@petewill Curious about the flickering you and @backcountrymountains are having. I have 15 of these things throughout my home, bought both in warehouse and online from big C, and I’ve never experienced “flickering.” I have, however, experienced a “buzzing” sound that came from some of my bulbs. This switch has a weird issue: it seems that if you set it to 100%, power it off (button or WiFi), then power it back on; the switch is NO LONGER at 100%! I don’t care what the software says, the switch is not perfectly at 100% anymore, as pressing the brightness up adjust button would increase the bulbs’ brightness by just a hair… and the buzzing would go away! I discovered this long before getting into flashing, and the solution I found at the time was to replace my cheaper LED bulbs (which were “dimmable” btw), with higher quality bulbs.
So I guess the question is, do your lights still flicker if you turn them on, and then hit the brightness increase button again (regardless of previous 100% setting)? Not that that would be an acceptable solution, but curious if it’s more or less the same issue I was having.
Interesting. I’ll have to test the brightness settings to see if the helps. I know the flickering happens when it is dimming so maybe being at 100% will help. The problem is I want to have the lights dimmed more often than at full brightness so setting to 100% won’t really work for me.
My LED bulbs are older so that could also be the problem. What brand are you using? If you have any suggestions for 40 watt equivalent I’d love to know.
The bulbs that caused the buzzing for me at anything other than perfectly 100% brightness (again including that issue about turning them on via button/wifi not being truly 100% anymore) were dimmable EcoSmart LED G25 vanity mirror bulbs purchased from Home Depot mid-2015 or 2016. I replaced them with GE Relax series G25 bulbs… a tiny bit more expensive, but MUCH better quality than those EcoSmart bulbs! No buzzing (or flickering in my case) at any dimness, and they dimmed to nearly imperceptible level. Only issue I had was that out of 18 bulbs I bought for the bathrooms, 3 had defects (1 was scratched, 2 had noticeable bad LEDs in the bulb when fully bright).
The other bulbs I use are also Feit LED bulbs from Costco ranging from candelabras, T8s, older A19s (the ones with the finned heatsink bases), and actually the RGB A19 & BR30 smart bulbs. Ironically the only ones of those that do “flicker” are the RGB bulbs… but they’re flashed with Tasmota, and only flicker when setting them below 10% brightness (many Tuya based bulbs struggle below 10%, which is why they’re typically locked at higher levels). Obviously this switch isn’t the culprit there, and in those rooms it only acts as a triggering device for automation On/Off and now dimming too (post flash only).
I picked the GE Relax bulbs up from Lowes, and they’re probably worth a try. Honestly I’d probably try installing a simple/cheap “dumb” dimmer first, and see if they still flicker on you. If so, I’d shop for and buy a couple samples of the middle to upper quality LED bulbs from wherever, and see if they address the issue.
Thanks! I’ll have to pick up some of the GE Relax bulbs and give them a try. The cheap bulbs I have not do not dim very low so the fact that they will dim way down is great.
I did test the 100% brightness issue you mentioned and I experienced the same thing. I was able to get a little more brightness when pressing the physical switch. Interesting.
Also, when I originally saw the flickering I had the switch on my desk in a test configuration with one dimmable bulb. Now that it is mounted in the wall in a 4-way configuration with 2 light fixtures (each with one bulb) I did not notice any flickering at various dim levels. I did not watch it for a really long time but it did seem to be much better than when it was connected at my desk.
I am newer to HA/ESPhome. I have 30+ of these switches installed and would love to get them set-up as local devices. I have one tester switch that I went and did the tuya-convert and matched setting with @mxr662’s post but experienced the on>off issue. I then tried to move it to ESPhome.
Issue: I have ESPhome on the device and on power-up it shows online for 60 sec then goes offline. I see the device in my APR table and in my AP’s devices list as online and can ping the device to show its connected to wifi. but ESPhome seems to not able to connect to it. In the logs, I get “WARNING Initial connection failed. The ESP might not be connected to WiFi yet (Error connecting to 172.16.100.88: timed out). Re-Trying in 1 seconds” and if I try to push a new config to it I get “ERROR Connecting to 172.16.100.88:8266 failed: timed out”
If I try to upload a config via the captive portal it resets the connection, even tried to push a tasmota_light.bin to it to back out to tasmota.
Any help/thoughts, I have been googling the crap out of this and am stuck. Please and Thank you.
Home Assistant: 0.105.3
ESPhome: 1.14.3
Here is my config,
esphome:
name: "sw_tester"
platform: ESP8266
board: esp01_1m
wifi:
ssid: "network"
password: "password"
manual_ip:
static_ip: 172.16.100.88
gateway: 172.16.100.254
subnet: 255.255.255.0
# Enable fallback hotspot (captive portal) in case wifi connection fails
ap:
ssid: "ESP-NEEDS-Help"
password: "password"
captive_portal:
# Make sure logging is not using the serial port
## EDIT: baud rate 0 still seems to cause issues with
## flickering lights and checksum errors in the logs
## I'm now using level: NONE
logger:
baud_rate: 0
level: NONE
# Enable Home Assistant API
api:
# Make sure you can upload new firmware OTA
ota:
# My dimmer used this hardware serial port
uart:
rx_pin: GPIO3
tx_pin: GPIO1
baud_rate: 9600
# Register the Tuya MCU connection
tuya:
web_server:
port: 80
# Make the light
# Not sure about the minimum dimming range here, 0 might be too low
light:
- platform: "tuya"
name: "sw_tester2"
dimmer_datapoint: 2
switch_datapoint: 1
min_value: 10
max_value: 1000
@JacobSpeckman I was getting some strange issues while trying to assign static IPs as well. I ended up creating DNS entries for the devices (devicename.local) then everything worked great. Not sure if that’s your issue but I thought I’d at least pass that on in case you haven’t tried it.
