I want a button!

Hardware
22

Hello,
Do i need to flash the Sonoff to get it to work, or is it possible to integrate out of the box, so to speak?

thanks in advance:-)

23

You could use it out of the box, but then it is limited to (I think) 4 devices. If you flash it with Tasmota or OpenMQTTGateway, it has support for an unlimited amount of devices.

24

Thanks, this helped a lot.

25

It’s hard to me to imagine a wifi button being as responsive as zigbee.

This is just because of the wake up time, and the number of round-trips it takes to connect to wifi and send that packet out before going back to deep sleep. (This is all assuming ideal case where you don’t scan for which channel/frequency to use, which said/bssid to use, or wait for DHCP, or do ARP… things that can take seconds if you’re unlucky)

26

I recently installed a Xiaomi gateway and several of the small round smart switches, and it has been quite fast in performance, and seriously reliable.

27

I still want a button. I know that home automation should do things that don’t require input but some things I want aren’t possible. Sometimes, the best thing is a cheap, wireless, reliable, and physical, button.

To that end I’ve been able to satisfy two of the requirements: a reliable button. I bought and setup a Stream Desk which is a physical USB device with several buttons. It connects to a Windows machine and with it I’m able to issue CURL commands against HA (or anything else for that matter). It works great but isn’t wireless or cheap.

I’ve seen dash buttons and xiaomi discussed as alternatives but neither are appealing to me. I looked into using Broadlink and RF buttons but after wasting some money found out it won’t work.

28

hi @timpro, I’d like to have some buttons at home too. do you have the link for xiaomi button? do we need a hub? how to use it zigbee2mqtt? thank you!

29

You can either use the Xiaomi Gateway or other zigbee implementations. I currently use the Xiaomi Gateway but recently bought a Conbee 2 which works also. The issue with the Xiaomi Gateway is that newer versions often have the required ports blocked and won’t integrate with HA. Best to just go with a Conbee 2 or some other zigbee radio.

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