Any experience with Sonoff stuff?

[kck]

Happened upon the Sonoff line of products.  Very inexpensive Chinese switches and the like that operate over WiFi.  Curious if any folks here have much experience with them.  Looks like they can be easily flashed with open source firmware to be more generally useful than with what they come with.  Their pricing looks pretty compelling for a bunch of things.  I ordered a couple of items to play with (sensor on/off and a power monitoring switch) but wondered about other folks experience.  Only one hit searching the forums and that was incidental to their utility.

[Teken]

Happened upon the Sonoff line of products.  Very inexpensive Chinese switches and the like that operate over WiFi.  Curious if any folks here have much experience with them.  Looks like they can be easily flashed with open source firmware to be more generally useful than with what they come with.  Their pricing looks pretty compelling for a bunch of things.  I ordered a couple of items to play with (sensor on/off and a power monitoring switch) but wondered about other folks experience.  Only one hit searching the forums and that was incidental to their utility.

 

I came really close to buying a few of their products until there was a massive recall for units lighting on fire. Based on forum posts the vendor has been quick to address this issue and halted production early this year. I was eager to test out their temperature and humidity sensor and the energy monitor. The only thing holding me back was the connection to their cloud hosted services which had direct access to user name, password, and access.

 

I haven't seen or heard of anyone having security breaches with this vendor at all but this does raise the hairs in the back of my neck. Please do circle back as to what you plan to do and how the DIY project goes as I would love to see a first hand review from someone I trust. 

[kck]

I am also no fan of required cloud operation.  I don't mind if there are optional features that can be enabled for a product if I choose to connect to the cloud but I want things to operate acceptably in a local only manner.  First off, it is possible for the Internet access to go down.  Second, I bought the thing and I don't want it to fail just because the company that sold it decided to stop supporting it or goes bankrupt.  There have been too many instances of stuff like that happening.  I'm also concerned that I get to decide from a privacy and security point of view what I put in the cloud (your point).  What attracted me to the Sonoff stuff is that you can pretty easily reload them with local Arduino based code that does not depend on anything non-local.  So I figured getting a couple to play with was a cheap bit of fun for the rainy days of my retirement when I'm too wimpy to his the golf course.

[Teken]

I am also no fan of required cloud operation. I don't mind if there are optional features that can be enabled for a product if I choose to connect to the cloud but I want things to operate acceptably in a local only manner. First off, it is possible for the Internet access to go down. Second, I bought the thing and I don't want it to fail just because the company that sold it decided to stop supporting it or goes bankrupt. There have been too many instances of stuff like that happening. I'm also concerned that I get to decide from a privacy and security point of view what I put in the cloud (your point). What attracted me to the Sonoff stuff is that you can pretty easily reload them with local Arduino based code that does not depend on anything non-local. So I figured getting a couple to play with was a cheap bit of fun for the rainy days of my retirement when I'm too wimpy to his the golf course.

Kevin,

 

I wasn't aware the 3rd party firmware allowed local only control without the cloud?!? You have my full undivided attention!!!

 

Does that 3rd party firmware still allow the mobile application to operate or is this control via open API? I would be very eager to learn if this device could be integrated with the ISY Series Controller.

 

Perhaps a node server??

[kck]

Here's a link to what seems to be the most popular 3rd party firmware:  https://github.com/arendst/Sonoff-Tasmota/wiki but there are some others.  It basically seems to make the Sonoff stuff MQTT compatible which means working with things like OpenHAB, Node-Red, and Home Assistant.  So while I think it would take some work, it should be possible to bridge to the ISY stuff.  I don't know enough at this point to know how hard or the best way to do that but it is open enough that I don't see an obstacle.  You give up Sonoff's mobile app but any mobile app that supports MQTT should work instead and I know that there are such apps for at least OpenHAB.  My query here was in part to see what any of our very knowledgeable colleagues here might already know.  Given their price points ($US5 to $US10) and functionality (WiFi, 433MHz connectivity options, mains and low voltage options, etc.) they seemed worth looking at.  The basic model isn't much larger than an Insteon Micro (actually narrower but a bit longer) so they might find use in places where a micro switch would go at a small fraction of the cost.

