Privacy - configure Sonoff Gen 2 sensors ('P' suffix)

Configuration Zigbee
1

Hi,
I now have HAOS installed on a Rasp Pi 5, with a Sonoff zigbee ‘P’ dongle.

I am confused about how to use my Sonoff sensors I have bought within Home Assistant, whilst being mindfull of Privacy and sonoff servers.

I originally wanted to Flash them with Tasmota, to avoid the eWeLink app, but i cannot find any written firmware online.

I started to install Sonoff Lan integration, but it looks like that needs you to have a Sonoff account, and to gain an account you need to install the privacy invading eWeLink app on your phone (android here), I cancelled the install.

Without Sonoff Lan or opening a Sonoff eWeLink account I have simply paired one of the devices within HA - the SNZB-02P, and can see the Temperature and Humidity levels within HA - I am confused, I thought these devices had to be married to Sonoff Servers to down load some sort of configuration/security file before they would work.

Do these devices need to connect to the mothership to simply run OTA firmware updates ??

And is this sensor communicating with Sonoff servers in its current state??
I am in the process of installing ‘System Monitor’ integration to see how noisy HA is, but really I need something like Wireshark, but cannot see any integrations of such, any suggestions.

This video on Sonoff Lan:

at 2.30 advises that he used Wireshark and checked over a number of days, and no communication was made to sonoff servers.

I also have SNZB-05P Water leak sensor and TRVZB-TRV to use and configure, so assume these will behave similar to the SNZB-02P above.

I have a SNZB-06P Human Presence Sesnor, which I had a link (somewhere - but cant find :frowning: on how to flash the firmware for this sensor, using a Serial Programmer and using with Tasmota (this being the only ‘P’ suffuixed Sonoff sensor supported by Tasmota)

2

Hello,

The sensor and the dongle are zigbee, so basically local only.

DrZzs is speaking about the wifi series of sonoff.

The two thing use different “way” of communicating with your server.

Wifi is using the same way of your phone or notebook to access your local LAN.

You are going basically local using zigbee. Your dongle is taking signal from sensor and making it available to Home Assistant.
Within integration list you should see an integration for zigbee ZHA, I suppose.

Tasmota is for devices with a esp based firmware, from the list you made these are not ESP based.
You can flash tasmota Z2T firmware on coordinator ESP based view the link

https://tasmota.github.io/docs/Zigbee/

The coordinator your dongle is like your wifi access point and the zigbee is basically another network, different from your wifi network via which you surf on web.

The zigbee coordinator is not sending data to the web but to your Home Assistant server only basically.

3

Hi, thank you for clearing up my confusion, I was also curious as to whether the devices might phone home via HA, ie once simply just paired.

Am I right that Sonoff has only recently gained the right to add Zigbee functionality to its sensors - hence they are marked ‘P’ - and are classed 2nd Generation (Gen2), and therefore there are already many older ‘WiFi’ sensors out there, and hence we have Sonoff LAN or the Sonoff and Sonoff LAN integrations.
The Zigbee functionality being ideal where sensors run off batteries.

I presume where Sonoff’s own or Sonoff Lan integrations are installed - these would then utiilise HA’s TCP to contact its mothership, which in turn require you to use the Privacy sucking eWeApp to register first.

So from my experience so far - ie the device simply pairs and is immediately available, and I can go about using and configuiring it from with HA as it is. HA knows nothing about any Sonoff Servers.
Just paired the Leak detector (SNZB-05P) without any bother.

I presume there are community Add-Ons that might bring some more functionality, but their job will not be to nefariously communicate with the mothership.