ZHA w/Tasmotized Sonff Bridge killing batteries with Tradfri remotes

Configuration Zigbee
1

I recently acquired a Sonoff Zigbee bridge and Tasmotized it to run ZHA and this setup seems to absolutely kill the batteries in the Tradfri remote and Tradfri On/Off switches.

These switches are eating a new battery in less than 24 hours. However, if I unpair them and stick them on a Tradfri bridge, the batteries stay at 100% for several days (so far).

I first noticed this issue with the Sonoff/ZHA setup with the Tradfri remotes right out of the gate - the Tradfri Bridge was just added a few days ago to test battery life with the same remotes on a different bridge than ZHA and to make sure the devices had the latest firmware.

Two days ago I put brand new batteries in a remote on the ZHA and another identical remote on the Tradfri bridge with a new battery. 24 hours later and the ZHA attached remote was down to 19% and the one on the Tradfri bridge was at a solid 100% battery level.

I then swapped the remotes between the two systems to see if there was perhaps an issue with one of the remotes - put new batteries in and started the test again. 24 hours later and the ZHA connected remote was at 21% and the Tradfri connected remote was at a solid 100% still.

So, that rules out any differences between the two remotes as both had 100% on the Tradfri and only around 20% on the ZHA after 24 hours.

I also have a Sonoff door sensor on the ZHA bridge and it has stayed solid at 100% for several weeks. Additionally, I have a Tradfri PIR device on the ZHA bridge and it has stayed at 100% battery for over 2 weeks so far. The issue seems to be limited to only certain Tradfri device types.

Iā€™m not sure why the Ikea devices depleted a full battery in 24 hours when connected to ZHA and hardly nothing is consumed when those devices are on the Tradfri bridge.

This has been driving me nuts for the past couple of weeks and I have a pile of dead batteries that have been drained by the Tradfri remotes on ZHA.

I found a discussion that talked about adjusting some of the polling settings on the devices - tinkered with that for a bit and noticed little or no difference.

Iā€™m happy to provide any additional details if anyone has any ideas why this might be occurring?

Iā€™d like to get it resolved and have decent battery life on the ZHA bridge devices and turn off the Tradfri bridge again. ZHA has better options for what you can do with the Tradfri devices vs what the Tradfri bridge and Ikea app can do.

However, the Tradfri HA integration is extremely easy to get working and not kill batteries. Donā€™t really want to run both bridges forever though.

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2

There is a firmware bug on the zigbee chip. Update to 6.7.8 and then do a ā€œreconfigureā€ on each IKEA device.

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I seemed to have screwed things up trying to upload the new OTA file.

When I tried the first two times to upload the new OTA file, the device kept complaining of an invalid signature in the file.

I then hit the update button for Tasmota itself and it upgraded to the 9.3.x version and rebooted.

I tried again to upload the OTA file and got the same error (Iā€™ve double checked the OTA file downloads to make sure they are good files from Git).

After that, I went back to look at the Digiblur docs for the Sonoff and went to the section with the steps for the OTA upload and started back there.

I started with the step to enter the line below in the console:
Backlog Weblog 3; so65 1; Module 75

As soon as I did that and hit enter, the device dropped off and wonā€™t respond on the IP anymore.

Iā€™ve power cycled the device a couple of times and when I plug it back in, it has a solid blue light and the other blue light ā€˜flickersā€™ on and off at a steady interval and I seem to be stuck there.

Any ideas how to get back on track?

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Sorry, Iā€™m not sure ā€“ Iā€™d pop into the Digiblur Discord and/or Tasmota discord channel and see if they can help you bring it back to life. Good luck!

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Same here, doing Backlog Weblog 3; so65 1; Module 75 kills the bridge. Havenā€™t found a way to recover from this rather that re-flashing tasmota. To not to get the ā€œinvalid signature errorā€ you just need to do the ā€œModule 75ā€ command.
That being said - this wonā€™t like help with the battery drain. (at least it didnā€™t help me)

6

is it confirmed that 6.7.8 fixed the bug ? iā€™ve flashed the zigbee chip with 6.7.8 right from the start and i still get all the IKEA switch batteries drained in less tha 24hours.

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7

After flashing to 6.7.8 you need to either reconfigure IKEA switch or re-join it to get it set into ā€œlong pollā€ mode.

