I have hopped into the sonoff-tasmota train around a year ago as i was looking for a cheap solution to automate some stuff in my home.
I didn’t go the z-wave/bee way as I didn’t have the experience and well, I didn’t want to invest at that point.
Right now I have around 12-15 sonoffs around the house acting as pir-sensors and operating several light fixtures and my garage doors.
Although they usually work, I have found that some of them tend to be kind of unreliable.
Some specific ones tend to lose their configuration after a power failure, then I have to go over there, connect to their wifiAP and re-enter my wifi settings.
And even then, ill have to do it 2-3 times for the sonoff to get connected to my wifi.
Sometimes I even need to remove them and re-flash them (and that’s quite a hassle)
Also, some other devices, specifically those with low wifi signal (<70%) tend to disconnect often.
Im writing to find out your experience, If you are seeing a similar behavior or if things are more stable on your side.
Also any recomendation about tasmota configuration or hardware mods (ext-antena?) that would help me towards making them more reliable would be greatly appreciated.
Sorry for being too broad, but really i need to pinpoint what the issue is so i dont have to run around the house once a week reconnecting the sonoffs.
Since updating my wifi I’ve been able to look a bit closer at my connected devices.
The Gen1 sonoffs I have (Basic, S20) generate large numbers of dropped packets and retries compared to the Gen 2 (POW 2, S26). I’m in the process of replacing the Gen 1 devices I have.
Having said that they were all in very good wifi coverage and I have not had a problem with control or connection to any of them over the 6 or so months I’ve been using them.
I have problems with the latest Tasmota version 6.4.1 and over the air updates. Lots of disconnects. The advice I got was to erase the flash completely using a serial connection and retry v6.4.1. Unfortunately the hassle to remove all my sonoffs to connect to them via serial is just not worth it. 6.2.1 is working fine so I’ll leave them like that for now.
I haven’t had the issues you are experiencing. One unit arrived with an AC/DC power stage that was DOA (I use that one as an inline USB switch now). I did solder an external antenna lead for one that is in a steel electrical installation enclosure in the garden but that has been reliably connected without even connecting the antenna (that is one of the original units based on the esp8266).
An external antenna is a cheap and straightforward modification that would probably be a good starting point for those with marginal signal.
I have three Sonoff S20’s, two Sonoff Basics, and a couple of D1 mini’s with Tasmota and i have to admit that i never experienced any big issues so far. No reconnections or whatsoever.
I do have a really reliable wifi network with house-wide coverage. I don’t know if that could make any difference.
Did you update all your Tasmotized devices to the latest firmware?
I have 7 Sonoff Basics and 4 Shelly Ones. Shellys are OK, but 2 of my Basics are real troublemakers. They keep losing wifi connection. I tried reflashing them, but to no avail.
One of them died, better say I killed it, when trying to solder pins. I may have shortcircuited one of the pins with too much solder.
I had that exact problem with a sonoff sv… turns out it was a bad flash. I reflashed it and the problem (having to do the wifi reconnect) went away.
I would suggest trying reflashing which can be a bastard if they are inaccessible!
Regarding the issue with 6.4.1… yes I had the same. Total nightmare. The problem is they switched from core 2.3.0 to 2.4.2 and I had a lot of disconnects.
I ended up compiling for core 2.5.0 and OTA flashing after doing a Reset 0 (or was it 1?) in the console. That is still not quite as stable as core 2.3.0 but it’s compatible with my Fritzbox and Mesh (apparently 2.3.0 wasn’t although I didn’t have any problems)
I have 4 x S22’s and 2 x SV’s and even with the very occasional dropouts I have not yet had one offline when triggered by voice or automation so thumbs up from me.
Can you point me to a how-to? Or some pictures of yours? I’ve studied a little and it seems that the antenna should not be too short or too long, plus i managed to kill one of my sonoffs while trying to solder an antenna to it ( I really dont know how i managed to do that … )
Not really, those that are working well i try not to mess with them
The ones that are giving me trouble i update them but nothing seems to fix it, i probably need to reflash them and ill be sure to avoid 6.4.1 as per:
and
The main issue remains that they are placed inside light fixtures on the ceiling so…
It’s a weekend project to reflash them all
BTW, you guys using tasmota and mqtt right?
Has anyone tried this new component that can control sonoffs without tasmota reflash?
It seems to work well if you just need the basic functionality and no extra sensors on them.
If I understand it well there are wifi disconnect issues with all 6.4.x based on the 2.4.x core. It is recommended to try with Core 2.3.0 or dev build with beta core 2.5.0
You probably can but that is not what is recommended:
For anyone having wifi problems, please try:
Erase all flash using esptool.py or esptool.exe and flash again by wire (as explained here) using the latest precompiled bins from http://thehackbox.org/tasmota/.
Sonoff Basic Module
Program Version 6.4.1.9(b5824fc-sonoff)
Build Date & Time 2019-01-18T12:13:06
Core/SDK Version 2_5_0_BETA2/3.0.0-dev(c0f7b44)
Uptime 0T00:00:34
Flash write Count 44 at 0xF7000
It works well. I will see whether it improves the WIFI connection.
It is unclear to me whether erasing all flash is necessary in my case, since I have no boot or instability issues. Can anyone explain that?
