I am sick of my sonoff devices. I have approx 170 zigbee devices running around the house, and they are all working except for the Sonoff crap that keeps disconnecting all the time. and a few aqara battery powered devices.
long story short, I am looking for two things :
replacement of all my battery powered sonoff SNZB-02 temp/humidity sensors.
I really want to replace them with somethig stable, RELIABLE in temperature readings (as I plan to use them to regulate the climate entities at home at some point) and eventually, if possible, not battery powered, but USB-C.
No need for a fancy screen or anything, as they will all be monitored using HA of course.
I do have several Appolo MSR-1 sensors, but they are not great as temperature sensors, as they tend to heat and need to be calibrated, which at the end of the day seem pretty unreliable to me.
I was looking into the Ikea vindstyrka device, which do have a pretty review here : IKEA Vindstyrka Indoor Air Quality Monitor Review
It could be an option, but I’ve seen it and it’s BIG, BIG ennough to scare my wife…
I need to replace my sonoff ZBMINI-L devices, for the same reasons, they keep disconnecting from my zigbee network.
I am seeking for a replacement unit, that just DON’t fail.
important to me is also these devices need to be pairable to an actual zigbee button. which ain’t posdible with the ZBMINI-L devices.
May I please ask you to let me know what works for you and what I could look at ?
Hello!
For reliable temperature/humidity sensors, consider the Aqara or Xiaomi Mijia sensors, though they are battery-powered. The Ikea Vindriktning is also an option but is quite large. For Zigbee switches, the Philips Hue Smart Plug and Innr tellthebell Smart Plug are reliable alternatives that pair well with Zigbee buttons. These should provide more stability for your home automation setup.
the door sensors are working great though. I wonder if the issue ain’t coming from the fact the devices are not queried regularly enough or something similar.
Maybe I’m missing something with these battery powered devices… as everyone seem to be happy with them.
Also, I don’t believe the issue is the lack of repeaters, as every single lightbulb in my home is a zigbee connected device acting as a repeater
You could try using the official HA SkyConnect Dongle and place more router devices around the house. My approach is to use smart lights with router functionality and avoid turning them off frequently. You can use wall-mounted remotes instead of traditional switches to achieve this. This ensures you have enough routers operating 24/7, making it more convenient when activating different lighting scenes.
However, I suggest avoiding routers from small manufacturers, as many haven’t passed certification and may struggle to perform as the main router. You can go with HUE, or the Xsky lights and switch set that I use, which has been consistently stable.
I have a sonoff temp and humidity sensor and it has not missed a beat in the 2 plus years its been there. I have a mix of aqara and sonoff door contacts and 60% of each make never miss a beat while the other 40% need reconnecting every now and again.
I would say there is nothing inherently wrong with these sensors. I think it is somehow the network that causes the issue, whether that be positioning or some thing else I don’t know about.
Yes, I expect something must be wrong. But I’m using canal 1 for wifi, and 20 for zigbee, to avoid interferences, and the weirdest part is really that only tehese devices are disconnecting.
I have a ton of battery powered switches (a mix of hue smart buttons and tradfri ones) and they never disconnect)
The only disconnection issues I do have are with these temp sensors and these damn ZBMINI-L switches. all the rest is pretty stable.
I actually do have a closer look at the aqara devices, and while Z2M reports them as offline, they DO report this :
Put one of the ones that are reporting disconnected in your hand and breathe on it. If it changes values you need to disable the availability or set it to a higher timer.
Will do, what I started to do is to pair each of these sensors to the closest tradfri bulb, just to make sure they have the best possible signal to the controller, through a “wired” repeater. I hope this will stabilize things, but I’m quite sure I did this already and that it ended up disconnecting as always
regarding the first aqara, I’m afraid I just did reconnect it to the closest bulb before I’ve read your comment, but even with the bulb being at approx 1,5 meters away from the devicek, I get terrible link quality (18). As soon. I blown on it, the temperature changed though.
That means that it is connected. These only report new values when a change is siginificant enough. So you should probably disable availability on these.
Just a thought, if you rely on bulbs as routers, are all the bulbs always powered, or are some powered down at times by turning off mains power. Powering routing devices up and down causes network havoc, regardless of the mesh.