[Teken]

Here's a link to what seems to be the most popular 3rd party firmware:  https://github.com/arendst/Sonoff-Tasmota/wiki but there are some others.  It basically seems to make the Sonoff stuff MQTT compatible which means working with things like OpenHAB, Node-Red, and Home Assistant.  So while I think it would take some work, it should be possible to bridge to the ISY stuff.  I don't know enough at this point to know how hard or the best way to do that but it is open enough that I don't see an obstacle.  You give up Sonoff's mobile app but any mobile app that supports MQTT should work instead and I know that there are such apps for at least OpenHAB.  My query here was in part to see what any of our very knowledgeable colleagues here might already know.  Given their price points ($US5 to $US10) and functionality (WiFi, 433MHz connectivity options, mains and low voltage options, etc.) they seemed worth looking at.  The basic model isn't much larger than an Insteon Micro (actually narrower but a bit longer) so they might find use in places where a micro switch would go at a small fraction of the cost.

 

Kevin,

 

Thanks for that information . . .

 

As noted I was really interested in the temperature & humidity sensor module they offer. I thought it would be (literally) the cheapest integrated solution I could deploy for my two bathrooms and basement.

 

Please do follow up and circle back with the group as to your progress in this!

[G W]

I am also no fan of required cloud operation. I don't mind if there are optional features that can be enabled for a product if I choose to connect to the cloud but I want things to operate acceptably in a local only manner. First off, it is possible for the Internet access to go down. Second, I bought the thing and I don't want it to fail just because the company that sold it decided to stop supporting it or goes bankrupt. There have been too many instances of stuff like that happening. I'm also concerned that I get to decide from a privacy and security point of view what I put in the cloud (your point). What attracted me to the Sonoff stuff is that you can pretty easily reload them with local Arduino based code that does not depend on anything non-local. So I figured getting a couple to play with was a cheap bit of fun for the rainy days of my retirement when I'm too wimpy to his the golf course.

I bought a couple of the switches to play with and ended up using an Annikken Andee Arduino device to control them. They are pretty nice but I didn't have a use for them other than playing.

 

They are nice concept and easy to reprogram. Someday I may actually buy more and find a good use for them.

[Mustang65]

If you are looking at activating relays or monitoring things like temp/humidity/pressure/water levels/soil moisture/sunlight.... try using the nodemcu esp8266 microcontroller (Wi-Fi). It uses the Arduino IDE to program it, and there is plenty of code out there (cut/paste) to meet your needs. See the link below for an example. You can have a temp/humidity sensor up and running in less than an hour. I have a stand-alone home network (not ALWAYS connected to the internet) for these microcontrollers. You can add a basic ID/password routine to them. I have one that is used for 16 relays which I use to reboot each of my older security cameras as needed. Also monitor city water pressure, hot water temp.  This stand alone network does have access to the internet, and is activated throuh an X10 low voltage switch that activates a relay and connects the network to my router. Need to switch that over to ISY994 system. You can also program in a data-logger if you need to. I am still working on the data-logger with a Raspberry Pi to display the ESP8266 output via HDMI on my media center TV. I will just have to select HDMI 4 on the TV and the data will be displayed along with the other sensor outputs. If you want a video go to youtube and search "nodemcu esp8266 HDT11"

 

It creates its own webpage.. just enter the local IP address into the browser and it displays the information.

 

http://www.instructables.com/id/Interface-DHT11-Humidity-Sensor-Using-NodeMCU/

 

http://www.instructables.com/id/Ethernet-Switching-with-Arduino/

I started with this project for my 16 relays

 

Even a non programmer can get this up and running

 

Just a thought

[dogla]

On 12/15/2017 at 2:03 AM, kck said:

