I’m not really an expert on looking at capacitors, but I think I have the same problem. I bought 2 Athom PG01 (EU) and both of them failed. They just suddenly stopped working. No unexpected reboots or anything else, they just stopped. If you plug them in, they get warm, but no other sign of life. One was powering a PC for about 8 months (I guess), the other just a small christmas light cord for +/- 11 months.
2 Likes
I think another one of my Athom plugs has died. Mancave fridge. Will know for sure tomorrow.
That’s the third one to crap out. It was installed October 2022.
3 Likes
Actually looking at my logs I think six of my seven remaining Athom plugs are on the way out. It was a fun experiment but I suggest people steer clear of these things. None have made it to a year in service.
2 Likes
I have bought 24 v1 plugs (PG04)
8 broke and Athom replaced them all
Then next 6 broke
today next 6 broke
Athom is no more replacing them
all broke the same way: no more LED, no more relay working, no more ESP working
only one broke as burnt completely (dishwasher was connected, still way below 16A as per specs)
and they are NOT REPAIRABLE! YOU CANNOT DISMANTLE it without breaking it.
no more Athom products in my house please ;-(
2 Likes
out of 20 of my failed v1 plugs only 1 was with 2kW or so (still below 16A x 240 = 3.8kW)
all others were switching… lamps or routers, switches etc - way below 100W (so 0.5A)
crap and rubish
1 Like
I found the culprit: Athom is using this IC for powering the board:
And then, the voltage from output goes to AMS1117 to be changed to 3.3V.
Unfortunately, the output of KP3210SG was below 3V so poor AMS1117 was stealing another 1V as dropout - finally on ESP it was just about 2V - way too low for the board to work.
I changed the capacitor (470u/10) and on the output I got 5V.
So, either they did not manage properly the IC KP3210SG, or any of the “around it” elements got old (i.e. the inductor or capacitors) or anything else - or maybe even the IC KP3210SG itself is … poor quality - the biggest problem is: OPENING AND CLOSING the plug - since - unlike Sonoff thingis - you need to almost destroy the plug to open it, once repaired it does not look nice anymore.
I was lucky today with a bit of hot gun (to open) and a bit of glue (to close) but again: it does not look nice anymore.
That is all - I repaired today 2 out of many - I will try to repair all.
Shame on Athom anyway.
6 Likes
Thanks for sharing all the details. Real shame.
They claim the V2’s are an improved design.
1 Like
So finally I managed to repari all - as mentioned above the “guilty” one is the capacitor.
I replaced existing 470u/10V with 680u/16V and all is OK - except the cover - it does not look nice anymore.
4 Likes
I have several of the UK plugs and one of the new UK single gang sockets. I have had a couple of the plugs fail - both with relay faults - the relays just can’t handle more than 10A for any length of time. They are rated at 15A (UK wiring is max 13A so thy should have capacity to spare) but they seem to die above 10A. Replaced the relays with ones from RS Components (a very reputable UK supplier).
No problems with the socket - yet.
2 Likes
Two failed on a microwave oven. Maybe that was a bit ambitious from my side but I don’t think the 16A/3680W rating is realistic.
The other one failed switching an outdoor light. It was placed in a garage type environment so could be caused by temperature differences/ humidity. I used a Hihome/Tuya smart plug in that position for several years without issues.
Not really sure yet 
I’m now experimenting with Zigbee devices (Sonoff/ Aqara).
I don’t seem to have a lot of luck with ESPHome. Athom plugs are failing and the temperature sensors I built myself started showing up as unavailable aftter a HA Core update. This has been going on since June and it doesn’t look like they will work again like they did before the update.
Hoping that the Zigbee route will be more stable/ idiot proof.
1 Like
UPDATE: a restart from the web console seemed to stop the log scrolling, and it’s reporting in power usage values now. I can’t write logic based on the voltage / current if they’re not reliably showing up. Anyone seen what I’m describing below?
I have two of the Athom AU / NZ plugs, SKU PG05V2-AU16A-ESP-1 which is probably model PG05V2, 15 months old. One is working as expected, the one that I’ve rarely used. The one I use every day to turn on and off my phone charger is behaving in an odd way.
Earlier it wasn’t sending voltage or current to Home Assistant, and it wasn’t showing up on its web console, but it still responded to on / off commands from HA. It was writing around 10 log entries per second as below. I don’t know how often this happens as I virtually never look at the web console.
