Zigbee products on Aliexpress

Hardware
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I am using deconz II usb on HA; generally i am quite satisfied with zigbee products and stability; however most of the chinese products i got from aliexpress are generally problematic. I find myself spending money and throw them away. Here are my findings so far:

  • Xiaomi and Aqara products all work quite satisfactorily, i found no problems with them.

  • Gledopto GL-C-008 Strip LED Controller works fine; however the power-on behaviour is not configurable and on power cuts it always come back ‘On’ whether it is on or off before the power cut. And also if the power cut duration is long, it appears ‘unable’ and you have to power it on and off in order to join to the zigbee network again. Won’t reccommend.

  • Blitzwolf BW-SS7 1/2 gang smart socket works fine again; however it has the same problems that gledopto has; no power on behaviour and loses network on power cuts.

  • Blitzwolf BW IS4 Temperature and Humidity LCD Screen works quite nice; no problems so far.

  • Sonoff Basic ZBR3 works quite nice and remembers power on behaviour. The only problem is that it doesn’t have an external switch connection.

  • Tuya Smart Plug is lacking power measurements with deconz usb ii, itt works as a dumb switch, on and off only.

  • IKEA Tradfri range extender: Generally works fine; but sometimes the led turns off and it doesn’t work; you have to plug it off and on again.

  • Tuya Thermometer, Humidity, Light Sensor e-paper , don’t ever buy this. Aside from zigbee issues, it doesn’t work at all, always shows 0; how do they sell this garbage that is not even working…

So, my own experience is that in order to keep the price low; most of the chinese zigbee product manufacturers don’t use EEPROM or whatever which prevents to set or config power-on behaviour.

I find only Philips Hue and Xiaomi-Aqara products reliable. If you guys can share your findings with specific zigbee products, we could get rid of spending money for useless products…

2 Likes
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How much do they update with Deconz ? I have 2, and they only send a temperature update once a hour.

1 Like
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I’m 50/50 with Zigbee stuff on AliExpress. I tried buying a smart plug and got a run-around from the seller. First they wanted me to send them more money for shipping, then they kept getting fake shipping numbers, then they wanted me to lie about why I wanted a refund.

But I bought a Zigbee valve controller (one of those motors which moves the arm of a ball valve) from Ali and it’s been great. Quick, cheap and I’ve been using it for three months now with no problems.

My experience with Zigbee has been almost exclusively with “on/off” type devices. I see lots of postings here about problems with color-changing or dimming bulbs, power monitoring smart plugs, etc. I agree it would be nice to narrow down the list of things which work, to things which work well.

My Visonic MCT-340E door & temperature sensors have always worked great, but they don’t sell that model any more.

My IKEA Tradfri smart plugs (on/off only) have also worked flawlessly.

I have one LEDVANCE smart plug, again on/off only but works fine.

I have one Centralite 3310-G temperature/humidity sensor, works great but doesn’t report battery status (always says 100%)

My three eWeLink SA-003’s work fine.

I have a Sonoff 01MINIZB, which is great but check the specs, some of these are limited to 10A. That may not be legal in a 15A circuit.

My newest acquisition is a pair of Sengled E1C-NB7 smart plugs with power monitoring. So far testing on one of them has gone very well. My only quibble is that it only gives Watts, not Volts or Amps, so you don’t get the full story if you really want to be precise, but for most applications it should be good enough.

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Guess it changes according to temperature change threshold. In my case it is sometimes 15 mins, sometimes 2 hours.

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For me, this is the Blitzwolf BW IS4 :
image

Same room, Digoo RH8 :
image

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Because of the battery drain, zigbee sensors send data more carefully, i guess Blitzwolf sends values around 0.5C or %2 humidity changes. Since digoo is RF, is drains battery much more less, that’s why it sends every 0.05C changes.

If you want more frequent checks, you can’t do that with this blitzwolf, but aqara sensor does it however it does not have a screen:

Blitzwolf:

blitzwolf
blitzwolf973×971 66.6 KB

Aqara sensor:

aqara
aqara982×979 66.9 KB