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
And now its down to 47% … SO I’m pretty sure things are going south quick for me… maybe the firmware update is killing stuff but thats pretty bad in 1 hours time
Did you complete the OTA firmware update of the remote?
And then leave it a day to stabilize. The battery drops with the update but it recovers
The OTA update just finished and its now reporting 5% … I’ll just keep watching… assuming it doesn’t fully drain and disappear off the network…
I am running the Zigbee2MQTT on an ubuntu-imac that doesn’t really do much else … so we’ll just watch I guess.
Its the only thing connected to Z2M right now…
Wow and now back up to 47% … how very odd! 
Just a comment on that issue.
I decided to NOT change the batteries until the devices are not answering anymore.
Many of my TRADFRI buttons are showing 16% of battery for weeks/months now. So I just ignore the low battery warnings.
In other words, when I change a battery, it quickly goes from 100% to 16% but after that it stays in that status forever.
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That is normal (at least mine did that too… They have bee 87% for about a month now.
And the updates will report a massive battery drop and then it returns… in most cases back to the 87%
Off topic probably, but I had to ask:
When we say my xxx zigbee device(s) just dropped from my z2m network, how exactly do we detect that? I mean, is there a way to know when it got dropped? Can we graph the status somehow?
Looking for ideas / comments.
The Z2M tool has both a mapping tool and a reporting tool that displays their status… You can see that they are “offline” Often a button push will bring them back… sometimes the repeaters need to be “booted” (unplug and plugged back in) ’
When I was setting everything up I would get regular “off line” warnings… Since everything is plugged in and in “regular use” the Zigbee network has been surprisingly reliable.