ZHA of course!
I have shortcut buttons and the on/off/dimmer buttons and they are behaving extremely well using zigbee2mqtt with a CC2652P coordinator (Smartlight, zStack3x0, 20210319 Egony).
The 5-button remote on the other hand, has gone through two CR2032 batteries in two days and I’ve now removed it from my setup.
Thank you for your 2 informative posts. I had ZHA and moved the Tradfri remotes from Hue bridge to ZHA on Friday. On Saturday, the batteries were crazy low/drained.
Thanks to your posts, I flashed the Sonoff USB and moved to Zigbee2MQTT, plus I’m upgrading the firmwares (I had 2017-2019 firmwares from when I bought all the bulbs & remotes and Hue bridge doesn’t upgrade them). Batteries look promising (although it was only yesterday, but no more 1-day drains at least).
Here’s a graph. The drops are the firmware upgrades, and then they mostly recover.
PS: I was scared of Zigbee2MQTT since ZHA is so native and simple. It took mere minutes watching the recent Mark Watt video on the Sonoff USB and it’s amazing, so many more options than ZHA (options, upgrade firmware manually, etc.) (not bashing ZHA, I love it too!).
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Well I decided to set mine back up today using ZHA but I added the remote directly to a Peanut plug that I’m using as a repeater (hoping that would help) and it made no difference. The remote was dead in a day. 
I guess I have to wait and go to a different ZHA hub (I’m using the ZBBridge)
Just want to chime in with another success story. Switched from ZHA on a Husbzb-1 to Zigbee2MQTT on an upgraded Sonoff 3.0 stick and my Ikea battery problems are gone. Thank you to all that posted here.
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Time for an update.
So I have 3 Ikea buttons running on the Sonoff dongle for about a week now:
- Paired with its repeater reset and paired as per the Z2MQTT instructions
- Factory paired to its repeater (which was not paired to the Sonoff, if that makes sense) Button Paired to repeater and to the Sonoff. (the repeater not reported by Sonoff)
- One connected direct to the Sonoff with the repeater not used and in the box.
Reported Signal Strength by Sonoff Mapping Tool:
- 179 (Bounced off of paired repeater)
- 63 (Direct)
- 74 (Direct)
Battery levels after one week of use…
- 87%
- 100%
- 91%
Ironically, so far, the one that was paired in the most “un-recommend” way seems to be performing the best.
All three buttons are about the same distance to the Sonoff dongle. None have line of sight to the hub.
Regardless These are working way better than they were with ZHA under either HUSBZB or the Conbee. In my house if I used ZHA the would be dead within a week… Using SmartThings and they would be dead in less than 48 hrs…
Thanks Again Blinky!
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Slightly confused by your wording and order… Do your repeaters show up on your map AND do they show the remote connected to the repeater then the repeater connected to the controller?
Sorry that was poorly worded… Let me try again.
So the first button… Yes, it and its repeater are on the map and they are both connected to each other and the repeater to the hub: Button → Repeater → Mesh/Hub. That one was set up as per your (and the Z2MQTT) instructions. It has the strongest signal.
The second button was not reset from the factory paring to it repeater and I did not pair the repeater, just the button… On the map, there is just the button . Button → Hub. The repeater is powered… But not on the map. (doing nothing I would guess) it reports the weakest signal
The third button has no repeater and like the second the map shows a direct link to the hub. (middle strength signal)
All three buttons are in the same room on the other side of the house, about 20’ through a couple of drywall walls to the Sonoff.
Since I posted my update… The first and second buttons are now both at 87% and are holding there. The third is still at 91% and is holding there.
IKEA documentation suggests that these should last well over a year with normal use (2 or 3 presses per day) I would be happy with 6 months.
I gave up with my tradfri 5 buttons remote.
Tired of wasting money for batteries that don’t last more than a day or 2.
I had 3 coordinators all with Zigbee2MQTT.
First sonoff ZBBridge with custom firmware, same problem and totally unstable with IKEA driver.
Usb dongle cc2351 all good, battery level didn’t change for weeks, network very stable.
