Zigibee UK smart plug with power meter, need help

Hardware
1

Hi,

My first post here.

I do not have much experience with home automation so far but running my little setup with some sensors and just try things out and when I get stuck then I leave it until I have time to come back. This time I have bought some smart pugs with power monitoring. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003763432055.html and it’s something wrong with it. Or I don’t understand something very simple or all five of them don’t work or are simply not compatible? I need your advice on this.

Plugs itself:

  • As per the link you can see it’s a UK version.
  • I have five of them and all act the same way.
  • When plugged into the wall socket and the physical Power button pressed the relay switches on for a maximum of 4 seconds and automatically switches (as I have marked in the log book as number 1).
  • If I click on the Controls section to switch it on with Home Assistant (Marked as 2) it does the same thing, it switches off just in a couple of seconds.
  • I have Power On State set to switch on when plugged into the wall socket (marked as 3) and it switches on just itself but again, just for a couple of seconds.
  • This is device diagnostics
  • It says it has a child lock. What is it? And how does it works? Maybe I’m a child, this is why :slight_smile: ? Well but at least HA sees it as an inactive function.

Screenshot_20230220_220446
Screenshot_20230220_2204461021×1049 71.3 KB

Zigibee Coordinator

Connected via Zigbee Coordinator

"manufacturer": "Texas Instruments",
 "model": "CC2531, Z-Stack Home 1.2 (build 20190608)",
 "class": "zigpy_znp.zigbee.device.ZNPCoordinator"
  • Can it be a problem with it? Too old or not compatible? But I guess the switch should work just even without being assigned to any zigibee network.
  • ZHA discovers the smart plugs just easily and allows me to add them with no issues.

What?

  • So what I’m missing here? Again, my knowledge isn’t that great, but I have easy success onboard about 13 zigibee devices with not much of a hassle.
  • I would guess I will need to buy different ones but now I do have not much faith in choosing the right ones.
  • I don’t know if I need to flash devices to Tasmota or another type of firmware, as for my needs seems that I’m happy with this what I have so far. And that would add extra load to learn and make all work again.

Thank you for your reply.

2

I’m using the ones mentioned in his post: Recommendations Zigbee Smart Plug (UK) w/ Energy Monitoring - #36 by Rofo

They require zigbee2mqtt latest edge version or ZHA.

Child locks deactivate the physical button on the plug, Tasmota is MQTT communication over WiFi, you don’t flash Zigbee devices with Tasmota unless I suppose it has dual radios.

1 Like
3

I have a feeling you might have the older versions that keep tripping when the active voltage goes above 250. I can see in your screenshot you are very close at 248.

It was recommended you go for the 20amp versions which have newer firmware that solves this issue.
I believe you can re-flash yours with a fixed firmware version, but you’ll have to hunt around for instructions.

1 Like
4

After I sped reading this post related to smart plugs shutting down I really believe I’m also on the list of those who bought crap.

5

Thank you. seems that it is a problem in the device not in me, :))

6

You can easily check if this is what your problem is by looking at the history of your RMS voltage. Does it go over 250v ?

This is an example of mine:

image
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You can see that my electrical supply rarely goes over 245v, but depending on your country/location it can vary alot.

If you prove it is the voltage causing your drop outs, I’m pretty sure you can flash them with new firmware to fix it.