New Sonoff RF Bridge Board - Need Flashing Help

Fred5 · May 2, 2022, 9:12am

I have Sonoff RF Bridge version 2.2 flashed with tasmota and still the original rf firmware and I do receive signals from the motion sensor translated to mqtt.
But the bridge is very slow with a delay of minimum 2 secs between motion detection and the flashing of the red and then almost immediately the blue led.
I suspect the the factory firmware only relays received RF data once the transmitting device stops.

If I do the hardware hack will this solve the delay.
Any ideas about this?

By the way is there a tool (HW or SW or both) to measure the RF signal which is sent by the device.?

mateine · May 8, 2022, 8:04pm

For those who wanted the “oscilloscope” for the esphome raw dumps:
https://dbuezas.github.io/esphome-remote_receiver-oscilloscope/

mateine · May 10, 2022, 10:40am

I am not sure if this is tasmota or the decoder chip. What I can say for sure is that hardware mod + esphome have no delay, it is instantaneous. I don’t know if hardware mod + tasmota removes the delay or not.
To measure the signal sent by the device, you can hook an oscilloscope or digital analyzer to the pins of the ICs that the hardware mod connects to.

Fred5 · May 10, 2022, 3:09pm

@mateine
I’ve a 433Mhz RF STX882 en SRX882 and a NodeMCU ESP8266.
I will flash tasmota on it and do some testing to see what that gives.
I can do this only the end of the week but I keep you informed.

denperss · May 14, 2022, 9:31am

It was acually really simple to do.

Use a FT232 usb device
Connect the wire like this image below.
Connect FT232 device to laptop.
Install tasmotizer (Use lates vers it will download it for you.)
Use a other usb cable as a power source. (Do no let go)
Hold down the black button (IMPORTAN, to do it all the time)
It will not ask to do a power cycle.
Disconnect usb 2(power source)
Hold black button in still and reconnect usb 2 power.
Wait for the program to give a complete status

And you are all done

Fred5 · May 14, 2022, 11:10am

@mateine
As promised.

I flashed nodemcu with tasmota-sensors and connected the SRX882 and also a PIR sensor on GPIO04 and GPIO05 respectively.

I start an MQTT client.

The result:
PIR: immediate send a MQTT msg ON followed by OFF (time between ON and OFF can be adjusted in Tasmota with a rule)

Motion sensor (Digoo DG-Hosa):
a MQTT message received when motion detected at 12:36:35 (led on motion senser on) and another message when the led of the motion sensor goes off at 12:36:35.

The sonoff rfbridge sends only one MQTT msg at 12:36:37.

Sometimes only 1 msg is received from nodemcu but the msg received from the rfbridge is always at least 2 sec later.

My conclusion:
If I do the HW hack on the rfbridge and flash tasmota-sensors the delay will be solved. (I hope)

As I’m not very expierienced with this I wonder what is your opinion please.

mateine · May 14, 2022, 6:39pm

Yes, I agree with your conclusion, the delay must then come from the decoder IC (or the communication with it). The HW mod will remove the delay.
Another experiment you could do is to check if the delay is there with the original Sonoff app to confirm it is not the tasmota implementation of the communication with the decoder IC.

Fred5 · May 14, 2022, 7:18pm

I don’t suspect the communication because I see the rf led immediate followed by the wifi led.
I think the rf decoder is the delay because the rf led becomes on at the moment the led of the motion sensor goes off.
I want to do the experiment you propose but how can I go back to the original Sonoff SW?

reedy · May 19, 2022, 9:28am

Came here because of issues when upgrading sonoff from hacs and having a version of HA from Sept last year.

In case this helps anyone else new, the NEW sonoff rf-wifi bridge works out of box with HA and can be locally controlled. I use this to control a linear actuator which opens a door in a tv cabinet because xbox series x generates enough heat to melt an iceberg.
Anyways after setting up the device in the ewelink app the only thing required is to install the sonoff addon from hacs and add:

sonoff:
username: [email protected]
password: !secret sonoff
mode: local

to the configuration.yaml and configure the sonoff.device HA detects e.g.:

  - platform: template
    switches:
      tv_cabinet:
        friendly_name: "TV cabinet door"
        value_template: "{{ is_state('input_boolean.tv_cabinet', 'on') }}"
        turn_on:
          - service: remote.send_command
            target:
              entity_id: remote.sonoff_1001395949
            data:
              command: Button1

as long as the mode is local it doesn’t need the cloud. I think if you want to add devices you have to set the mode: to something else.

I was going to flash it with tasmota/esphome but I thought I’d try this first. It took 30 minutes to setup and create automations in HA to get the actuator doing what I wanted it to do.

Kinda glad I didn’t try flashing after reading this post.

HTH

bentou · June 12, 2022, 11:08am

Hello,

I want to emulate my old CHACON DiO 54761 remote (equivalent to AYCT-102)

compatible with all the Trust‑Smart‑Home devices starting with a A like AWST‑8802 in this page: Trust.com - Other smarthome products
these are 433,92 Mhz devices, handled by KlikAanKlikUit in NL

I also have the Trust.com - Octopus Internet Control Station ICS-2000 internet device that handle those devices, but this is proprietary and not usable on homeassistant. (no open port, only managable by a smartphone)

So I bought a Sonoff RFbridge but I got a R2 V2.2

I flashed Tasmota on it, but I don’t know how to handle the RF part…

should I need to modify the hardware ?

by the way, should I use esphome or tasmota ?

regards,
Benoit.

