Hi! Today we’re going to talk about the Adaprox Fingerbot, a small but powerful device that can turn your traditional appliances into smart devices. And the best part is, you can connect it to Home Assistant using Zigbee. In this video, I’ll show you how the Fingerbot works and how to set up and use the Fingerbot with Home Assistant. Let’s dive into this!
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A couple of months back, I published this video in which I showed some Switchbot products and how you can use them in your home. One of those products was the Switchbot bot that can be used to automate dumb devices in your house. Today I’m going to show you a device that looks a lot like the Switchbot Bot, but has one big advantage that the Switchbot Bot does not have!
What is the Fingerbot and how does it work?
This Fingerbot that is sent to me by Adaprox, is a small robotic finger that can press buttons, switches, and other physical controls on your appliances. It’s powered by a CR-2 battery and can be controlled through a mobile app. You can even set up schedules and automations to make your appliances work on their own. At the end of the video, I will give you my opinion about these kinds of devices.
The Adaprox Fingerbot can be connected using the Linkoze Smart Gateway or straight into Home Assistant. The Linkoze Smart Gateway can be used to connect Bluetooth and Zigbee devices so that you can control them with the MeshHub app.
How to connect the Fingerbot to the Smart Gateway
To connect the Fingerbot to the Linkoze Hub, you need to install the MeshHub app on your phone. You have to scan the QR code on the package to add the Hub to the app. After the Hub is found, you need to enter your Wi-Fi credentials to connect the Hub to your network. After that, you can add the Fingerbot to the app by putting it in pairing mode and adding it as a Zigbee device.
When the Fingerbot is added to the app, you can control it using the app and change a lot of settings. You can select different modes. The click mode just clicks a button. The switch mode switches the button down and up and in the program mode, you should be able to program several actions one after the other. I couldn’t get the program mode to work myself. It seems that there was a little bug in the app when I tested it.
What I like about this Fingebot is that it has a touch button on it, so that you can also control it with your finger and you do not always need to use the app to control it. You can turn that off using the touch control toggle. And there are options to set the down and up movement percentages so that the Fingerbot doesn’t apply too much pressure on the knob of your device.
How to connect the Fingerbot to Home Assistant using Zigbee?
When you connect the Fingerbot to Home Assistant, it will lose all the settings that you have set up in the app and you cannot configure those settings in Home Assistant. To connect the Fingerbot to Home Assistant, you’ll need a Zigbee stick, such as the Sonoff Dongle P or the SkyConnect. Watch this video about the SkyConnect if you didn’t already. I tested the Fingerbot on Zigbee2MQTT and ZHA and it works with both. Check out the links in the description for tutorials on how to install Zigbee2MQTT or ZHA in Home Assistant. Let’s set the Fingerbot up in ZHA for this tutorial.
- Open the Home Assistant interface and go to Settings -> Devices & Services
- Click Add Integration.
- Click Add Zigbee Device.
- Press and hold the reset button on the Fingerbot until the LED flashes rapidly.
- When the Fingerbot is detected, change the device name.
Your Fingerbot is now connected to Home Assistant. You can check if it works by going to Settings > Devices And Services. Click on the devices Tab and select the Adaprox Fingerbot. If everything went well, you can toggle the switch now.
How to use the Finger Bot with Home Assistant?
You can add the Fingerbot in a couple of ways to Home Assistant. It’s possible to add it as a switch on your dashboard or to create an automation for it. You can, for instance, start your coffee maker with it as soon as you enter the kitchen between 8 and 8:30 AM.
Comparison
So, how does this Fingerbot compare to the Switchbot bot? Both devices do the job they have to do. The plus for this Fingerbot is that it uses Zigbee which is a big plus for me. Switchbot uses BlueTooth at the moment. There is also a Bluetooth version of the Fingerbot, but I don’t like Bluetooth that much because of the limited range and slow speed response when I use this in Home Assistant. This Fingerbot is really fast because of the fact that it uses Zigbee.
Adaprox sent me two samples of the Zigbee Fingerbot and when I tested the Fingerbot, the mechanism of one of them broke. The finger was not pushing down enough anymore after that. I am not sure if this was because of the fact that this was a testing unit, but it seems that the mechanism of the Switchbot bot is sturdier than the one from this Adaprox Fingerbot. The other sample worked just fine and I had no issues with it. Speed matters to me, so I replaced my Switchbot bot with this one to control the power button of my PC.
Conclusion
And now, the downside… Although I really like these kinds of bots, I am having difficulties finding good use cases for them. In my house all lights are Zigbee lights, so these bots do not work for my light switches. My washing machine and dryer have capacitive touch buttons and these bots do now work with such buttons. And my coffee machine does have capacitive touch buttons as well, so again, these bots do not work for me here. The only use case that I can think of is to use these bots for an old-fashioned washing machine with push buttons. I guess it will work for appliances like that. But maybe I’m wrong and there a more use cases for these bots. Let me know in the comments what use cases you can think of.
That’s it for today’s video! I hope you found this tutorial helpful and that you’re now able to use the Fingerbot with Home Assistant using Zigbee. With the Fingerbot, you can make your appliances smart and automate your home to make your life easier. Don’t forget to give this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel to help the channel grow! Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you in the next video!
Bye bye!
fingerbot, home assistant, home automation, smart bot, bot