433MHz Socket Switches: State Detection When Using Remote Control in Home Assistant

Configuration
1

Hello everyone,

I’m currently transitioning from Domoticz to Home Assistant and have already familiarized myself with some parts. However, I’m stuck on one issue.

In Home Assistant, I have several 433 MHz socket switches. They can be controlled via HA without any issues.

In addition, I use a classic 433 MHz remote control to switch the same sockets directly. This works technically well – but the state (on/off) is not updated in Home Assistant when switching via remote.

This results in the UI no longer reflecting the actual state of the socket.

My question:
Is there any solution or best practice to allow Home Assistant to detect or synchronize the true state, even when the switch is triggered outside of HA?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

2

Nope. The communication is one way. From Home Assistant or the remote to the switch. There is no state feedback from these devices. Thus if changed by the remote Home Assistant has no way of telling if the switch has changed state.

Modern wi-fi, zigbee and zwave switches do have this state feedback.

3

You would have to make a template switch and then have scripts to send the turn on and off signal and set the state accordingly, and you would also need automations that capture the remote signals and then set the state accordingly.
It will sometimes go out of sync, but if you do not use the toggle action, but instead the on and off actions, then a click on the remote can correct the state.

4

Only if you can detect their state somehow. I have a 433Mhz Socket on my TV upstairs, so I have a template switch using a ping sensor to the TV to detect if the 433Mhe socket is on or off. Same for an access point.

But if you can’t detect it through the load on the 433Mhz socket, you never know the state for sure.

5

Hi WallyR,

First of all, thank you – and also thanks to tom_l and francisp – for your helpful replies! You’ve all clarified the situation for me:

tom_l explained that 433 MHz sockets are one-way only, so there's no feedback.

francisp shared the idea of using ping or power monitoring to infer the state, which is great for smart TVs or access points.

And WallyR, your suggestion of a template switch with scripts for on/off and automations to track the remote signals sounds like a promising solution!

May I ask if you have an example or YAML snippet of such a template switch setup? I’d love to adapt it to my own setup with three sockets and corresponding remote buttons.

Thanks again to all of you for the great support!

Best regards

6

Hello PeKusch,

7

I have it in Node Red.

What device do you have to handle 433 signals?

8

This is a 433Mhz switch that is handled by rflink + espRfLinkMQTT

  - platform: template
    switches:
      boven_tv:
        value_template: "{{ is_state('binary_sensor.sensortvboven', 'on') }}"
        turn_on:
          - service: mqtt.publish
            data:
              payload: '10;newkaku;03a0b800;2;on;'
              topic: rflink/cmd
          - service: mqtt.publish
            data:
              payload: '{"SWITCH":"2","CMD":"ON"}' 
              topic: 'rflink/NewKaku-03a0b800'
        turn_off:
          - service: mqtt.publish
            data:
              payload: '10;newkaku;03a0b800;2;off;'
              topic: rflink/cmd
          - service: mqtt.publish
            data:
              payload: '{"SWITCH":"2","CMD":"OFF"}' 
              topic: 'rflink/NewKaku-03a0b800'
        unique_id: 51be40b2-85a0-4ca8-a27e-f252ad579193

First mqtt publish is the command to turn on/off, second is what is received from the remote/from the rflink

9

Thank you very much to everyone who contributed to this thread!

All of your replies were extremely helpful and allowed me to understand both the technical limitations of 433 MHz sockets and the different ways to work around them in Home Assistant.

I now fully understand that there is no direct feedback channel from these devices, so state synchronization has to be handled manually. Thanks to your insights, I was able to build a working setup using template switches, scripts, and helpers. The idea of combining signal detection from remote controls with automation logic was especially valuable.

This solution works well for my setup with multiple 433 MHz sockets and remote controls. I really appreciate the shared examples and your experience with different integrations like MQTT, RFLink, and Node-RED – they gave me a broader view of the possibilities.

Thanks again for your support – this topic is now resolved for me!