Sonoff Basic R4 with Magic Switch Mode works only on switch ON

Hi, I purchased a Sonoff Basic R4 to control a light bulb connected to a two-way switch using Sonoff’s new Magic Switch functionality. Below is the wiring diagram.

Strangely, the relay detects the switch presses only when the light is off.

For example:

  • Light off → I press a switch → The light turns on
  • Light on → I press a switch → The light stays on
  • Light on → I turn it off via the app → The light turns off → I press a switch → The light turns on

It doesn’t matter which switch I press. The behavior is the same in both cases.

It only worked in some cases when I pressed the switch more gently, increasing the phase cut-off time. It seems like the device doesn’t detect the state change from L1 to L2 but only when the light is already on.

For reference, I am using two Bticino Matix switches.

Do you have any idea what might be happening? Could I solve it by replacing the switches? Could the switches have some leakage?

You might need to provide more context, like a link to some official explanation about this magic switch functionality.

I’m hardly an expert in electricity, but the “magic” part seems to involve rewiring the switches so that both outputs are permanently connected to live.

Without any further info, no one can tell whether it’s something configurable within the Sonoff itself or whether the switches are indeed too fast to reliably trigger.

Some switch don’t play nicely with the magic switch mode. Like himmel switches, i had to toggle the switch just slow enough to toggle the relay which is not WAF friendly

You’ll need to replace with different switches

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This video expains it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NudSvGNqbAo

Based on ferbulous’ reply, I’d say your switches are incompatible then.

Only suggestion is can make is to remove the wire link from one of the switches. Your picture shows a link in each switch, but the video showed a link is only needed in 1 of the switches.

It’s a long shot and I’m fully aware it might not make any difference, but it’s worth a try.

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Hi community,
I’ve solved my issue. I bought a different switch and a bulb to test on a trial 1 way circuit, and it worked correctly, so I excluded an hardware issue. So, I first tried replacing the switch on my two-way system, but nothing changed—same problem. Then, I replaced the bulb with two others in the ceiling light, and finally, it works now!

Basically, I had two of these 12W bulbs in my ceiling light:

Using this 4.9W one:

it works instead!

I read from BASICR4 doc that they support bulbs up to 100W. Why doesn’t it work with those two? That’s now my doubt.

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Again, I barely know anything when it comes to electrics, but I’ve seen enough bigclive videos to hazard a guess. The bulbs you had used a capacitor to drop the voltage (common with cheaper lightbulbs), while the newer ones don’t.

Again, I could be absolutely wrong since this is all based on speculation, but that might explain why switching quickly did not reliably trigger your Sonoff.

Thank you so much for sharing your hypothesis. Any ideas are appreciated

no, it is not woth a try. Teh magik mode detects the short period of no-power while the switch changes. If you remove one of the two extra connection, you still switch everything off, everything! including the sonoff - so the r4 needs a lot of time to reconnect after switching back.