Yes it’s nearly 2000W on the maximum temperature setting. Sonoff claim max 3500W. I really should go the CT clamp route.
Is sonoff the right device to convert all my switches to wirless and connect them to home assistant?
… what they claim is simply not true.
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That’s a huge house.
There is no “right” solution. They all have their plus and minuses.
I also have a mix of Z-Wave, Zigbee, WiFi and 433MHz devices.
Of all, the 433 are the least reliable. It has a range of two or three feet.
My zigBee is actually Ikea Tradfri. They mostly work but once in a while the Ikea Gateway needs to be restarted. I rate the Ikea lights at 95% uptime.
My Z-Wave is a mix of GE and Inovelli switches, and an Aeotec Z-Stick for the hub. I prefer the Inovelli switches because most of mine are in three-way circuits and can use existing slave switches, where the GE requires their own GE slave switch. I would rate them at 98% uptime. Sometimes they just don’t respond to Alexa and by the time I go to troubleshoot the problem, they start working again. I suspect that Alexa is the problem here.
Which leaves WiFi. Mostly Sonoff stuff, a mix of Basics and Switches and a few ESP8266 nodes I made. The uptime on these are 99%; quite reliable. My wife does not like the European surface-mount look of the Sonoff Switch, and the logo is sideways. But the Sonoff Switches are the most reliable here. Also the least used because of the locations. My gripe with the Sonoff Switch is the friction mount. It just feels flimsy to me, and it’s a tight fit in the box. Worse yet, and it’s why they are in infrequently used locations is because they are only single-gang. (Most of my switch locations are two or three-gang).
Sonoff Basic. What a workhorse. I started with the Sonoff Basic behind a lot of wall plates. Still have some there. The Sonoff Basic is designed for in-line switching of a two-wire, ungrounded extension cord. I have some on my table lamps, and at Christmas time on my tree lights. All low-current circuits, and they are quite reliable there.
When I say Sonoff, I mean Sonoff flashed with Tasmota.
Sonoff modifications. Some people are scared of using Sonoff Basics in unconventional locations, particularly behind a wall plate. And they should be. To my engineering eye, the biggest flaw in the Sonoff Basic are the screw terminals. I can guarantee that if you go to a Basic that you installed a couple of months ago, you will be able to tighten the screw terminals by a quarter to a half turn. Guaranteed. What can happen, particularly if you are drawing five amps or more through the Basic, is that the screw terminals will loosen over time and become a high resistance point that can overheat to failure. Every photo of a melted-down Sonoff Basic looks like the failure is as I predicted, at the screw terminals.
To Sonoff Basic users- turn them on then come back fifteen minutes later and feel the case around the connectors.
When I put a Sonoff Basic in a permanent location, like in a switch box, I remove the screw terminals and solder on a set of 6-inch pigtail wires. The wire I use is from a 14/4 appliance cable cable that I had in my basement. You can also buy a few feet of 14/4 trailer wire online. You only need three pigtails, black, white and red, and they connect nicely with standard wire-nuts. The ones I have converted are running 1,000 watt (8.3 Amp) space heaters and don’t show any signs of stress.
There is a new downside to the Sonoff Basics- Itead redesigned them recently to resolve the other weak point. I speculate that the air gap between the hot and neutral lines does not meet the 300-Volt isolation requirement from UL (Underwriters Laboratories). Basically, all insulated conductors have to survive a 300-Volt AC stress test, and in the case of printed circuits the air gap is supposed to provide this isolation. Also, unexplainably, In the redesign the Sonoff Basic no longer exposes GPIO14 which many of us have used to connect external switches or sensors.
So, what will I use in my next house? Still the same mix. Probably more Z-Wave since more nodes makes Z-wave more reliable. And they are direct replacements for existing switches. No modifications needed.
Two routers? How? Downstream Wireless Access Points, Wifi Extenders and downstream routers still go through the primary router, so I don’t see how this would reduce the load on the primary router. I have been looking at the Ubiquiti Networks Unifi access points. The Unifi works as a mesh network, but they can be pricey.
In my next house, I also plan to run a lot of CAT-5 to blind locations in the walls for future use. (CAT-5 because I have a couple of thousand feet of it in my basement). There will always be applications that need real wires. For example, I have an A/V balun at my family room PVR and a companion balun next to the TV in the basement, connected with CAT-5. Can’t do that on WiFi.
I see that I am beginning to ramble…
SK for now.
Probably on paper.
The specs:
Voltage range: 90-250V AC
Max current: 16A
Max Power: 3500W
3500 Watts at 250V is 14 Amps. Should be no problem - in China where the standard household voltage is 220V (200V in Taiwan).
In the US where the standard household voltage is 120V, 3500 Watts is 30-Amps. Smoke time.
The MAX values are individual maximums. You cannot exceed 16 Amps, 250 Volts, or 3500 Watts.
At 120 volts you hit the 16 Amp limit at 1920 Watts. Would I pull 2000 Watts through that? Probably, but not until I verify the actual current draw with a clamp-on Ammeter. (In my experience, most appliance specs are rounded up. My LG washer is rated at 2000W, but I’ve never seen it go over 1700 Watts on the clamp-on meter.)