is a neat-looking wall switch. Sonoff also sent me 2-way and 3-way adaptor plates. These will vary in different countries; mine are for Spain.
It looks pretty standard to me. In fact, it seems to contain a variation of another Sonoff no-neutral switch. I’m not sure I want to take it apart to confirm, but of course, it works with the eWeLink app. The real question—will it also work with Zigbee2MQTT at this stage?
There are only two connections: one live, the other to the load. Sonoff states that the minimum load must be at least 3 watts, which makes sense since these devices draw a small amount of power to operate.
To test, I connected the switch between a power plug and a 12W LED light, and tried manual on–off control—no luck. A green light flashed at the back of the switch, so clearly, it needed pairing first. Straight into Zigbee2MQTT it went.
After the usual stream of debug messages, I saw “accepting join from device 0xc4xxxxx85c”. I then substituted in a friendly name, zbw1l—and sure enough, it turned out to be a Sonoff ZB Mini inside. (See my article about the ZB Mini for more details.) Amazingly, that was all it took.
Now the on–off button works, and of course, Zigbee2MQTT control is available. I’m using the Zigbee2MQTT integration inside Home Assistant, which has a slick new interface—but you can also run Zigbee2MQTT on a Raspberry Pi and control it via Node-RED or other platforms. For those not interested in HA, the eWeLink app works fine, though it requires a Sonoff hub.
I already knew the ZB Mini worked well, and I like this refreshed visual interface. A status light on the switch would have been nice, but you can’t have everything. At least mounting screws are included.
I also have the Orb-MW1 Matter over WiFi Wall Switch and the Orb-RBS Matter over WiFi Roller Shutter Switch, which I’ll review last. Same styling, same build quality. By the looks of it, these are existing Sonoff modules housed in sleek new wall switch casings..
For example, the Orb-RM1 is really Sonoff’s MiniR4M-E in disguise. The casing matches the Orb-ZBW1L, and installation is simple.
Unlike the ORB-ZBW1L, though, the Orb-RM1 does require neutral. Setup with the eWeLink app takes just seconds: scan the QR code, select your WiFi network, and you’re done.
The Orb-RM1 is a straightforward local/remote on–off switch with support for timers, schedules, and loop timers.
For me, the Orb-ZBW1L is more practical since it doesn’t need neutral wiring. But if you do have neutral at the wall switch location, the RM1 is equally functional.
In Home Assistant, device integration was seamless: under the HA eWeLink integration, I simply clicked Add Device, entered my eWeLink credentials, and both the switch and its status sensor appeared instantly.
There’s a Sonoff Orb-RBS Smart Roller Shutter Wall Switch too but as I don’t have any blinds – I can’t test that fully – but – I’ve just tried it with 12w LED lights – just like their brand new Fusion Series (Orb-ZBRBS) wall switch which uses internally a Sonoff Mini-ZRBS-E controller module, the device which uses WiFi – in the eWeLink app, One output turns on when the “open” button is pressed and can be stopped by pressing again (or in the app, by pressing the centre STOP button – and same with the other button (close) in the app. Either way the output turns off after a couple of minutes automatically. That time can be programmed in the app and there are also schedule and timer facilities (which I never saw in the Zigbee device as I didn’t use the eWelink app – timers etc can easily be added as automations in Home Assistant). Meanwhile the Wifi device was automatically added to my Sonoff integration in Home Assistant..
Better than the state of the current (unreleased at the time of writing) Zigbee unit, the HA controls here work perfectly – up for one output which is stopped by the centre stop button, the other output turns on when the down button is pressed. A neat touch is if you press the down button in HA while the up output is active…. the up output turns off, short delay then the down output turns on. This handy 2-part action does not however happen with the real buttons on the wall switch.
No setup controls in HA as yet but you can do that in the app. The above I simply did under settings, device in HA. Normally you’d make a pretty tile or automation.
Finally my normal gripe which applies to many such devices – only one neutral connector even though there appear to be 2 spare connectors doing nothing – hence my test choc-block.
