They tend to last less and less, I’m the end I have modified them all to power them via cable.
it was quite and effort but it worth.
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I have mine powered by 2x 990mAh primary lithium batteries in parallel. It has been going strong for 20 months.
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Nice setup, may I know which cable connector did you use? Please provide Amazon/Ali/Banggood link if possible. Thanks a lot!
Select the 2pins, awg 22 connectors and 03mm cables
Hey @tom_l , since you know enough about these things to do this mod, I was wondering if you might be able to offer any comments about whether you think something similar could be attached to these fobs (round black thing) that some of us are using to control a door lock? I don’t know where the real reliability issue lies but adding an antenna seems like a relatively easy and worthwhile solution attempt?
If you think the technique could be used, could you describe or link me to suitable antenna?
I don’t have a clue.
Thank you
The white rectangular component highlighted in fuchsia here is the antenna:
De-solder it and remove it (hot air or SMD soldering iron tweezers). Then as it is bluetooth you can use any of these antennas:
The only thing you will have to determine is which side of the component is connected to ground (check continuity to a known ground point on the board). That side goes to the coax shield, the other to the coax centre. If neither side is connected to ground it’s a balanced line and I have no idea what characteristic impedance, so it’s probably not going to work.
Going to be a bit awkward with an antenna like that poking out of a fob too.
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Great! Thank you!
Another Q if you don’t mind.
Is it ok/possible to leave the existing antenna in place and solder the new one on “in parallel” kind of “on top”.
Somehow I feel this would be easier with my crappy soldering skills.
Or is that a bad idea?
That is a bad idea. Two antennas in parallel will not have the correct impedance and will be very poorly matched to the transmitter and receiver. You will only make the reception worse and there is a very slim chance you could damage the transmitter with reflected energy (though this is unlikely at these power levels).
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Hi guys,
I only just started to venture out into the somewhat scary world of MiFlora. Got a pair of white ones from AliExpress. They are actually named “Flower Care” and branded as HHCC (Huahuacaocao).
What puzzles me is, that with all the discussion about battery life and broadcasting vs active polling none of you seems to be talking about the update patterns shown by your sensors. Only @aidbish has posted an ESPHome log that shows an insane rate of a few seconds. (No wonder that this will quickly drain the battery.)
Mine are currently connected through the HA MiFlora integration. They update their 5 sensor values all at the same time at a rock solid pace of every 40 minutes. Sometimes an update gets lost and HA has to wait another 40 minutes to get the next transmission. This is not a proof but a strong indication of a broadcast system without any poll. I will switch to ESPHome in a few weeks and report back. But I honestly don’t expect any changes.
My assumption is that we are really talking about a bunch of different hardware items here that only resemble each other on the outside. The mere branding chaos (Xiaomi, Aqara, HHCC, MiFlora, Flower Care, whatever) is a strong indicator of that.
IMHO it would be helpful if you could give some indication about what gadget you actually bought, how it looks exactly, how it is named and branded, how it was originally packed and how its sensors update.
40 minute update cycle, precise to the second
(Attention, the black version is NOT Bluetooth enabled. It just gives information through light signals when a button is pressed.)
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Or that software updates have applied since this post was started.
Or that the device sends updates based on % change. The faster the rate of change, the more updates received.
Or that there is more than one way to connect the device (HA miflora integration, vs ESPHome BLE component).
Or a combination of all three.
Yepp, most definitely!
Except for…
Or that the device sends updates based on % change. The faster the rate of change, the more updates received.
… which does not at all match my observation. All sensors send at the same time in fixed intervals. See above.
That’s the home assistant integration though. The ESPHome component is not that regular, it seems to be % change based.
Ah I see @tom_l. Thanks.
Will try that in a few weeks. I ran out of ESP32s. Currently waiting for the next cargo flight from China. 
Not ESPHome solution - instead im using a raspberry pi with dedicated software which listens to Miflora broadcast and a high gain BT antenna.
Unfortunately neither the range is good - its actually just a few meters - nor the batteries last long, with 9 sensors i remember that i needed to replace one of them every week or so. Finally i gave up 
Hi there, after the season I can report that they worked fine trough all the the season. I do will weather seal them before the next season though, because they are indeed not well protected and creeping in moisture might create creepage that is enough to drain the batteries faster.
Thanks for the reply, that is good to hear.
The latest firmware version on MiFlora is 3.3.5. Maybe it will use up the battery less?
Whilst I have no idea on what version i have, 1 have 4 of these throughout my garden.
Battery life varies, anywhere from 6 weeks to 2 years. My experience leads me to belive its actually more to do with the health of the replacement battery than anything else … and theres no way to know that in advance!
I was having issues when i was buying them 1 at a time from bricks and mortar stores, and instead bought 10x cheapies from ebay — the cheapies seem to outperform the singles i was buying!
As to range … about a year ago i moved from a normal esp32 to using an olimex esp32 poe. The range went from ~3-4m to over 20.
So if you are having issues with range, and can run some ethernet, that could be a good option!
I got 3 of these a week ago (second hand). They’ve been reporting 100% battery for 3 days and then suddenly one of them dropped to 67%. After restarting HA that one is showing 47% and one of the others suddenly dropped to 71%.
These are connected through BT so not using ESP32. I’m not sure if there is a way to upgrade the FW of these devices or reduce how often they are pulled, a part from using the median.