sosojaja · June 12, 2022, 4:00pm

Hello Together,
I got for 2 weeks the “SonOff RF-Bridge” but in the last V2.2 version we see at the begin from this blog.
I could flash Tasmota without problem and could configure it to (25) and install my WLAN.
I could connect to the html side from this device.
But I could make what I want it is not possible for me to flash the “Portisch” RF firmware over tasmota to the RF-Bridge. It preppaired my device like I found in some different sides. This means cut the 4 wires and insert the 2 470Ohm resistors likt it shown.
I flashed finally the Tasmota 8.4.0 where tasmota tells me “Failed to init RF chip”. So I tried to switch the two resistors accross but with the same result. I tried to use only the FTDI flasher to get power to the device without using the USB plug but nothing helps me to flash the RF chip.
I hope someone from you have a good idea for me that I make wrong or has changed, at the newer releases from the RF-Bridge, something else too?

colebatchd · June 14, 2022, 6:36pm

@sosojaja - sorry I can’t help, but I’m interested as will probably shortly be doing similar.

sosojaja · June 17, 2022, 11:23am

Hi, unfortunately I red the blog not fully. Schmurtz told in his answer that it is not possible to send out data over RFLink32 firmware on the SonOff RF Bridge. It is only for sniffing. Many tried there luck with the original RF firmware. But I didn’t could sniff with Tasmota 11 and the original RF firmware, but I made the HW hack, perhaps this could be the reasen that nothing runs. At the moment I have no bock anymore. I will kick it in the corner and try other things.

Hi, I have a short additon to my post before. I built all changes I read back to the original conditon. I flashed Tasmota 11.1.0 and set tasomta the Edit and the pre template to sonoff bridge (25). Afte the second configuration the SonOff Rf Bridge R2 make a “beep” and I could lerned the RF sent information to a button of tasmota. After this I could sent the buttons information over MQTT and it work for my components very well. I would recommend to all to check first if the original RF firmware with Tasmota, are working with your equipmente.

atv · June 27, 2022, 12:41pm

Did you do any hardware hacks ? Or just use a FTID with tasmotizer ? Do you notice any delays compared to the old sonoff rf bridge?

Scoff · July 1, 2022, 2:59pm

Wanted to say thanks for all the info within this thread so far! I’ve just carried out the hardware mods using resistors and cutting the lines on the board (R2 V2.2) - flashed ESPHome successfully and have added the newly discovered device to HA.

Completely new to RF, I was hoping to start finding out what RF devices are being picked up to start with, purely out of interest. I am getting non stop flood of raw data but I have no idea how to figure out where it’s coming from. For example:

[15:29:13][D][remote.raw:028]: Received Raw: 743, -400, 627, -491, 648, -1177, 463, -1037, 160, -155, 420, -214, 702, -179, 465, -216, 730, -158, 162, -160, 448, -207, 475, -94, 174, -4925, 219, -789, 1818, -900, 201, -238, 122, -437, 202, -479, 2004, -125, 201, -160, 447, -133, 466, 
[15:29:13][D][remote.raw:028]:   -175, 157, -126, 232, -141, 102, -144, 156, -173, 460, -174, 181, -403, 167, -2971, 2155, -818, 1920, -806, 226, -508, 469, -144, 191, -128, 1385, -760, 211, -117, 1080, -163, 730, -165, 171, -783, 445, -148, 195, -4306, 782, -787, 370, -702, 789, 
[15:29:13][D][remote.raw:028]:   -906, 222, -213, 141, -781, 183, -140, 417, -151, 503, -143, 726, -192, 172, -121, 224, -401, 470, -195, 139, -123, 232, -401, 161, -187, 424, -180, 464, -174, 153, -4306, 867, -692, 399, -686, 735, -502, 666, -190, 757, -183, 188, -137, 422, -208,

Can I actually make sense of any of this information somehow? When I try to capture the RF signal of the device I would like to eventually use in HA, how do I spot that RF data in amongst all of this raw data?

mateine · July 1, 2022, 5:06pm

You can use this to visualize and and analyse the raw outputs.

https://dbuezas.github.io/esphome-remote_receiver-oscilloscope/

If you like it, you can give the project a star too
Here https://github.com/dbuezas/esphome-remote_receiver-oscilloscope

NCO3 · July 4, 2022, 4:29pm

obviously there is a lot of brain power accumulated here, so I would like to get things straight.

Just a few questions:

The RF bridge (v2.2) will enable me (after flashing with tasmota or ESPHome) to teach and send RF 433 signals to my awening
this will be controllable through HA using RFLink.
Will this work for flashing: sds011_usb2ttl_004 ?

I jus want to make sure before starting the direct hack above.
Thanks in advance!

Please allow one more question:
The RF Bridge with the original FW does not learn my remote (Warema Awening using 433.92 MHz).
Is there a better chance that Tasmota / ESPHome will do it better?

Scoff · July 4, 2022, 6:34pm

Thank you for providing that, a very useful tool! Now I need to figure out a way of decoding the signals using either ESPHome or Tasmota, as I’ve bypassed the on board chip.

From more reading though I’ve not found a combination of software for the Sonoff v2.2 that will work for reading the Watchman device I have, which uses a Si4320 chip /FSK protocol. It looks like I may have to park the Sonoff and use a SDR USB device plugged into my HA host instead…

I know that RTL_433 can decode the Watchman RF signals using protocol 43, and there is a RTL_433 Addon available for HA, so would just need a SDR USB dongle instead of the Sonoff - unless there’s any way to use RTL_433 with either Tasmota or ESPHome.

mateine · July 4, 2022, 6:59pm

For FSK, you’ll need a cc1101 chip. Here’s how:

Scoff · July 5, 2022, 12:13pm

Thank you! Completely new to RF so looking up all the terms and meanings currently. I’ve got some spare D1 Mini boards not being used, so I’ll pick up a CC1101 and hook them up and do some testing. There’s nothing I need to transmit in terms of RF, just receive, and send to HA, and it sounds like this will do the trick.