Sonoff motion sensor stuck on "detected"

This is weird. I went into “Developer tools” and changed the state of the binary sensor from “on” to “off”. Then I put the battery back in, and it seems to be functioning as normal. But I’m still confused as to why the sensor didn’t show as being “unavailable” when I took the battery out and left it in that state (no battery) for about 12 hours.

I have one that just started doing exactly the same thing. I’ll try your method to reset it.

The method I used to reset it only lasted a couple of days, then I had the same problem. So I gave up on it and bought a different one. It’s a Samotech SM301Z and it’s been rock solid. It’s a bit larger than the Sonoff one because it takes bigger batteries but it seems to work much better.

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Thanks for the update. Mine was only a couple of week sold before it got jammed in the ‘detected’ state. As it’s still new I’m returning it for a refund. I’ll look into the Samotech units.

Thanks!

i had same problem, so im leaving my notes for others who might come across this as well.

usually replacing battery (even though the one there looks fine, and within the normal Voltage reporting of a multimeter, and the sensor is “brand new” and been working for just few days, and HA reports the battery as 100%…) - will fix the problem.
be sure to use a “well branded” one, and not the extremely cheep ones the sensor usually Ships with…

week connectivity with hub does not help either - be sure to have a good enough score in your zha visualization map.

if these are “checked” and you still get faulty reports - consider replacing the unit.

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Thanks, I was ready to toss it but a new battery fixed the issue for me. I suspect the battery it comes with isn’t that great.

I experienced this issue with a snzb-03 as well. After replacing the battery it was up and running for a day. But then it became unavailable and I could not even pair it up to my Sonoff Zigbee Bridge(flashed with Tasmota) Another weird thing was the new battery was only showing 55%.

I did a power reset of the Sonoff Zigbee Bridge and I could now pair it, but then the problem with the stuck detected state came back.

Then I notice that one of my Ikea Traadfri motion sensors was also stuck in the detected state.
I then tried to power reset the Sonoff Zigbee Bridge again, reloaded the ZHA integration and reboot Home Assistant and then the problem got resolved.

I will keep monitor this behaviour for the the next following days.

Hardware is Raspberry Pi4
Version: core-2022.3.3
Host Operating System: Home Assistant OS 7.4

As an update from my last post, I kept having issues as well with the Sonoff sensor getting stuck on “detected” even with the new battery after a few days. I am using zigbee2mqtt but based on your post this happened with ZHA and even a Sonoff bridge, so I would have to assume this is a device specific problem at this point. The Sonoff was so unreliable I gave up and tossed it, as no matter what I did I couldn’t fix it. At this point, I would not recommend anyone else purchase one.

I have two aqara motion sensors now that have worked well, but those can have issues depending on if you have other devices that aren’t “compatible”, as they don’t fully conform to the zigbee standard. Apparently, the Phillips Hue sensor appears to be the “gold standard” here. Checkout this thread for a good discussion on the alternatives

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I’ve been using hue sensors for around 6 months now, and I’ve not had a single false trigger, or indeed any issues at all. I wouldn’t buy anything else now.

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Got the same issue after updating to 2022.3.6, i tried to pair it again, do a reboot to my hub (Sonoff Zigbee Bridge with tasmota V 11.0.0.0) reloaded the ZHA integration and rebooted HA, but only after i restored to 2022.3.5 it began to work as usual, dont know if it is something changed in ZHA integration that is causing this problem… never had a single “hiccup” with any of my SNZB-03 sensors…

Agreed. The Hue PIR is well worth the price. Wish I knew who makes the actual PIR sensor from it so I could build a POE version.

Same here, same with sonoff and ikea, i will try to find some sensor that is supported with ephome that can be connected to mains.

Ideally something like this with digitally adjustable sensitivity

Updating here since I came here looking for answers but i found my own solution and hoping it can help someone.
I had problem with one sensor which was always in detected state an showed 60% battery although I just purchased it.
My solution was to bend the small metal hinge that connects the battery from the side inwards with a small screwdriver and that instantly gave me 100% battery life, and it has been working since.

It seems that it was connecting, but just too little to work properly.

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For Zigbee be sure to always follow these tips and best practices → https://community.home-assistant.io/t/guide-for-zigbee-interference-avoidance-and-network-range-coverage-optimization/515752/3

It seems that OP is talking about a SNZB-03.

Tip to him, and all the others with this sensor: you will find numerous posts about false positives and solutions (that sometimes work, mostly not) here on the forum.

I have a few of these too because they were my first motion sensors and because of being cheap, small and other zigbee stuff from this brand works well, I bought these.
I have given up on them and bought Philips Hue motion sensors: they are more expensive but also measure illuminance and temperature.
These are more reliable and because of 2x AAA batteries and it’s claimed to run for about 2 years on 1 load.

As the OP of this very old thread, and as per my second post, I can confirm that I did indeed give up on the SNZB-03 in May '21 and bought a Samotech SM301Z from Amazon. It’s been 100% reliable even though it’s designed for indoor use and I’m using it in my outside porch (albeit sheltered from any rain). Like the Phillips Hue, it takes two AAA batteries and I haven’t yet changed them. In fact the battery status is showing 89% and that’s after around 23 months. It does not have luminance or temperature but it is about half the price of the Phillips here in the UK.

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I can confirm the bend-the-pins method helped revive an apparently-dead-on-arrival sensor of mine too!

Glad I found this thread. Ordered me one of these for testing purpose :slight_smile: quite happy with the Sonoff USB Dongle and the Temp/Humifiier but holy moly is this one bad. Guess I will check out the hue motion detector :slight_smile:

Glad they only 5$ and I was able to test my automation a bit lol

Hi, I’m also having problems with the Sonoff SNZB-03.
In the Tuya app the device does show as ‘cleared’ after 1 minute and everything looks fine.
But, going into HA the state is still shown as ‘on’ (detected).
Only by using the developer tools to set it off again works.
I’ve tried another Zigbee hub but the with the same result.
The only common things in this are HA and the Tuya app.
It doesn’t appear to be a faulty device as many others on here are suggesting.
But as fairly new to all this can’t be sure. Just hoping a solution can be found.
I have a different sensor on order as backup.
Config:

  • Core 2024.8.3
  • Supervisor 2024.08.0
  • Operating System 13.1
  • Frontend 20240809.0

Try settings > devices and devices > zha > configure, scroll down to the bottom and set both ‘consider mains powered…’ and ‘consider battery powered…’ to a much higher value. I set both mine to a year (in seconds). Haven’t had a problem with sensors (sonoff/aqara) dropping out since.

It seems to me it somehow has to do with sensors battery levels being reported to infrequently, making HA believe the entire sensor/device is offline. It seems it’s partially a bug and partially values that has to be tuned to match the most infrequent sensor in your mesh.

Another solution read elsewhere was to force the sensor to update it’s battery level more frequently. I don’t think it seems logical to force a sensor to keep reporting a value that hasn’t changed, so it seems more logical to lower HAs expectations.