Try disabling the the web_server section. As @apop pointed out, it does cause some screwy behavior due to major memory usage. I did this for mine, and re-added it when I put one of my switches that didn’t need the dimmer portion enabled (that’s the area that causes the On/Off issue - switch itself works fine if you don’t assign that dpid) back to Tasmota.
Edit: also that time out error is pretty normal. Try setting your logger level to VERBOSE so you can see what’s going on. I usually get that time out issue 2-3 times after a fresh flash before it connects and gives me a MCU heartbeat.
I will do that, i tried it just to see if i could get into the device and move it back to tasmota but it never worked. only the portal on the AP mode worked.
INFO Resolving IP address of sw_tester.local
ERROR Error resolving IP address of sw_tester.local. Is it connected to WiFi?
ERROR (If this error persists, please set a static IP address: https://esphome.io/components/wifi.html#manual-ips)
ERROR Error resolving IP address: Error resolving address with mDNS: Did not respond. Maybe the device is offline., [Errno -5] No address associated with hostname
But i do see it on fing and i can ping it from my PC but from the hassio docker i get no response
Via the web server portal, load a tasmota-minimal.bin file. Anything else will likely give you insufficient space error.
Once Tasmota Minimal is loaded (have patience and let it fully do its thing), go into the console and enter “reset 5” to clear out the garbage left from flashing/ESPhome.
Load the full Tasmota version of your choice.
This is what worked for me, but again it does require the web_server to be loaded/working.
I managed to flash tasmota-minimal.bin onto my device after loading a minimal ESPHome firmware but now I can’t figure out how to connect to tasmota to load a more fully features firmware. Did I brick the device? How did you get into the console after you completed the flash?
If it successfully installed the tasmota-minimal.bin file, it may have reset your wifi settings. Check for a ssid of tasmota_XXXX on your wireless, connect to that, and then connect to 192.168.4.1 to setup your network’s wifi ssid and password. If none of these work, it may have just changed IPs. Check your router’s connected devices or HA TasUI addon and search for the device.
It’s odd, I did the flash to two lights but I think one might have failed and it’s now in a bad state.
The one light seems to have connected to the wifi that was setup in esphome (do they use the same settings?) the other light doesn’t seem to come up. It’s not connecting to my wifi nor is it creating an AP. Anyone know whether the minimal firmware has an ap built in?
I believe they share a common area, or at the very least if you previously had it setup with Tasmota (as I did via Tuya-Convert) before going to ESPhome, it may have just been left over. If you can’t find its IP (I keep a list of every mac address for my devices… makes it MUCH easier finding them), then try getting the light into pairing mode by connecting and disconnecting it several times (usually 3 times, but can be more depending on manufacturer). It might not stay in pairing mode FYI, but if it starts to blink and then go steady, you can check for a new wifi access point (might be something other than the tasmota_xxx ssid). Had this happen when I flashed a pre 2.7 core Tasmota on my Feit Dimmer, and then flashed it all the way back to version 6.5.0 core 2.3.0 to try and get this dang switch stable. They made major changes after 7.2.0 I believe, so the configuration became corrupt… thought I bricked it too, but the pairing mode trick saved it, and allowed me to connect and go to the setup IP I listed to re-enter my ssid/pass.
The problem is that the light doesn’t even turn on. It really seems like it’s bricked but I’m sure it’s because tasmota is on there and isn’t set up. Pretty sure minimal doesn’t have an ap and will just try to connect to whatever settings are in the wifi. I must have had the second bulb set up with tasmota before I flashed esphome which is why it could connect…I guess?
Anyway, frustrating but I think this one is a brick now. I can’t even get tuya-convert to see it (not that I expected that to work). I would imagine I could unbrick by flashing over USB but that means cutting open the light.
Yeah if it won’t even momentarily flash when you disconnect and reconnect power, that’s not the best sign. Memory serves me, Tuya-Convert won’t see it again after it’s been flashed… even if it could, it would have to be in pairing mode to work. About the only thing I can recommend short of USB flashing it if you can’t find it connected to your network (I think you’re right about the AP on minimal bins - there is some sort of configuration restoration tool on the Tasmota wiki, but I have never used it - worth looking into still), is to try the good ol’ power off for an hour or so, powering it on, then powering on/off rapidly several times again to get it to do… well… something trick. Unless it’s an easy to disassemble and/or expensive “must save” bulb; I would probably chalk this one up to hazards of the hobby. Sorry man.