I don’t know where you are located, but here in NL Sonoff has its own subsidiary registered so I assume that company can be sued under Dutch or EU laws. Bedrijfsgegevens | Sonoff
Apparently that doesn’t stop them from making stuff that self-ignites.
The problem with Chinese manufacturers is that legal liability cannot be enforced.
In perfect world you will be right but this is not a perfect world.
In Croatia some guy started to import Chinese test for corona virus. Their test was decent and precise. But it was too low profit. So he decided to buy components in China, pack it all together in Turkey and forge all the labels on the test as it was originally Chinese test made in China. He flood the market with those piece of crap. Sold that in millions.
And know what? There is investigation going on, there is a lot of screaming on the state and this and that…but liability? What liability.
This scenario can be easily implement on smart home products.
I don’t say that they don’t mass produce various crap but on the other hand they can produce and do produce decent products.
Having worked in electronics manufacture for most of my working life I feel a few things need to be said.
First CE marking is not worth anything. You can just say your product meets CE and put a sticker on it.
Any product can fail, it is probably not a fault of design. It is much more likely to be a bought in component that has a manufacturing fault. This can happen to even the most rigorously quality controlled production line.
These days nearly all products are produced in China, even product built elsewhere still rely on components made in Chine.
A big issue with Chinese production is keeping the manufacturer under control and not letting them cut cost on component purchase.
Even if a product is designed in a country that is not China does not make it a quality product.
Some may not like this but one of the main reasons every mass manufacturer uses China is that they are very good at making stuff of the correct quality to a very reasonable price.
And I would not stop buying Sonoff products just because one or 2 people have had issues, when they sell millions of products with little issue.
Just take an iPhone as an example, made in China, in the same factories as a lot of products people wil class as Chinese tat I bet if you browse round the internet their will be a few iPhones which have caused issues.
Any product can fail at any time for no other reason than it just fails, no inherent design flaws or cheap design. If you BMW breaks you don’t class all German cars as cheap tat.
Since it seems to be impossible for some people to pry their cheap Chinese junk devices from their cold (burnt ?) dead hands, regardless of the overwhelming evidence of how dangerous these things are, welp, what can I say. Risking your property and possibly life because you save a few bucks on a device that is known to self ignite is a mind set I will never understand. But hey, everybody is free to their choices. Good luck and keep a fire extinguisher handy.
So Alex can you please list the devices you trust, so we can all benefit from products with no Chinese components.
I’m honestly getting a bit bored of repeating myself again and again in this thread, while being intentionally misquoted. So one last time: It is not about the location of manufacturing, it is about the lack of quality and liability from Chinese manufacturers selling their devices direct to consumers with made up certifications. Of course you know exactly what I mean, you just chose to ignore and misquote it. With that said, I’m out. Have a nice day.
You are really incredible, acting like a child. Me and other people are just asking one simple question.
How to prevent this, what measures can we take ?
You answer is - do buy cheap Chinese crap. OK, what then should we buy as Chinese crap is everywhere.
As for liability goes playing around with electricity is dangerous behavior. Its just like driving a car.
If you have car accident it is always a driver liability not matter what. Liability of the driver is never excluded. Its the same in every country on the globe.
The same goes with an electricity and smart products. No matter did you install it by your self or hired a contractor if fire happens its always the house owner liability and it will under no circumstances be excluded in some trail.
Actually I very much doubt that the CE marking on (orginal) sonoff products is “counterfeit”. In other words expect the CE as valid (or un-valid) as the one found on shelly products.
Thanks, exactly what my knowledge is. CE marking doesn’t provide anything real regarding safety for consumers.
That is a common misconception.
I first became aware of it a couple of years ago as electric vehicles became more common and we started to see issues with “granny - chargers” (chargers for normal household outlets) burn out outlets …
The most common plug in europe is the schucko. VDE 0620-2-1:2021 states that a Schucko outlet should withstand 7360Wh over a periode of 3 hours. At a nominal 230V that is a 10.6A continously. And the outlet will typically be rated at a maks of 16A.
It is worse in Denmark where we historically use the Type K plug. Many of the most common outlet for that can only withstand 6A continously as a works case even trough they might be rated for a 10A, 13A. Even outlets rated for 16A can only take 9-10A continously. The problem is not typically the connection to the plug (unless it is corroded) but the connection of the wiring to the outlet
https://ckm-content.se.com/ckmContent/sfc/servlet.shepherd/document/download/0691H00000Gejp1QAB
For that reason “granny-chargers” sold in Denmark totay are not allowed to be for more than 6A when the come with a typeE, F or K (All three outlet types are allowed in Denmark today most even in new houseing K is the most common). CEE outlets are a different story and the right connector woth heavy loads.
A small note about UK - They have a fuses in their plugs which makes perfecly sense as the fuse that protects the installation can have a high rating, but you then plug in a lamp with thein 2 x 0,75mm2 wiring and a flimsy connector or some electronics. The rest of Europe don’t have that extra level of safety. But it does not help if its the outlet that can’t handle the load continously.
As we all have more or less smart homes why don’t we try to make an automation that will monitor outlet or smart plug voltage fluctuation and if voltage rise or drop out turn the plug or outlet off and send a notification on a telegram bot.
