***SONOFF - WiFi Wireless Smart Switch***

Would you use a Sonoff..?

  • Total voters
    85
tekmunki

tekmunki

Active Member
These Sonoffs are amazing for the price once you reflash them with better firmware. I've got my tents all automated now with temp monitoring and inlet vents hooked to NodeMCU's (pretty much Sonoffs without the relays) with a servo that auto close at lights off and re-open at lights on to keep the temps under control during these cold months. The "brains" of the system is Home Assistant that I have to automate a few things around the house so I just added the Sonoffs as MQTT switches which gives you control over pretty much any timer scheme could want. With everything tied into Home Assistant you could do temperature based conditions or even sunrise/sunset triggers as it tracks all of that for you and keeps logs of everything.

To flash the Sonoffs to new firmware you don't even need to take them apart I did 8 Sonoff basics the other day in about 10 minutes all over wifi and they no longer need an external server everything is handled on my private network all through my web browser. If you have a spare tablet laying around I've seen people wall mount them with a charger and you have a simple control panel you can mount right in the grow room.

Broken down to get a setup like this you would need:
1x Raspberry Pi or a computer you keep running 24x7 to run HomeAssistant.io
Any # of Sonoffs to monitor/switch power.
Wi-Fi

Once this flower run is over and I'm able to get into the wiring of the tent I'll be hooking all the lights and fans up to the Sonoffs for control as well. Unfortunately, I got into the Sonoff game a bit late so I had all my wiring tucked away and with the plants taking up every inch it will be easier to get in there once I've harvested in a few weeks.

homeassistant1.jpg homeassistant2.jpg tasmota.jpg
 
tekmunki

tekmunki

Active Member
sethimus said:
be carefull with updating your sonoffs if you plan to flash them in the future:

"Besides, some users say that once updated the 1st Generation devices' firmware to 1.6.0, it's difficult to flash with their own firmware."
Click to expand...
Ya hopefully, they get this worked out with iTead but it is something to look out for. The 8 basics that I just flashed I ordered 2 weeks ago and they came with 1.5x version firmware and the QC sticker was dated 11/05 so if you're not on the 1.6 firmware I wouldn't update it via the app. The TH Sonoffs I have are safe up to the latest version as I had those updated to the most recent firmware before flashing Tasmota over it.
 
noodle-led

noodle-led

Well-Known Member
tekmunki said:
These Sonoffs are amazing for the price once you reflash them with better firmware. I've got my tents all automated now with temp monitoring and inlet vents hooked to NodeMCU's (pretty much Sonoffs without the relays) with a servo that auto close at lights off and re-open at lights on to keep the temps under control during these cold months.
Click to expand...
This is a pretty cool setup. I use the "KMC WiFi Smart Plug Mini Outlet" (@ $10 each) with the Sonoff-Tasmota firmware in my tent with the added bonus that these have power monitoring as well. Do you have a little more information about your vent servos? I already have my fan temperature controlled so it shuts down when it gets too cool, but being able to shut the tent up completely would be great.
 
bizfactory

bizfactory

Well-Known Member
p0opstlnksal0t said:
Can the sonoff switches use inputs from the th10 and th16?
Click to expand...
Yes absolutely, I have a TH16 with temp/humidity and use it turn on humidifier on or off. Turns on when it drops below 40% and off after it goes over 42%, all configurable of course. You can ALSO set a schedule along with the sensor values. So you could set it to 40-42% during lights on, but then turn off the whole unit once the lights go off.
 
S

sethimus

Well-Known Member
tekmunki said:
Ya hopefully, they get this worked out with iTead but it is something to look out for. The 8 basics that I just flashed I ordered 2 weeks ago and they came with 1.5x version firmware and the QC sticker was dated 11/05 so if you're not on the 1.6 firmware I wouldn't update it via the app. The TH Sonoffs I have are safe up to the latest version as I had those updated to the most recent firmware before flashing Tasmota over it.
Click to expand...
looks like that flashing problem only occurs if you try to flash the sonoff via sonOTA wirelessly, normal flashing over serial connection should be fine
 
InTheValley

InTheValley

Well-Known Member
sethimus said:
srsly? wtf?
Click to expand...
Yeah, I can tell you for a fact, seedlings wont grow around a strong wifi signal. I used to germ my seeds in a papertowel/ziplok bag, and used my laptop for the heat, they popped, but stopped growing as soon as they popped open. Had 10 all do it, on 3 different occasions, till i figured the wifi probably did them in, seeing temp never got warmer then 80F,

