家庭智能立方体助手

Summary

This cube allows:

• Control the cube lights with your zigbee controller - home assistant, smartthings, alexa etc.
• Control your home with the cube. put it on any of the sides for a specific action. (does not work with smartthings, alexa not sure)

For example, i have made that side 6 of the cube enabled do not disturb mode, where the house stays dark and lights do not turn on anymore. During this mode, the cube flashes red every 30 seconds to let people at home know the mode is enabled. Side 1 turns off the do not disturb mode and flashes quickly green to confirm.
See the above scenario in action on a youtube video i made:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kmg2Pz-W0hQ

You need:

1. basic soldering tools and skills.
2. wires.
3. transparent filament.
4. color filament of your choice for the cube itself.
5. Aqara vibration sensor.
6. Zigbee usb led strip. https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B09MRYNTST/
7. 18650 batteries of your choice that have a flat head (so they fit in the holder)
8. 18650 holders, that you glue together: https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B09YM53TKJ/
9. usb power board: https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/1005006005948104.html
10. charger board: https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/1005005356623076.html
11. a hot glue pistol.

PS: I am waiting for a 3v board that i will try to solder on the vibration sensor so i do not need to replace the build in battery of that device. Will update if that worked out.

Important notes:

• The zigbee led strip link i bought and linked above from amazon has the very low power consumption. I do not know if all zigbee led strips have the same low power usage, so you might want to check it with a usb power meter. I had a bluetooth usb led strip a while ago that used 1.3w in standby.
• The cube will not respond as fast as the aqara cube pro device. it takes around 2-3 seconds with this device to respond to switching to a side.
• The side plates may be a tiny bit too big, experiment with scaling them.
• This model is made without thinking about having to remove the battery of the aqara vibrations sensor (should last like 2 years on a battery. I will update the model when i had luck connecting a 3v board to the sensor, so i never have to open the cube again.

How to build:

1. Order the parts needed.
2. The cube, inside of the cube and the diffuser need to be printed in transparent filament.
   The inside cube only needs support on it's side and the bottom. you can place support blockers on the rest of the model.
3. Print the other parts with a color of your choice. I used metallic copper PLA for my cube, it makes it look old, alien and looks great with warm white/yellowish light.
4. Glue two 18650 holders together. (do not put batteries in them yet)
5. get some short and thin cables, red and black, and strip & connect the red from battery holder 1, the red from battery holder 2, and the red from the short cable together, squeeze and turn them into a single cable end. repeat for the black cables. Then, put the ends into the charger board's TOP SIDE plus and ground (or batt and ground), then solder them on those connection points. cut away any excess cable on the bottom of the board, it needs to be as flat as possible.
6. you now have 2 loose wires, a red and black one. Connect them to the usb board and solder them on there, ofcourse keep an eye on positive and ground positions.
7. put batteries inside the 18650 holders and see if you can charge the batteries (red led lights up on charger board) and if the zigbee led strip works.
8. Optionally, to prevent a little battery drainage, you can use a sharp thin pliers to cut the red led on the usb board. it will break it, and has no consequence for the functioning of the board.
9. Now that everything is working you can place the charger board in the corner of the inside cube, put the 18650 battery holder pack into the center, and the aqara vibration sensor in the hole next to it. You can place the usb board and zigbee controller in the remaining large holder on the opposite side.
10. now, you can either proceed with what i have not done yet, connecting a step down 3v board to the current system, that you then connect to the vibration sensor. Then you can continue with taping the led strip to the exterior of the inside-cube model you printed.
    Or, if you proceed without soldering this board/permanent power supply to the vibration sensor, it means you still need to open the cube to replace the battery once in a long time.
    You do not use the tape of the led strip and only glue the last bit of the led strip to keep it tight around the exterior of the inside cube.
11. Place the inside-cube into the cube. place the transparent lid diffuser into the lid, then put the lid on the cube. now be sure the usb-c slot alligns with the charging board. if it does not, use some small plastic or paper to put the board in the correct place.
12. Finishing up and closing the lid. I recommend using a hot glue pistol to put the lid on semi-permanently. you can easily remove it again using a heat gun or hair dryer. (be careful and slow with this as you do not want to melt the plastic)

Possible improvements to the model for advanced 3d modellers:

• A better guidance for led strips so you can make it perfectly even across the sides and perhaps also the edges.
• The aqara cube works faster and allows for more actions to be executed, vs the aqara vibration sensor used... However it does not easily fit into the space available. However, if we check info on the aqara cube product info pages, we can see it only uses half it's size and the rest is just plastic to make it a cube? perhaps it can be cut in half without consequence and then be fitted into this alien cube.

Have fun creating this if interested and be sure to share a picture!
Feel free to ask questions on the home assistant forum topic: