Hello all,
I’m a newbie at Home Assistant, still learning as I go. My dedicated HA has been running some temperature monitoring for about a week now. I’ve pulled in a few Add-Ons and have a rudimentary dashboard to look at. I want to maintain local control of devices and automations, so I’m trying to make good architectural choices to allow that.
My wifi network is currently running with two Shelly relays. I will likely continue to use wifi devices when I have access to mains power. For locations without mains power, I’ve chosen the ZigBee protocol for battery powered sensors. I’ll probably avoid Z-Wave altogether to avoid adding a third network.
My coordinator is a Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus, flashed with the most current firmware. I am planning on initially using ZHA as the gateway until I find the need (and skills) for ZigBee2MQTT. My current task is to add a few (mains powered) ZigBee smart plugs to play with. They will also do double-duty as repeaters, building out better range in the ZigBee mesh.
Now for the help request …
I purchased two Sonoff S31 Lite ZigBee smart plugs for the mesh build out. The wifi S31 version is quite popular and has lots of YouTube videos on flashing it with Tasmota for that local control. However, the ZigBee Lite version has almost no information out there regarding flashing, set up, HA integration, problems, etc.
Any experience you can share about the S31 Lite would be greatly appreciated. If you have a better ZigBee smart plug to recommend for my application, I’d be willing to return the S31 Lites and switch teams.
Karl