Sonoff Mini with Tasmota versus the competition

You can’t get away from it, the iTead products are inexpensive – and sometimes that is very important. But are they the best solution for Home Control? Well, that depends… I think they are very good… Sonoff products have always been inexpensive. But bear with me.

At one time the company had a seemingly unbeatable grip on the DIY end of home control – their products which are usually based on the the ESP8266 include Sonoff BASIC and many others. The BASIC is lomited to basic on-off control, less than £5 sterling gets you a simple WIFI controller with button. Today there is some competition depending on your wallet and how much you want to spend on controlling a light.

Of course many of us are averse to using even more Chinese “cloud” or even more APPS – not in my case for political reasons but because I am a happy Raspberry Pi/Node-Red user – and I want to keep my home control working as much as possible even if the WIFI goes off – you can mitigate power issues by using battery backup, generators and other solutions but if your entire control system is cloud-based, what do you do if the Internet service provider screws up?

Every IOT company seems to think you should use THEIR APP… I already have lots of different apps for my various watches – I don’t want any more for my home control thank you. Which brings us back on topic – Sonoffs. Sonoffs were the smallest and lightest cheap control box until along came Shelly. But on cost, Sonoff still have the edge by some way – and on size, well, the new Sonoff Mini competes there as well.

Shelly made some smart moves however – MQTT support and a nice user interface. Sonoff Mini has DIY mode and as I just found out that kind of works – though it needs fixing up. Cutting to the chase, this page has good info on using Sonoff Mini in DIY mode and within that is the Windows tool you need to set these units up in DIY mode. If you are interested – here is some official API information on Sonoff DIY mode. Here also is their new video on DIY mode, discussing Sonoff Mini, Sonoff Basic R3 and RFR3.

So, grab a Sonoff Mini (not as cheap as Sonoff Basic but smaller). After wasting hours following the WRONG info I got hold of the links above. The initial issue I had was this – often this kind of board has a user interface i.e. built in with a web server for initial setup – Sonoff Mini doesn’t.

Instead, they expect you to set up a router (or your mobile phone hotspot) with a specific SSID and password. That floored me initially as I was expecting to find that hotspot within the device itself. I took the approach of temporarily renaming one of my WIFI access points.

WiFi SSID: sonoffDiy
WiFi password: 20170618sn

So firstly I did the above, then turned on the un-altered Sonoff Mini – and used the EWELINK App on my phone to set the Mini to work with that access point. I then set the Mini to work with my normal access point. Easy up to now. Using the APP I upgraded the firmware of the Mini to v3.50 – you HAVE to do this as the stock software that likely came with the unit (v3.0.0) doesn’t support the DIY mode.

Next I turned off the device, opened it up (no screwdriver needed) and fitted the supplied “DIY” link to the two OTA pins inside – clearly marked. I put the top back on.

The instructions refer to a single flashing LED meaning you do NOT have a WIFI connection – a double flashing LED means you DO. I turned on the Mini and sure enough, I DIDN’T. WHY? Well, despite the really poor translations I eventually twigged that when you change modes to and from DIY mode and normal CLOUD mode, you lose any custom WIFI settings. Right, back to the special access point.

NOW I was COOKING. I grabbed the EXE program in the link above but frankly it is just not very good. Glaring problems (renaming the device doesn’t work, the popup dialog is faulty, changing access point options don’t show you the EXISTING access point etc. I changed the name of the Mini from the utterly useless default to myfirstmini. I also set up my normal WiFi access point.

Sonoff Mini DIY does not support MQTT natively, but it DOES have an API on port 8081 and if you get stuck into THIS page, you can supposedly easily make use of it. I had no joy. Strangely as a devout MQTT user I just recently spoke to my SHELLY 1 using ITS API – if you are a Node-Red user, that’s a lot easier than it seems. Essentially using the HTTP REQUEST node is a doodle.

Thats the yellow one above. I’m controlling a relay on my heating system with simple on off commands and THIS is the setup inside of that node.

In the Shelly I simply fire into that node a payload of “turn=on” or “turn=off”. Easy once you know how. I can also read the output of that node to see what came back… String(msg.payload.ison)

But that’s Shelly .

Thankfully what the otherwise poor Sonoff tool DOES manage is to let you flash the likes of Tasmota and Espurna – I’ve used both and I have to say, at least for the Sonoffs – for me, Tasmota wins. When I originally wrote this article I flashed Espurna onto the Mini – but since then Tasmota has come along in leaps and bounds and is now my standard go-to.

I tried the Sonoff DIY software but it simply isn’t rock solid and so eventually I pulled out the soldering iton. Wiring to the 5 pins on the Mini isn’t that hard if you take care. Using a bog-standard TFDI and TASMOTIZER on the PC, I flashed the online TASMOTA-LITE.BIN straight onto the board.

And there it is. Make sure you use 3v3 and not 5v. You need a fine soldering tip and steady hand for this but it is no-where near as hard as trying to solder, for example, an ESP8266 chip. To FLASH the board, before powering up, CAREFULLY ground the PRG pin (In the image below it says GPIO – I meant GPIO0). Once done programming – release that pin. In fact I took the lot off, put the unit back in the box, fired mains power at it and on my phone the familiar access point popped up and I then told the board (192.168.4.1 in my phone browser – configuration tab – no need to change module settings – jump straight to WIFI ) about my local access point on my network, then fed in MQTT details and that was that.

Actually some interesting stuff from the Tasmota site.

I’m sure we can find a use for the second input (on the connector) not to mention GPIO2, GPIO3, GPIO16 (output only)….