Hi all,
I’m looking for a WiFi capable temperature and humidity sensor, any advices on which is the best and which to avoid ?
I’ve heard about “Shelly H&T gen 3”, any thoughts on its reliability ?
Hi,
“Best” is one of the those words that needs a lot of context to help us to help you.
- Indoors / outdoors?
- Mains powered? What region? What voltage?
My own answers range across:
- Sonoff TH16 + DHT22 sensor on WLAN running Tasmota + MQTT on UK 240V
- Sonoff TH01 on Zigbee on a CR2032
Notice - even specifying one manufacturer here isn’t enough detail as they produce a wide range.
Sonoff, Shelly, or even a bare ESP32 + ESPhome + sensors all work well. I’ve hacked 1-wire sensors into several different Sonoff devices using Tasmota, but
If this helps, 
this post!
Hi James,
Here’s the context:
- Indoor
- USB powered/Region is EU-France
Best case scenario would be a sensor which has it’s own display just like the Shelly I’ve mentioned earlier. I don’t know how reliable it is or if there is any good alternative ?
I’d like to avoid anything Bluetooth, Zigbee or Z-wave.
Thanks!
Hi,
There is a tradeoff here which will sadly rule out many devices. WLAN needs lots of power so most devices are mains-powered (directly - Sonoff TH*, or indirect - USB). The market seems to prefer battery devices for sensors so many are small BTLE, Zigbee or Z-Wave.
A UK-specific retailer has a useful site broken down by both purpose and technology:
Sadly, mains powered devices tend to be HVAC controllers.
A product that almost matches is the Xiaomi LYWSD03MMC which measures temp and humidty, is cheap, and has a display. Sadly it is sold as BTLE, but FOSS firmware converts it to Zigbee - battery low-power protocols!
I’ve used ESPhome and Tasmota to create my own hardware with cheap DS18B20 / DHT22 sensors and small OLED displays. These work with WLAN and are powered by USB, but not off-the-shelf.
James
Another trade-off to consider is that most WiFi devices are going to want to use the vendor’s cloud, instead of directly connecting locally to something like HA. There are too many reasons not to want this to list them all here.
This is one reason people use ESPHome to develop their own sensors.
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Perhaps 5 years ago, but the success of Tasmota firmware running on Sonoff devices has spurred others like Shelly to enable and encourage local control without the need for the costs (to the manufacturer) of a public cloud server. It almost looks like the Open Home is winning!
I’d certainly avoid Tuya’s cloud like a plague, but now there’s plenty of WLAN devices with local control out of the box - just not that many sensors.
The latest local WLAN protocol worth mentioning is Matter, but again for power reasons, sensors tend to be battery powered running Thread.
I’ve got Tasmota, Shelly, ESPhome, and Matter devices all running on the same WLAN APs without issues. Each firmware has a different set of advantages.
I’ve built a commercial freezer / fridge temperature monitor with multiple probes and a small OLED display using ESPhome, but the temp sensor in the shed is just a Sonoff device with a temp probe running Tasmota as it’s pre-defined commodity hardware and easier, IMHO.
The last two WLAN devices I added were plug-and play though - a Shelly EM (MQTT) and a Sonoff MINI4RM (Matter).
If this helps, this post!
I’ve been using Wireless sensor tags for several years.
Mine are all battery (life about six months) but they have USB-powered models as well. No display. You need a tag manager, and the HA integration is cloud-based, but I’ve found them to be a good work horse.
I replaced all my temperature/humidity sensors with xiaomi LYWSD03MMC type sensors, i have 10+ of them everywhere. They are very precise - once I’ve had 4 of them together and they all showed exactly same temperature and humidity (up to decimal point).
You just need to add some BT proxy esp devices around the house (if one is not enough) to be seen in HA, and flash them with pvvx fw (they work with original one, too, but pvvx is better). Battery lasts ages, and they do have lcd.
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