Then I switched back to more powerful sonoff usb dongle 3 (with latest firmware), same problem.
So the problem for me is between sonoff devices and IKEA devices.
I’m now using a sonoff snzb-01 wireless switch, no problem at all.
Sadly Tradfri remote button is now on my drawer, I spent probably more for batteries than the device
If you check the voltage of the batteries one day later you’ll see that they’re almost full (2.9V).
I had used both ZHA and Z2MQTT with a rooted Lidl Gateway SGWZ 1 A1 and had the same Ikea remote battery issue with both. What apparently (16 days now) helped was upgrading the TYZS4 (EFR Series 1 - EFR32MG1B232F256GM48) from v6.7.8 (https://github.com/grobasoz/zigbee-firmware/raw/master/EFR32%20Series%201/EFR32MG1B-256k/NCP/NCP_UHW_MG1B232_678_PA0-PA1-PB11_PA5-PA4.gbl) to v6.10 (https://github.com/MattWestb/EFR32-FW/raw/main/TUYA_ZBGW/ncp-gp-TYZS4-610.gbl).
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Hi BlinkyLights
Is there a trick to get the Sonoff to firmware update the buttons?
A couple of days ago it managed to update Button #2 (the one with the unpaired repeater )
But so far the button with the “properly” paired repeater (#1) is refusing to firmware update the button from OTA.
Also interesting that since Button #2 did its update it now uses button #1’s repeater to get back to the hub (as per the map)
Any tricks to get the button firmware to work?
I originally updated them on the ikea hub before moving them to the sonoff. However, battery devices don’t do much unless you wake them up. I would suggest selecting the upgrade option and then pressing the button to wake it up a few times. It should happen naturally within a few hours otherwise.
Note that firmware updates WILL drain the battery a fair bit.
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Jus to be clear to do a firmware update on Ikea devices in ZHA you need to enable it in the config file and in Zigbee2mqtt it is on one of the web interface screens.
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I upgraded all of this through Z2M OTA, no problem (with the Sonoff dongle).
As BlinkyLights says, click the button right before the Check for updates to wake it up. If the button still refuses the OTA, take its battery out 10 seconds, try again.
I also put the remote upgrading right next to the dongle, to give it max signal.
It takes 2-3 hour per remote, and ~25 minutes for bulbs.
If the repeater causes issues, I would pair them directly, OTA, then re-pair them however you like (through repeater) - but I understand Zigbee will eventually find its best path automatically?
My batteries are still going strong even after all the upgrades they recover.
Only one E1810 seems to be going into too deep sleep and needs a few taps every few hours. I will re-pair it soon.
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Thanks for the reply(s)…
Got it…
In my case i needed to ask to do the update and then quickly press the button a few times and BANG… it took…
I find that the Sonoff is way faster than the IKEA hub doing updates… Button updates on the IKEA hub were about 6hrs long… The Sonoff is about an hour… To update my binds on the IKEA hub was over 12 hrs in some cases.
I am very pleased with the Sonoff and Zigbee2MQTT (so far) I will give it a couple of more weeks and if all is well I will turn off the Zigbee radio on my SmartThings hub and move everything over to HA!
Thanks for your help!
Could this debacle finally be fixed? Can anybody confirm? I need to get some more abtts to test:
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Based on their release notes page, it doesnt look like there was a firmware update for the remote:
https://ww8.ikea.com/ikeahomesmart/releasenotes/releasenotes.html
I don’t think so. The last updates for remotes were in October.
The recent update was for bulbs, although it mentions the communication with the remote - but no firmware for remotes.
No. This was confirmed on the SmartThings forum. The new IKEA firmware does nothing to solve the battery drain that some are experiencing.
So I just installed the new Sonoff - flashed it with the latest firmware → and just paired a remote with it. I’m currently updating the Ikea firmware.
I’m running Zigbee2MQTT so we’ll see how it goes. Battery is currently reporting at 87% (which is odd for a new battery) - but hey maybe they’ve been sitting around for a long long while