RF is powerful sht man,
 
Professor Plons

Professor Plons

Member
InTheValley said:
Yeah, I can tell you for a fact, seedlings wont grow around a strong wifi signal. I used to germ my seeds in a papertowel/ziplok bag, and used my laptop for the heat, they popped, but stopped growing as soon as they popped open. Had 10 all do it, on 3 different occasions, till i figured the wifi probably did them in, seeing temp never got warmer then 80F,

RF is powerful sht man,
Click to expand...
My home is all WiFi everywhere on different channels. I did several grows with an ESP8266 as controller and every seed grew beautyfull budds.
 
tekmunki

tekmunki

Active Member
noodle-led said:
This is a pretty cool setup. I use the "KMC WiFi Smart Plug Mini Outlet" (@ $10 each) with the Sonoff-Tasmota firmware in my tent with the added bonus that these have power monitoring as well. Do you have a little more information about your vent servos? I already have my fan temperature controlled so it shuts down when it gets too cool, but being able to shut the tent up completely would be great.
Click to expand...
Nothing fancy as I'm still prototyping it all out but they work surprisingly well being taped on I'm probably gonna try and get some type of bracket 3d printed and solder the NodeMCU in place on a more permanent board. The servos are TowerPro sg90's that I got off amazon for $8 for the pair and they handle the torque load with room to spare. I have a simple arduino sketch that takes a MQTT payload between 0 and 170 and moves the servo arm accordingly.
 
tekmunki

tekmunki

Active Member
noodle-led said:
This is a pretty cool setup. I use the "KMC WiFi Smart Plug Mini Outlet" (@ $10 each) with the Sonoff-Tasmota firmware in my tent with the added bonus that these have power monitoring as well. Do you have a little more information about your vent servos? I already have my fan temperature controlled so it shuts down when it gets too cool, but being able to shut the tent up completely would be great.
Click to expand...
Here's a video link I couldn't attach last post guess I need to lurk less https://gfycat.com/ScaryEnchantingKitty
 
Randomblame

Randomblame

Well-Known Member
bizfactory said:
yo @tekmunki! Just flashed a sonoff basic. I had read you couldn't flash OTA with the stock firmware but your post was the kick in the butt I needed! Working on installing homeassistant.io right now. Thanks dude!

For anyone that wants to try the OTA flash on pre 1.6 devices, this is what we used: https://github.com/mirko/SonOTA
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link, mate!

Another device running a custom firmware ?! Can not count how many phones I've flashed in the past, LOL!
Thankfully, it seems a bit easier than rooting a phone and installing a custom rom(I'm a longtime member of xda.developers)
Is there another firmware for the Sonoff POW or is it(Tasmota) the same for all Sonoffs?
Makes much more sense to me to run the Sonoffs on its own home server. Feels safer when the things work completely without internet connection. I've 2 Sonoff Dual and a POW and be interested to flash both with a custom firmware if possible?
Many thanks and long live the community!
 
tekmunki

tekmunki

Active Member
The nice thing about Tasmota is they code it to be able to run on all of the available Sonoffs so the default firmware bundled with SonOTA will work fine for the POW and Dual. I like to compile the firmware and replace all the defaults with my network info so I can just do a batch of Sonoffs at a time and have them all set up on first boot, but that's entirely optional as all the settings can be modified from the web interface after flashing.
 
Randomblame

Randomblame

Well-Known Member
Excellent! Thank you!
That means, when I've successfully flashed the firmware I just need a Raspberry pi + HDD running homeassistant.io?
And I make all the settings via a browser window or via the welink app?
 
tekmunki

tekmunki

Active Member
Randomblame said:
Excellent! Thank you!
That means, when I've successfully flashed the firmware I just need a Raspberry pi + HDD running homeassistant.io?
And I make all the settings via a browser window or via the welink app?
Click to expand...
Once you've reflashed the Sonoff it won't work with or need the welink app. Homeassistant is a little more complex setting up learning all the syntax and how to modify the config files. A good place to start would be https://home-assistant.io/blog/2017/07/25/introducing-hassio/ and then there a few good youtubers that go over more in-depth configs like BruhAutomation and DrZZZ if you can handle the editing. If you're trying to just set it up to control the Sonoffs that's pretty straightforward and I can share some of my configs to get you started if you want. Oh and for the Raspberry Pi no HDD is needed as it uses the SD card as the hard drive.
 
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