lucky you - mine always fall off after a period of time - no idea where it comes from - battery reporting is also off, brand new showing 58% or so, then for a while it increases to lets say 64% before they eventually fall off the zigbee network … I have tried pretty much all versions since the blogpost - removed it and recreated it, even did a complete reset on the zigbee bridge itself - always the same - even a sensor that sits like 1m away shows this which makes me think its something else - interestingly the one that stays on the longest is actually the longest distance away from the bridge …
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I had issues with ikea remotes. Wouldn’t pick up zha events on node red. Ended up switching back to my conbee ii
I understand from itead’s website that their Sonoff Zigbee Motion sensor does not directly work with the (Zigbee compatible) Alexa line of hubs.
What we do know, is that Sonoff Zigbee Power plugs can work directly with Alexa hubs. We also know that the Sonoff Zigbee Bridge can be integrated with Alexa hubs.
My question is the following: a Sonoff Zigbee Motion sensor connects to ZB Bridge and from there to a Alexa hub. Does that work properly?
And then with the rules / conditions capabilities within Alexa, can you control other Zigbee or WiFi devices conncted to the Alexa hub?
And is the integration between the Sonoff Zigbee Bridge to the Alexa hub a direct link (via local WiFi network or Zigbee) or are the Sonoff cloud servers in between to facilitate this integration?
Is this related to home assistant?
Not directly, but in this thread a lot is discussed about the Sonoff Zigbee Bridge in relation to motion sensors and various issues with pairing. And I was wondering if someone had a few answers on my questions above.
Same here unfortunately… Are you also using the Sonoff Zigbee sensors? My PIR and TH have gone mad and showing exactly the same behaviour you have described… Have you had any luck debugging that? Many thanks
There are a couple of findings I noticed after some further testing/investigations:
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When you start pairing Sonoff Zigbee devices to the Zigbee Bridge, by using the Ewelink App, you always have to make sure your mobile is on the same Wifi LAN of your local router and the Zigbee Bridge is connected to. Also you have to make sure your mobile is connected to the 2.4 Ghz radio of the router and not to the 5G radio of the router (if your local router is dual band).
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I also noticed that you have to locate the Zigbee Bridge not too far from your wifi router and at the same time not too far from any Sonoff sensors which are battery powered (like the PIR, temp sensor and the Sonoff Zigbee door/window switch). Insufficient / or not stable 2.4 Ghz Wifi coverage to the Zigbee Bridge or low Zigbee radio coverage from a battery powered sensor to the Bridge is also causing issues. Alternatively this issue can be reduced by installing Zigbee power plugs here and there in the house which function as repeater.
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And then comes a really bad thing of the Sonoff Zigbee PIR: I noticed that when the button battery cell in there has decharged a bit by its use, from the standard 3.0 volt to for instance 2.8 volt, the PIR sends a ‘battery low notification’ and quickly stops completely working. I am not sure exactly where the drop-off level is, but when the battery is slowly getting empty and reaches a voltage somewhere around 2.8 or 2.7 volts, then the PIR is not able to function again and switches off (on the Ewelink it shows then ‘Device Offline’). I find this really bad of the Sonoff sensors that those already stop working if the battery voltage has dropped to these kind of levels.
These batteries in the Sonoff sensors in my house last for ca 250-300 hrs hours under normal use and then the voltage has dropped to the ca 2.7-2.8 volts and the sensor then switches off. Bottomline, these battery powered Sonoff sensors can only operate ca 2-3 weeks. After that the battery has to be renewed…
I am going to solve this now in my house to run a separate thin power cable to all the battery powered Sonoff sensors I have and that line will be soldered to each of these sensors and at the other end to an USB 5v to 3v step-down converter (ca $3 at Alibaba) which will be plugged into an Apple USB iPhone charger plugged into the mains.
In the past I already thought earlier about these kind of power issues, but Sonoff has proofed it now as well: Zigbee sensors shall in fact not really be powered with button type battery cells. There is not enough power in those tiny cells and you keep renewing these in the sensors every few weeks - 1 or 2 months or so… And this is really not working…!
ok here is what I did - removed the integration - deleted the zigbee.db and started over … I also added a router (bulb) into my setup and since then it seems stable - this was done on 0.118.4 I since upgraded to 0.118.5 and still all seems well so far … not sure if there were any kinks in previous versions and adding, re-adding caused an issue here potentially …
fingers crossed - if it goes on for another 3 days I will start changing my automations to use the sensors but as I said so far it seems my issues have been resolved apart from the battery bouncing but I was told an automation eg sensor battery <40% for a day or 2 should help in that sense … will see
I have a few of those Sonoff Zigbee PIRs myself and from a daily operations point of view, my conclusion is that those are useless. The battery life of the button cell battery in those small sensors is just not good enough (unfortunately). Their life in daily operation is a few hundred hours and then it needs replacement. This is totally unpractical (and costly).