Has anyone seen anything like this? I wonder if a firmware update to replace the software could help. I can see an “OTA Update” option on the Athom web console, but I wouldn’t know where to get another firmware… I don’t know if it’s device specific or if there’s a generic ESP32 firmware. Does anyone know?
19:55:24 [D] [sensor:124] 'Athom Smart Plug V2 Voltage': Sending state 0.00000 V with 1 decimals of accuracy
19:55:24 [D] [sensor:124] 'Athom Smart Plug V2 Current': Sending state 0.00000 A with 2 decimals of accuracy
19:55:24 [D] [sensor:124] 'Athom Smart Plug V2 Power': Sending state 0.00000 W with 1 decimals of accuracy
19:55:24 [D] [sensor:124] 'Athom Smart Plug V2 Total Daily Energy': Sending state 0.00070 kWh with 3 decimals of accuracy
19:55:24 [W] [cse7766:058] Invalid checksum from CSE7766: 0xB6 != 0x00
19:55:25 [W] [cse7766:058] Invalid checksum from CSE7766: 0xB6 != 0x00
19:55:25 [W] [cse7766:058] Invalid checksum from CSE7766: 0xB6 != 0x00
19:55:25 [W] [cse7766:058] Invalid checksum from CSE7766: 0xB8 != 0x00
19:55:25 [W] [cse7766:058] Invalid checksum from CSE7766: 0xB8 != 0x00
19:55:25 [W] [cse7766:058] Invalid checksum from CSE7766: 0xB8 != 0x00
19:55:25 [W] [cse7766:058] Invalid checksum from CSE7766: 0xB8 != 0x00
19:55:25 [W] [cse7766:058] Invalid checksum from CSE7766: 0xB8 != 0x00
19:55:25 [W] [cse7766:058] Invalid checksum from CSE7766: 0xB8 != 0x00
19:55:25 [W] [cse7766:058] Invalid checksum from CSE7766: 0xBA != 0x00
19:55:25 [W] [cse7766:058] Invalid checksum from CSE7766: 0x7A != 0x00
19:55:25 [W] [cse7766:058] Invalid checksum from CSE7766: 0x7A != 0x00
19:55:25 [W] [cse7766:058] Invalid checksum from CSE7766: 0x44 != 0x00
19:55:26 [W] [cse7766:058] Invalid checksum from CSE7766: 0x44 != 0x00
I updated my plug yesterday. Create new ESPHome dashboard entry. Use new yaml manual compile and download .bin for OTA.
I have two plugs rock solid but new plug I flashed yesterday is dropping connection. Bit of fault finding and have ordered two new plugs just in case
Some insight into UK wiring, and any assumptions about the MAX current a UK socket will allow.
The key takeaway is that you can pull way more than you think without ever noticing.
For a given room or floor of a property, the circuit (Ring Main) is generally rated at 32A
A double socket is rated at 20A
A 13A fuse has a fusing factor of 1.6, meaning it could allow you to pull up to 20.8A before blowing (13A*1.6=20.8A)
I am not an electrician but I have studied the subject quite extensively in my own time.
Not sure what happened but reflashed some 5 or 6 times, bin / OTA and eventually straight from dashboard. Kept dropping connection with outside world. Final go restarted with “standard and latest v2” YAML from GitHub and somehow it decided to go stable!
This one is rather important as powering UPS and entire network! I must be tempting fate!
Athom sent me a link to the latest Smart Plug v2 firmware, the current one is here. In future it’s better to go to the releases page and search for “Smart_Plug_V2”.
The problem went away with a reboot. I’ve put the new firmware onto the problematic plug and it seems to be working fine. It created a new entity and I had to do a bit of renaming old entities and changing new entity names to match old, so I probably won’t bother updating the other plug without a good reason. The new firmware has additional sensors, like WiFi network connected to, device MAC, etc.
I have no idea. I don’t know anything about ESPHome. Let me know if there’s anything you want me to check, I’d probably need instructions how to find it.
Does anyone know how to alter the configuration of the smart plug? I can understand the configuration format in the config file, but I don’t know how to apply that configuration.
Do I need to upload it with ftp / ssh, build the firmware with it embedded, change it in a GUI, etc. I’m ok with HA but have no experience with ESP32.