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Touch Control

The front of WallSense doubles as a touch button. A capacitive touch surface sits behind the front. It has no moving parts, so there is no mechanical wear.

Note: This page describes the current firmware, a WiFi test build. Names and behavior can change until release.

Built-In Gestures

The current firmware links three gestures to the rear LEDs. The front LED confirms each gesture with a red pulse.

Gesture What you do What happens Front LED
Single press Tap briefly Toggles the rear LED effects One short red pulse
Double press Tap twice quickly Selects Rainbow Two short red pulses
Hold Keep touching for 0.8 seconds Selects Aurora Flow One long red pulse

Good to know:

  • A single press that turns the LEDs on always starts Rainbow, not the last scene you chose.
  • After a single or double press the action starts about 0.4 seconds after you let go, because the firmware first checks whether another press follows.
  • Hold starts as soon as you reach 0.8 seconds, while you are still touching.
  • A touch of roughly 0.35 to 0.8 seconds triggers no built-in action.

LED Lighting explains the rear LEDs and the scenes.

Touch in Home Assistant

The Touch Button binary sensor is on while you touch the front and off when you let go. Use it as a trigger for your own automations: switch a light, start a scene or run a script.

Note: In the current firmware a press also triggers the built-in LED action. There is no setting yet to turn this off.

Home Assistant only sees on and off. Double press and hold are not separate events. You can recognize a long touch yourself with for: in the trigger, as in the second example below.

Toggle a Light

The examples use wallsense as the device name. Entity IDs can differ per installation.

alias: "Living room: touch toggles the light"
triggers:
  - trigger: state
    entity_id: binary_sensor.wallsense_touch_button
    from: "off"
    to: "on"
actions:
  - action: light.toggle
    target:
      entity_id: light.living_room

Long Touch for a Scene

alias: "Living room: long touch starts movie scene"
triggers:
  - trigger: state
    entity_id: binary_sensor.wallsense_touch_button
    to: "on"
    for:
      seconds: 2
actions:
  - action: scene.turn_on
    target:
      entity_id: scene.movie

This touch also passes the 0.8 second hold, so the rear LEDs go to Aurora Flow as well.

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