Sonoff vs Third Reality

Configuration Zigbee
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1

Hey!

Anyone use Sonoff/Third Reality devices in ZHA? Currently deciding between the 2 manufacturer for door/window sensors and motion sensors, not sure which is generally better. For sonoff I am considering getting their new SNZB-03p line for motion, but it looks like the upgraded door sensor isn’t available yet.

2

Third Reality is a Works With HA partner, so I’d probably lean towards them. I have 8 of their power monitoring plugs in use and they have been really solid. Not a single issue with any of them.

I’m not a fan of Sonoff Zigbee devices. I got burned by them a few times and swore them off my mesh. Supposedly they are better now, but I’m too invested in what I have to try them lol.

Although, for door/contact sensors, I’d recommend Aqara (especially if you are on Z2M). I have 19 of them and they are literally the perfect size: SMALL. They can be hidden/blended in easily on windows and on door frames they don’t stick out like a sore thumb.

My cons for them are:

  1. They don’t publish their firmware publicly
  2. I’ve had 2 of them stop reporting for an hour then “magically” start sending data again.
  3. They can have some pretty wild temperature swings (at least in their reporting). I’ve had to tune a few of them to get proper temps.
3

I hope the SNZB-03p is better then the SNZB-03

4

I have aqara (door, and motion) sensors connected to their hub - but I want to get everything on one zigbee network instead of multiple. I’m using ZHA but I am ALSO using certain repeaters (smartthings power monitoring plugs) that will not properly repeat aqara zigbee signals, so they will often get stuck in a certain state. For that reason, I’ve been looking at third reality and sonoff. I have 2 third reality sensors, and I have to admit, they have been unbelievably reliable, but I saw sonoff was cheaper and I also happen to have 2 of those that (temp/humidity sensors) that seem fine, but I definitely wouldn’t notice if they failed where I would notice if the motion or door sensor failed.

Also sonoff is available direct from them, third reality as far as I can tell is amazon only and sometimes their products just disappear. That being said, I’ve posted this thread in a couple other forums and everyone has told me third reality, so I am leaning towards them at this point. It’s a difference of $163.17 over the 23 devices I am eventually going to replace, and if third reality are that much better, I am willing to pay for it in the end.

5

wrt third reality. i have 2 4-packs of these: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09KNDM4VV
got them because they were the lowest cost ones that seemed decent

i’d say “proceed with caution”… i’m keeping them, but it’s been a little bit of a struggle. 2 of the 8 were defective.

pairing was a challenge.
zha and zigbee2mtqq don’t upgrade the firmware.
you can update the firmware via their app but… the code that puts it into pairing mode also does factory reset and uninstalls the upgrade.

they have a nasty bug on firmware earlier than 71 such that if you have it set to be power on after a power loss, there’s a race condition such that i could turn on and off at 1 hz. this of course can burn out your electronics. so make sure it’s upgraded to 71, or don’t set it to be power on after power loss. (this is documented in their release notes)

it functions as a relay, but the range is low. i have them about 20 feet away from each other even with line of sight and hte lqi is just mediocre (about 120ish).

6

I don’t currently need smart plugs, I am more in need of motion sensors and door sensors and buttons. But I will make a note of it. I have updated the third reality motion sensor via ZHA before, but maybe the smart plugs are different. Anyway, appreciate the info!

7

That’s weird. I have 8 of them as well and they all updated to 1.00.74 without issue at all.

8

Completely understand. I got rid of all my SmartThings kit just recently for the very same reasons. They suck at repeating for some brands.

Let me know how the sonoff works out for you. I’m interested to see how they perform. I know from some reports they are supposed to be good with signal and battery life. I’ve been burned by sonoff products before though, so I’m more cautious now.

9

My only 2 sonoff sensors, both temp and humidity, I haven’t noticed any issues with. But one is only a trigger for temperature low and I rarely look at it, and the other triggers the shower fan, but it’s techincally a last resort (closing the shower door ALSO triggers the shower fan) so if they failed, there’s a good chance I’d never notice lol. I might still go with sonoff for temp and humidity, and honestly I don’t love the shape of the third reality buttons, but I think I will be going with third reality for most everything else going forward.

As an aside, I love my SmartThings plugs way more than my aqara stuff, so if I had to choose one to keep, it’s the SmartThings stuff. I’ve never had it have a single issue in the time I’ve used them, whereas my aqara stuff is less reliable. Still good, don’t get me wrong, but fails more than my SmartThings stuff does.

10

For me, the SmartThings gear was only reliable when I had their hub. I had so many mesh issues when I migrated over to HA and eventually it turned out to be all my plugs. I then got a few Tubez repeaters and never had an issue since. Those things are AMAZING and keep my mesh super clean and problem free.

I do agree with the Aqara statement, but on my mesh, they have been pretty solid. I have a bunch of the contact sensors, temp sensors and a few motion sensors as well. Although, I’ll never give up my Hue motion sensors. Those things are like little tanks! lol

11

I’m replacing my Aqara motion sensors and door sensors (and a single smart plug) but you’d have to pry my single hue sensor from my cold dead hands. I only have one, and I have a hard time justifying the price of more when third reality is under half the price, but damn the thing hasn’t failed me a single time.

12

Stay away from the SNZB-03!

14

Any reason? I’m leaning towards third reality at this point but just wondering reasoning.

15

If you do a search, here in the forum, or elsewhere, you will noticed that they are not reliable at all.