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This seems to be more of a recent Tasmota thing per se. If you give the bridge 24 hours or so, it will get out of the loop issue. FWIW, Iā€™ve seen this same behavior on a few of my other Tasmota devices when going to 9.3.1.x too. They also went nuts and wouldnā€™t get back on the network for about 24 hours. If you see the flashing light issue with your bridge, give it a day and see if it doesnā€™t suddenly come back to life and jump back on the network.

Iā€™m testing the rejoin approach now. Had one that was rejoined after I got the bridge back up and another one that wasnā€™t and the battery already died on it. I have replaced the battery and rejoined it and will let you know how it goes the next couple of days with that one.

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Turns out the Tasmota issue I saw with the other devices was related to them somehow failing to connect to the Wi-Fi. I had them setup with a fallback SSID entry and I removed that and re-entered the password on the primary and was good to go again for them.

So far, the Tradfri remotes that I re-joined to the Sonoff are reporting 100% battery levels after over 24 hours - thatā€™s a vast improvement so far.

I do have one Symfonisk remote that disappeared from the network today that had previously been re-joined - Iā€™m going to pull the battery on it and measure it to see what it looks like - it had been hanging tough for the past several days.

This seems to be the only quirky one at this point. I have several other remotes that I am going to put fresh batteries in and join to the network and let them hang out for a few days to see what happens with those.

Definitely making some progress albeit slowly.

10

Status update - things are better, but issues still seem to persist with the Tradfri 5 button remotes being more problematic that the regular on/off remotes. Battery life on the 5 button devices is quite inconsistent on the Sonoff. Iā€™ve tested some of these devices on both the Sonoff as well as the Tradfri bridge and they do just fine on the Tradfri bridge.

It also seems like when more devices are added to the network (in any qty) it has a negative impact on the Tradfri remotes as well.

I ran with one 2 button and one 5 button for several days and the batteries on those two stayed at 100% for the duration. I added 2 more 2 button and one more 5 button and the original 2 devices depleted their batteries within 24 hours of adding the additional devices.

The other Tradfri devices such as the PIR sensor do just fine - The Symfonisk controller also seems to do somewhat better, but is still a bit inconsistent.

All of the test devices are on the same workbench within a foot or so of each other and Iā€™ve also tried with and without an extra plug in the mix for extra mesh and donā€™t see any significant difference.

Other Zigbee devices also seem to behave OK - itā€™s the Tradfri remotes in particular that seem to take the worst of it.

11

Hi

I have the same issue with an IKEA on/off remote, even after upgrading the sonoff zigbee bridge to tasmota 9.3.1.1 and the firmware to the ncp-uart-sw_6.7.8_115200

Does your IKEA on/off remotes are working properly now?

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Nope - still have random battery killing events and only on the 5 button and on/off remotes. Other Zigbee devices (including Tradfri) are fine (knock on wood). These two remote devices in particular are still problematic and Iā€™ve removed/re-added them to the network numerous times.

There is now consistency to how/when it will kill them either. It also seems to be somewhat related to how many of the devices are on the network but I canā€™t nail down any exact pattern. Frustrating for sure.

I have some 5 button remotes on an actual Tradfri bridge and they have been on there for multiple weeks so far and seen next to no decrease in battery life so far.

The Sonoff on Tasmota with ZHA is a different story completely.

13

Hi Todd,

Thanks for the feedback.
I recently installed the firmware ncp-uart-nsw_6.7.9_115200.ota with tasmota 9.4 on my Sonoff zigbee bridge but the battery on my ikea switch is still dies after only 1 day.

I will keep trying to find a solution since I really like this ikea buttons but it very frustrating indeed.

14

I finally gave up on getting the Tradfri to work well on the Sonoff bridge and bought one of the Tubeā€™s devices instead - problem solved and my network is also much better as well and no devices have even dropped off the network in weeks. Iā€™ve only had to replace a single battery since I got it as well. I went with this one

It was almost 3 times the price of the Sonoff, but my sanity was worth it and everything has been rock solid since. I figured it was worth the price difference in order to use the Tradfri devices vs. other more expensive devices and it is also nice having it on ethernet now. I highly recommend this solution and I got my bridge super fast as I was lucky and they were in stock.

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15

Thanks again for sharing your experience.
I am also tempted to change my coordinator.
I really like these IKEA switches but so far it has been too much wasted time (and batteries) so itā€™s probably worth it.

I will keep an eye on these Tubeā€™'s devices.