Something like this
alias: Android TV smart plug voltage monitor
description: ""
trigger:
- type: voltage
platform: device
device_id: 6a1c54efc9f052e2cd209e055f635843
entity_id: 7947d2d90147b95a73be6db5c303ca1a
domain: sensor
above: 238
below: 218
condition: []
action:
- service: switch.turn_off
data: {}
target:
entity_id: switch.android_tv_smart_plug
- service: telegram_bot.send_message
data:
message: Android TV smart plug has power failure. I shut it down
title: Home Assistant
target: xxxxx
mode: single
Will this be some preventive measure against fire hazard from smart outlet or plug.
Hello,
to be sure that i understand correctly. With breaker you mean a fault circuit breaker or fault detection device (or for the geman speaking people a FI-Schalter)?
Frank
yup, and that’s why I have a job. If nothing ever failed they wouldn’t need my skills.
And I also agree that most failures are due to unexpected manufacturing errors in either the overall device construction or in the individual component parts making up the device.
Quality control can be enforced either more or less which will result in a more or less reliable device but nothing is 100% perfect and a small failure rate has to be acceptable. The issue is if the manufacturer has a history/trend of their devices failing and then not addressing the failures.
Sonoff may have a higher failure rate than others due to their cost cutting measures and designs and that’s what gives pause to feeling comfortable using the stuff.
OTOH, I know that they have made changes to their products in the past in response to customer complaints.
The original Sonoff Basic only had solder traces on the PCB that was supposed to handle the 16A rated current 
. In their later designs they replaced the soder traces with actual wires.
original:
revised:
I’m not saying that has fixed all of the issues with all of their devices but it at least shows they have tried to make their product better.
I think Alex’s concern is that even if it can be proven that the manufacturer used a poor design or a rash of low quality parts and the device fails causing damage/injury/death because of the current political/economic situation then it would be impossible to hold Sonoff accountable for their actions (not that I’m saying that they necessarily should be in this case).
It is very hard to impossible to prove legal responsibility of any manufacturer anywhere in the world. Even if you do, the very big question is will you or how much will you get compensated. You are looking in years and years in court and a lot of money spent on it.
Costumers never managed to take down any global manufacture ever.
The only thing that they are afraid of is bad publicity resulting in sales drop because this can easily led to bankruptcy.
Take for example Ford Pinto case. Ford knew that car has dangerous design flaw that can result in injuries or death. And what they did? Well nothing. After lot of people died or suffered hard injuries they were brought to the court, payed some minor fee in damages and life went on.
Did Ford faced bankruptcy because of that? Of course not. And that happens in USA.
That was a crystal clear case of manufacturer negligence making deliberate unsafe product due to cost cutting.
There are two types of damage a company has from faulty products. One is direct damage from liability lawsuits. Unless there’s a sizeable group that gets behind a class action case, there’s usually not a lot that they suffer.
The other one is reputation damage. That is where the expensive companies have a lot to loose. So that’s why they will be extra careful in design and quality control. Because if you read about a a device from a premium manufacturer self igniting, it gets really hard to justify spending three times the money on their products compared to budget stuff.
An interesting player in this field is IKEA. Their Tradfri smart plugs are priced similar to Sonoff, Tuya and all the other cheap brands, but they have a LOT to loose in terms of reputation, far more than the revenue of their smart home products.
You know how this class action cases go, at least, in Croatia. There was class action case against banks for cheating their clients. Doesnt matter know how and why. Class case was eventually won against banks but every client had to sue bank and claim their money back. Some succeed some didnt. So, at least here, even if the class action case is won that is not a guarantee that you, as a client, will won your case.
The other one is reputation damage.
Reputation damage is the only real damage that they can suffer because it will have an impact on their sales results. And that matters more than any law case. I don’t know did any device for a premium manufacturer self ignited but I would be surprised if it did. There was cases with a premium products, like cars from premium brands, that had a lot of issues. But then you have a damage control to shut up people, buy a nice marketing and everything that goes with it.
As for IKEA goes I think that they are using tuya hardware is some of their products and that why they are cheap. But I would worry about that. Ikea probably made a parent company that produce and sell those stuff. If the shit hits the fan they can easily cut this off and live long and prosper. You have so many possibilities to avoid liability or to minimize any potential damage that this is incredible.
I personally don’t have a lot of faith in law cases. Lawsuit exist only for one reason. For lawyers to take as much money as they can.
Ikea can’t fix reputation damage by ‘cutting of some parent company’ . They are selling these things under their own name in their own stores. I think we agree that reputation damage is the driving factor for companies to make sure their devices are safe beyond the minimum needed for market access.
It is not my motivation to argue with you or anybody else about manufacture liability. I just want to point out that manufacture liability for faulty product is something that is on very very long stick.
As for ikea goes or anyone else for that matter I woudn’t worry much about it. They surly did their exit strategy before they went in this business. That’s for sure, because this is what global companies do.
The only thing here, for us end users of a smart products, is what can we do to get an early warring that some smart device is failing or is showing some signs of premature failure.
The is the key thing in my opinion.
Daniel,
I like your notification script for devices that may begin having issues. I guess there is no real way to test it’s efficacy? Have you thought about doing so? Maybe set up your script and then start poking wires into plugs to see what happens?
Pat