Here's a link to what seems to be the most popular 3rd party firmware:  https://github.com/arendst/Sonoff-Tasmota/wiki but there are some others.  It basically seems to make the Sonoff stuff MQTT compatible which means working with things like OpenHAB, Node-Red, and Home Assistant.  So while I think it would take some work, it should be possible to bridge to the ISY stuff.  I don't know enough at this point to know how hard or the best way to do that but it is open enough that I don't see an obstacle.  You give up Sonoff's mobile app but any mobile app that supports MQTT should work instead and I know that there are such apps for at least OpenHAB.  My query here was in part to see what any of our very knowledgeable colleagues here might already know.  Given their price points ($US5 to $US10) and functionality (WiFi, 433MHz connectivity options, mains and low voltage options, etc.) they seemed worth looking at.  The basic model isn't much larger than an Insteon Micro (actually narrower but a bit longer) so they might find use in places where a micro switch would go at a small fraction of the cost.

After flashing Tasmota firmware I'm able to control my sonoff also from ISY (turn on and off) within the network resources configuration. Although I'm not able to query the status through ISY I can turn it on and off now. Now how can I add them to programs? bc network resources don't appear in the list when configuring a program...

[Bumbershoot]

In the "Then" stanza, under the "Action" window, select "Networking | Resource | Your Network Resource".  See screenshot.

[xtalker]

I know this is an old thread, but perhaps someone is still listening!

I have an ISY, Home Assistant, and almost as many Sonoff devices (all running Tasmota) as I do Insteon devices.  I'm wondering where to go from here!  The price and reliability of the Sonoffs is very hard to beat, I really can't imagine buying more Insteon devices at this point.

The ISY is well integrated into Home Assistant and that works very well. The problem is that I want to program all these devices with the oh-so reliable ISY and NOT with Home Assistant "automations" (which I find klunky, unintuitive and difficult).   I can only control the Sonoffs with the ISY using REST commands (as mentioned above), of course, this only offers one way control.  The ISY has no clue about the state of the Sonoffs which really limits programming.

In my scenario, Home Assistant is important because it can talk to many devices/services that ISY just can't and it has a very powerful and configurable user interface.

It would seem to me that if the ISY could talk MQTT to the Sonoffs, all would be perfect!  I know that this may be possible using UDI's Polyglot server, but I'm reluctant to add yet another fragile dedicated RasPi server into my scheme.

So any thoughts on this?  Has anyone solved this conundrum?  Any experience with ISY, Sonoffs and the Polyglot server?  There could be something basic I could be missing here, if so please let me know!

Thanks, Bob

[KSchex]

1 hour ago, xtalker said:

I know this is an old thread, but perhaps someone is still listening!

I have an ISY, Home Assistant, and almost as many Sonoff devices (all running Tasmota) as I do Insteon devices.  I'm wondering where to go from here!  The price and reliability of the Sonoffs is very hard to beat, I really can't imagine buying more Insteon devices at this point.

The ISY is well integrated into Home Assistant and that works very well. The problem is that I want to program all these devices with the oh-so reliable ISY and NOT with Home Assistant "automations" (which I find klunky, unintuitive and difficult).   I can only control the Sonoffs with the ISY using REST commands (as mentioned above), of course, this only offers one way control.  The ISY has no clue about the state of the Sonoffs which really limits programming.

In my scenario, Home Assistant is important because it can talk to many devices/services that ISY just can't and it has a very powerful and configurable user interface.

It would seem to me that if the ISY could talk MQTT to the Sonoffs, all would be perfect!  I know that this may be possible using UDI's Polyglot server, but I'm reluctant to add yet another fragile dedicated RasPi server into my scheme.

So any thoughts on this?  Has anyone solved this conundrum?  Any experience with ISY, Sonoffs and the Polyglot server?  There could be something basic I could be missing here, if so please let me know!

Thanks, Bob

Don't know if this helps but Jonathan Oxer at Superhouse  https://www.superhouse.tv/ has a three or so VLOGs on Sonoffs.  Good luck..

[xtalker]

Interesting site!  I'm pretty good with the Sonoffs and Home Assistant. 

I've been a long time ISY user but might be tempted to switch if there was a programmable Insteon and MQTT controller out there someplace, anyone heard of such a thing?

[roopesh]

@xtalker you mean this? https://github.com/TD22057/insteon-mqtt