Much better battery powered sensors (but Z-wave!) for these purposes are:
FIBARO Motion sensor FGMS-001 ZW5
and:
AEOTEC MultiSensor 6
Those have much larger capacity batteries inside and probably only need replacement every 1-2 years.
I have not used any Zigbee PIR sensors but I have several of the Neo Coolcam NAS-PD02Z Z-wave sensors which I installed well over a year ago and the batteries are still all showing 100% (these use the 3V lithium 123 batteries). They may be a little cheaper than other Z-wave PIR’s and I would highly recomend them based on their detection range, speed & reliability, I also like the magnetic mounting which make they easy to adjust.
Hi Mark, that’s good to read and an useful addition. Perhaps Z-wave battery powered PIRs are having a more efficient (low power) energy consumption than the Zigbee PIR sensors.
It’s interesting. I just saw that in your PIR (Neo Coolcam NAS-PD02Z ) is a much larger battery!!
At least: the Sonoff Zigbee PIR sensors are not doing particularly well. I installed 2 of those outside the house (perhaps outside temperature has an effect and was between 10-15C), but the batteries of these PIRs ran low in about 2-3 weeks, which corresponds with ca 300-500 hrs.
Then comes of course the next question (I have no answer for yet):
Are Z-wave battery powered PIRs in general more energy efficient than Zigbee battery powered PIRs?
Or may be it is only a Sonnoff related issue and that their Zigbee PIRs are just not very efficient with the battery power or that the small capacity button cell battery inside is just not the way to go to power PIRs.
I have aqara human body sensors (zigbee pir’s) that the battery lasted over a year, and still going. The ikea Zigbee pir’s batteries seem to faster. Can’t tell yet about the Sonoff Pir’s, the one I put into service is only working 6 weeks, but the battery still shows OK.
How many of the Sonoff ZB Bridges can be added into Home Assistant?
I’ve been following 2 how-to pages on loading the Sonoff ZB bridges into Home Assistant:
I just tried to add a 2nd bridge so I could have better RF coverage in the far part of my house and the Home Assistant Integration process wouldn’t let me add another bridge.
Is that expected behavior?
Yes. You can only add one ZHA coordinator. You can try Tasmota2Zigbee on the other one.
I think it obviously also depends where they are installed - I run FIBARO Motion sensor FGMS-001 ZW, AEOTEC MultiSensor 6 and the NeoCoolcam PIR all zwave but the size of the sonoff made them very interesting but the battery capacity is really poor for at least where I planned to run them - I think I get 10 days out of them while my zwave run for moths and months (probably around a year) in the same area …
ZHA currently only supports one Zigbee coordinator which in turn can only have one Zigbee network. As far as I know, the ZHA developers have no plans to add support for more than Zigbee coordinator.
It should be noted that the Zigbee specification only supports one Zigbee specification only support one Zigbee coordinator per Zigbee network. That is a hard limitation in Zigbee. There can be only one!
ZHA could, in theory, add support for more Zigbee coordinators at a higher-level but each Zigbee coordinator would still only be have their own seperate Zigbee network and none of the Zigbee coordinators/networks would have any low-level connection or even any knowledge of each other. Any connection between them would have to be done at ZHA or Home Assistant application level and not at the Zigbee level.
Feature request for a possible solution = [ZHA] Support for more than one Zigbee coordinator in ZHA?
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I’d be satisfied with some Zigbee devices that would repeat the Zigbee signals from device to device, in a mesh network fashion.
I thought Zigbee was supposed to act as a mesh network, where the devices performed a relay/repeater function and thus allowed for an extended RF footprint of the network.
As-is, the Sonoff temp sensors I have ALL connect back to the Sonoff Zigbee Bridge rather than performing a relay function for the more distant sensors. See the ZHA map.
Battery powered Zigbee devices never act as a repeater in a mesh network bcs that would consume too much power and running the battery low quickly. Only mains powered devices, like a Zigbee power plug or a Zigbee Mini switch has the repeater function.
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