I currently have Home Assistant installed on a Raspberry Pi 4. Initially, I set up an Aqara M1S hub and paired Aqara temperature sensors (SKU: WSDCGQ11LM). Unfortunately, these sensors have been performing very poorly. They are unstable, frequently go offline, and often require re-pairing. Sometimes they only reconnect after pressing the physical button on the sensor for about one second.
Because of this behavior, I believe it may not be possible to achieve stable operation with these sensors. I would appreciate your thoughts on this as well.
At this point, I would like to replace these sensors with another model. I do not prefer Wi-Fi sensors; instead, I am looking for sensors that operate via a hub and integrate locally with Home Assistant (no cloud dependency), similar to Aqara but more stable.
My main requirements are:
Integration with Home Assistant (local only, no cloud)
Maximum stability (protocol does not matter: Zigbee or Z-Wave)
Approximately 10 sensors
Budget and design are not important; stability is the top priority
Sensors should not frequently go offline or require manual re-pairing
For this reason, I purchased the SMLight SLZB-06p7 coordinator and SONOFF SNZB-02P Zigbee Temperature and Humidity sensors . However, I encountered a similar issue.
Here is what happened:
I connected the SLZB-06p7 coordinator to the network via Ethernet, and Home Assistant detected and added it automatically.
I then paired two SONOFF SNZB-02P temperature sensors and one Xiaomi motion sensor to the SLZB-06p7.
One sensor was placed about 1 meter away, and the other was placed farther away.
On the first day, everything worked normally.
Later, I disconnected the SLZB-06p7 from power. As expected, all sensors went offline.
After reconnecting power:
The Xiaomi motion sensor came back online automatically.
Both SONOFF SNZB-02P sensors remained offline, regardless of distance.
I pressed the button on the distant SONOFF sensor for about one second, and it came back online.
The nearby SONOFF sensor remained offline because I did not press its button.
If I press the button, it will reconnect — but this is not acceptable. Manually pressing buttons on every sensor after a coordinator restart is not a practical solution.
Unlike the Xiaomi motion sensor, which reconnected automatically (even if not immediately), I expected the temperature sensors to come back online automatically after a few minutes. However, this did not happen. I waited approximately 15 hours, but they still remained offline.
Could you please explain what might be causing this issue?
Thank you in advance for your support and guidance.
If a battery sensor was always ‘online’ the battery would go dead. It checks in on a regular schedule and shows up then. pressing the button ‘wakes it up’ now.
Same with restarting the host. When it comes up, it doesn’t know the sensor value until it checks in on the sensors schedule.
This is why you don’t power down the HA Host or radios except for manually.
I understand your point and I agree with you. However, these sensors are sleepy (passive) devices. When the temperature changes, they normally wake up after approximately 3–5 minutes, send the data to Home Assistant, and automatically appear online again.
For this reason, I waited about 5 hours expecting the sensors to come back online, but they did not. They only come online when I press the physical button. If we consider a setup with 20–30 battery-powered sensors, this would require dedicating specific time just to manually wake them up, which becomes inconvenient. Some of these sensors are installed in high or hard-to-reach locations, such as motion sensors.
We install these devices for convenience and automation. My expectation is simply that after being passive, they should later wake up normally and appear online in Home Assistant without manual intervention.
I will also try updating the coordinator firmware and test again.
The issue is that a 5-hour sleep period is not realistic. Within 5 hours, the temperature changes many times (even dozens of times), yet the sensor still does not come back online.
I strongly believe there must be a solution to this, and I can see that many other users are experiencing the same problem. Under normal circumstances, the device should reconnect automatically within a maximum of 10 minutes.
While it is normal for the sensor to operate in sleep mode, if it remains offline indefinitely, then it raises a valid question: why should I use such a sensor at all?
I have not tried using button.your_device_identify yet. However, even if this makes the device come online, I do not think it is reasonable to repeat this manually every time.
Since the SLZB-06P7 coordinator supports running scripts, perhaps it would be possible to create a script that periodically checks paired devices and attempts to wake them up. If a device is offline, it could then be brought back online automatically.
No one said you have to do this manually every time. What I asked you to do is confirm whether pressing this causes your device to show online. We can cross the automation bridge later.
Meanwhile, I noticed you said your Xiaomi sensor came back online automatically with your new coordinator, while your original post you said that it didn’t. Maybe you don’t have a device issue, but a setup issue.
Does your Xiaomi sensor always come back online, now that you changed your coordinator? Also, what does your ZHA integration settings screen show under “Consider battery devices unavailable”?
Still waiting on an answer on what happens if you press identify on your Sonoff devices when they’re offline.
Ps. Given the fact that your original issue with Xiaomi devices has been resolved & that Sonoff sensors have quite a few negative comments in these forums (use search), I’d suggest you bin or return them & get more Xiaomi sensors.
However, I could not find such a button in Home Assistant. Also, the device sometimes goes offline and stays that way — this does not happen every time.
If the device does not come back online again in the same way, I will try the method you suggested and provide feedback.
When I press the identify button on the sensor itself, it comes back online.
Weird. Every zigbee device I have in ZHA, even cheap Tuya mains devices, has an identify button. Open up the device pages for your Sonoff sensors & check if it’s disabled by default. You should see disabled entities option under each config/diagnostic/ whatever sections in your device page
As you can see in the image, it is not possible to use the identify function (it is greyed out).
The sensor has been offline for about 4 hours now.
When I pressed the button on another identical sensor, it came back online immediately. However, for this one, I did not press the button and waited for it to reconnect automatically — but it still has not come online.
by the way- up to date all firmvare version.