16

You aren’t looking for plugs - but as a statement on the technology companies: I purchased 8 third reality smart power monitoring plugs in August 2023 - and 100% of them seem to have failed by Dec 2023. I contacted the support team for zha and they have been unable to find anything in the integration that is the problem. They ran fine for 3-4 months then all failed within a short period. Seemed like an integration issue - but nothing will bring them back online. Maybe they were susceptible to a rolling blackout or had something else flakey that couldn’t handle some comms noise - but every other zigbee device still works and all third reality devices have now failed. Now, If I unplug them and plug them back in, I can see power draw for a few minutes (but cannot control them) - and then they go offline again. Not sure what caused them to all fail, but I’m probably heading to Sonoff to replace them all.

When I test them within 3 meters (line of site) from the zigbee coordinator, I get an LQI of around 70. Pretty disappointing.

17

I have 8 of the THIRDREALITY ZigBee Smart Plugs around the house. Only a couple of them actually control anything, but they are also routers (repeaters) that make my Zigbee network more robust.

18

I have a lot of Sonoff-devices.

And, it feels like, that they aren’t really designed for serious use.

  1. Reliability:
    1A) The sensors (door, temp/hum, buttom) randomly stop responding (and then need to be re-initialized).
    1B) the TRV’s do not stop responding, but their temperature-sensor is measuring way off (when hot water is passing /it is “Heating”).

Related to the above (reliability/stability), then I have used all my Data- & Network-skills - in-vain :
I have :

  • exchanged the “Sonoff ZB-dongle-E”, with 2x “SLZB-06 from SMLight” (which gives easy 100% control (channel, adress, etc.), and adds “free placement” within the LAN).
  • exchanged our Wifi-Mesh, from TPLink to Cudy - to have 100% (manual) control over the wifi-channel & channel-width.
  • I have then manually set the wifi- and zigbee-channels - to make 100% sure, that there is NO interference between them. (And we live in the countryside, so we do not “enjoy” 2.4GHz-interference from neighbourgs.
  • adjusted the SMLights’ transmit-power to 5dB (to make sure, that there is balance between the sensors’ transmit power, and the smlight’s transmit-power.
  • made sure, with 2 coordinators, placed optimally, that all sensors have got an okay signal-level.
    …
    All the above, have pointed the arrow /problem-cause directly & solely to the Sonoff-sensors !!!
    (and we are talking sensors, that after only 1-xx days stops sending/responding - while at the same time being displayed (inside z2m) as “online” (green text), vs. in red, as “Offline”.
    …
    AND yet:
  • even the “closest to the coordinator” Sonoff-sensors, randomly stops sending - can happen at ANY time during the day/night.
    (which is a crucial problem, when used to control the radiator-heating - and makes "being away from the house = un-secure … because what-if the sensors stops sending, when the radiators are “off”, during the winter-period (with a lot of sun entering & heatng-up the room fx. af 13 o-clock), and the temperature then drops to below zero during the next days/nights!).

Plus, a major issue, for me:

  • I used the Sonoff 02 temp/hum-sensors to measure temperature - especially their “transmitting every 5 minutes”, even when there is only a change of 0,01 degrees (their lowest delta-detection.
  • And, based on Sonoff’s false claim “measures every 5 seconds”, I bought their newer 02P’s - only to find out, that this claim is so very very far from the reality.
    • because in reality, the 02P’s ONLY transmits measurements each 60-minutes, UNLESS there is a temperature-change of 1,0 degrees. Which, in my use-case, meant that they only did “update their reading” 1 time each hour !!
  • Now, som will claim, that this is due to getting a better battery-stamina - which I will agree on - but, this is extremely fra from, what they write/advertize !!!
  • Mathematically, it is = 3600 / 5 = appr. 750 times wrong !!
  • and, I have tried increasing the delta-sensitivity and update-frequency within the Z2M-addon interface, but this only results in errors.

So,
I am now switching to (or: am trying out) the temp.-Hum sensors from ThirdReality (3Reality).
On paper the 3Reality & Sonoff’s seem very similar. They both (on paper) measure each 5 seconds, and they both have got batteries with appr. 1000mAh (3Reality with 2xAAA Alkaline’s, and Snoff with 1xCR2477 Lithium).
…
I hope for the best - and I will definetely warn against all the sensors from Sonoff !!

And, another major annoyance/issur, with the Sonoff’s: exchanging batteries.

  • the 04P (door/window-opening): You have to squeeze/pull VERY hard, with a screwdriver, to open up, to the battery-compartment (and you need to remove the unit-beforehand, being very impractical due to the double-glue tape fixation).
  • the 02P (temp/hum): One of these, I simply conNOT open (on-paper, it is only a matter of turning, using a coin, but for xx reason, this bugger is stuck - I have tried with brute-force, and ended up ruining the plastic … so P…ssingly frustrating !!).
    …
    And, I can simply not imagine 3Reality’s sensors being/doing worse than this !!!

Regarding the TRV (Sonoff-TRVZB):

  • it is a mixed bag. The temp-sensor is useless.
  • But, as far as I know, then Sonoff is the only brand on the market, with which you can actually control the needle-position (in 1% steps).
  • This fine-control, has made me implement and refine a very precise and “fluent” temperature-control - that I would NOT have been abe to implement, with a normal “Smart”-TRV (with 0/1 needle-position, open/closed).
  • but the very same, is then ruined by Sonoff, because their temperature-sensors (02/02P) is either useless or unstable !!

I plan on returning, to this post, with an update - once I receive and have throughourgly tested the 3Reality temp/hum-Lite sensors out !!

  • I hope they will update at leats one time each 5 minutes (and hopefully more often, even with only very small changes) - and I hope they will prove to be stable (reliable) IRL !!