Sonoff / Tasmota started regularly showing "Unavailable" on Home Assistant

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After Months of flawless Tasmota operation with Home Assistant I’ve started to run into problems that my devices are in and out or availability and constantly showing “unavailable” in Home Assistant. This is often only brief maybe 2-3 seconds but its consistently happening.

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This could be due to the latest Tasmota upgrade to V6.4.1 but not guaranteed it was a few days after the upgrade i noticed it. Ive got 28 devices running and up until a few days ago they were solid as a rock with no problems so wifi signal strength shouldn’t be the problem in TasmoAdmin I’ve checked my lowest wifi signal is 58% i run a google mesh network with 5 nodes ensuring good coverage everywhere.
The runtime of the sonoff’s is not affected so this isn’t a device restarting problem, its not a device specific problem either as its affecting all tasmota switches.

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I wondered if interference could be an issue because i recently started using zigbee2mqtt, I’ve unplugged that and turned off any other device that i could think might cause interfearnce but it didn’t make any difference… still the “unavailable”

below is a copy of my Home Assistant entry for an example switch, but like i say nothing has changed and this config has worked for the least 6 months.

 - platform: mqtt
    name: "Dressing Room Lights"
    state_topic: "stat/sonoff003/POWER"
    command_topic: "cmnd/sonoff003/POWER"
    availability_topic: "tele/sonoff003/LWT"
    qos: 1
    payload_on: "ON"
    payload_off: "OFF"
    payload_available: "Online"
    payload_not_available: "Offline"
    retain: false

Note on TasmoAdmin page the switches occasionally turn red, and this is at the same time HomeAssisistant shows “Unavailable”

Im using Hassio on a Raspberry Pi with the latest version

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We had exact the same problems after updating to Tasmota 6.4.1. I’ve did the built myself and the problems stayed with Core 2.4.2 and Core 2.5.0 (beta). Back to Core 2.3.0 and they were stable again.

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Fantastic Thanks at @Florian Going back to 2.3.0 indeed did fix it, Was very pleased this worked OTA would have been a nightmare pulling all them sonoff’s out of the ceiling :rofl:

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Trying this now. I got my bin file from here: http://thehackbox.org/tasmota/release/020300/

Getting this after updating to 6.4.1… but I have also been troubleshooting my wifi… I’m wondering now if the trouble I’ve been having with my wifi is related to all my sonoffs connecting and disconnecting all the time now.

Capture

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Been an hour. Looks like using core 2.3.0 is doing the trick! :smile:

blight

Thank you!

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What’s the difference between these core version?
How to know which one is good for your sonoff?

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ESP8266 Arduino core comes with libraries to communicate over WiFi using TCP and UDP, set up HTTP, mDNS, SSDP, and DNS servers, do OTA updates, use a file system in flash memory, work with SD cards, servos, SPI and I2C peripherals.

Source: ESP8266 core for Arduino

This library is not Tasmota specific. If you ever programmed one of the ESP8266 chips for yourself you probably already used this libraries too.

In general the later the version the better. Especially since Core versions before 2.4 contain the KRACK WPA2 Vulnerability. Unfortunately Tasmota does not run reliably on Core 2.4 and above for a lot of people forcing them to decide between a stable or an unvulnerable device…

If your device is stable when using the Core 2.4.2 binaries do not consider downgrading.

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So glad I’ve found this thread, this has been driving me bonkers just has described… running 6.4.1 currently and constant unavailable filling the logs. Have about 8 tasmota . Sonoff basic.

Will try the old core you mention and report back! Thanks

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Actually, while I’m here, can anyone help me out.

I’m slightly confused as to what I should flash to my basics and a couple of S20s

I usually go for the sonoff-minimal.bin file first as a staging step and then the sonoff.bin… seems to work fine on all devices…

I do notice a file called sonoff-basic.bin though, should I be using it on my basics either directly or after staging and what’s the difference?

Thks

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i am also facing this same ‘UNAVAILABLE’ problem for the last 1 weeks , after reading this thread i think the problem is with tasmota firmware , all my esphome nodes are working perfectly .

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Differences are mainly the functionality that comes with the device, e.g. external sensors support.

If you are using the device without attached sensors it might be sufficient to use a smaller package. This would allow to update without the additional flashing of the minimal image first in the OTA process. But since this is automated it should not really matter…

The tosmata page contains an overview which features are supported by which image if you want to have more details.

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Oh no. I’ve gone for the older core and now all my tasmotas are rebooting every ten seconds or so!

What’s happening!
?

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No

I think This is not the problem of tasmota core , yesterday i flashed my node in which unavailable was showing with esphome , but today again it is saying unavailable ,
Now what to do ?

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Which version? Did you download binaries or compile your own?

All the released versions come with 2.3, 2.4.2 and 2.50 (I think) core… I found any 2.4.2 version was a nightmare.

I have also been compiling my own and for the last half dozen dev versions have had this constant boot loop with core 2.3.0… very frustrating. The latest core 2.5.0 seems reasonably stable and compiles and uploads for me (6.4.1.18)

I had no issues at all with 6.3.0 but 6.4.1 has not been fun…

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my node was having 2.4.2 , but it was problematic , so i flashed it with ESPHOME , but same problem remains .

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2.4.2 was the worst ever for me…

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seems something else maybe at fault. it could be your wifi itself

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Any tips how I can flash OTA if the things are bootlooping… Maybe I can’t !

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I have been able to even with a 8 second loop… just keep trying and try and catch it when it just comes up… I haven’t been forced to use a wire yet to reflash…

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Thanks that’s helpful, I think I can catch em’ which is good as some are a bit tricky to get at!

Only thing is, I’m now unsure as to what to flash them with to give myself the best chance of clearing the inavailable issue and not get boot loops.

I don’t think this is a WiFi issue with my unifi APs as I tried all sorts of settings on them, could be rf interference I guess but not sure what that would be.

Any tips what to flash on these next, mostly basics couple of S20s

Thks