Cheap Sonoff-lookalike BASICs and Aubess Zigbee

No doubt I’m not the only one, despite being a long-term Sonoff BASIC user, who’s noticed that AliExpress and Temu have what look like cheap Sonoff knock-offs running as low on Temu as €2.00 on special offer and not much more on AlieExpress. Good deal?

Well, for the sake of it I bought two different kinds – all look the same externally – just like a Sonoff BASIC (well, almost – for one thing, live and neutral are superimposed compared to genuine Sonoff BASICs – for no good reason that I can see ). This article written in November 2023 with January 2024 update section at the end.

They do indeed look like un-branded Sonoff BASICS on the outside – and the good news is that both kinds I bought are based on ESP8285 – so at least in theory – they should be able to Tasmotize if you’re not keen on running them on the cloud-based SMARTLIFE APP – I’m even less cloud-keen now than I was last week having had some WiFi dropouts recently which of course immediately rendered Alexa and my Google Home Hub useless.

Anyway with Tasmota you don’t have to worry about any clouds – all local. But therein lies the rub: one of my three units uses an ESP module, vertically mounted – and what looks like an extremely basic main supply. But the worse part is, it has no PCB pin markings and no holes/pads to program up the ESP module.

The other units are identical to each other and the ESP mounted on the underside and do have some breakout pads – no holes, but again no markings – so figuring out how to connect to gnd, 3v, rx, tx, gnd and GPIO0 looks at first glance like it is probably not worth the hassle.

Update after a few days off to solve my broadband issues:

These are fine if you don’t mind cloud control of basic on-off – but for example: I thought I’d use these in a pair of bathroom lights (same switch) and have the lights under normal control but turn off after a while (timeout) as both my wife and I regularly forget to turn them off. SIMPLES – just set a time-out and have them default to ON on powerup. So they light the lamps when you switch them on and after, say, 15 minutes turn off – but NO – there’s no time-out and no ability to default to ON.

Even using a Smartlife SCENE you can’t do it – SO unless I could figure out a simple way to Tasmotise these which I just did – it was going to be the BIN for them. Such functionality and beyond is bog-standard in Tasmota.

Simply set them to default after power cycling to ON – and instigate the timeout of your choice. If only these companies weren’t so intent on trapping you into using Smartlife… at least Sonoff make the pins accessible on some of their boards for Tasmota etc. flashing.

Later: I’ve done it for you… That photo top right above – starting on the right and moving left – the round pads – ground, nothing, GPIO0 (ground when powering up to program), RX on your FTDI ,TX on your FTDI, VCC. For Tasmota configuration – GPIO12 is relay, GPIO5 is the button (that’s NOTHING like Sonoff BASIC which uses GPIO0 for button AND programming) and GPIO1 LED (LEDi – so you get the blue light for comms AND to indicate that the relay is on).

You have to wonder why they’d use a comms GPIO pin when there are plenty of GPIOs available to do the job (though I’m rather pleased that they DIDN’T use GPIO0 for the button). I could not figure out how to get to another pin for a temperature chip – so we’re just looking at a basic Tasmota relay output only – but that’ll do me.

I can set this board to default to power up and to time-out after say 15 minutes, all in Tasmota – which means where I have a wall switch that’s impossible to get into – I’ll use the wall switch for on/off but hide one of these boards where each of my two bathroom lights are.. and have the lights time-out after 15 minutes (bathroom – keep forgetting to turn the lights out) and all for under €2 each on special (depending on when you buy) .

For my uses: command POWERONSTATE 1 to ensure the device is ON when powered up – and PULSETIME 1000 for 15 minutes (900 + mandatory 100 offset)

And the last of these three – the one which has the ESP8255 module – not as hard as it looked to solder: only GPIO0 was tricky (programming) – a gold circle on the module as against one of it’s connectors..

On this final board, again GPIO12 = relay – but the LED (LEDi option) is on GPIO4 (and VERY bright blue). The button is on GPIO13. You’d never think Sonoff did this all years ago, setting the standard – though to be honest unless you want to re-program – I prefer the button NOT to be usable for programming – that could always lead to accidents happening.

Subtle indicator light? Erm, no.

But in general, how hard can it be to have a single standard for which GPIOs to use for a straight-forward power switch?

Red power, green gnd, blue rx, yellow tx, and that purple circle is the programming pin GPIO0

So basically all you have to do is ensure the device is ESPxx based and there will be a way – and for clarify – November 2023 – no – Tuya-convert does NOT work with these or similar devices otherwise I’d not have gone through all this. I had to prove that one way or another that I could get them running offline – and I wanted the timing features which you just don’t get on cheap Tuya devices yet which are common in Tasmota. It might of course have been easier just to spend extra and buy previous-model Sonoff BASICS which have the pins clearly marked and a spare GPIO pin (GPIO2) for anything extra you may care to add like a DS18B20.

So then, I bought a cheap AliExpress Aubess DIY Smart Switch – 16A, Zigbee 3.0 – no part number anywhere – which is annoying.

I connected the Aubess to the mains and long-pressed the button on the underside until a blue light started flashing and… could this continue my lucky day?

I went to my Zigbee2MQTT web page and told it to accept devices. Sure enough this Tuya unit is recognised.

Short-pressing the button on the underside of the unit turns on the relay (and a blue light again on the underside). I renamed the unit from it’s unfriendly long Zigbee ID to “aubess-1”.

The button can be set to toggle, state or momentary and the unit has the choice to powerup off, on or last state. That”s pretty much it and it’s all I’d expect from a dirt cheap controller.

One caviat – the two connectors S1 and S2 – for replacing a real switch – I found when messing about with a wire across them (don’t do this at home) that quickly repeated sequential presses put the Aubess unit back into pairing mode… why when you have a pairing button underneath? I sometimes wonder about designers.

Back to my bathroom now, I wish I’d bought two of these Aubess units when the Temu sales were on. As I have this unit running under Zigbee2MQTT, it is easy to add the functionality I need (not stand-alone but then not cloud-dependent either).

Update January 17 2024

I’ve done it again – an AliExpress offer – I got three of the Tuya (Sonoff Basic Lookalike) units above (right photo – chip onboard, not on a module) for €1.79 each – and yes they included and achieved 5-day delivery to rural Spain.

Again – I connected an FTDI (I’m using a cheap one which cost just a few Euros and has a USB-C as against microUSB connector) – shown below – only ground and 3v3 connected at this point after initial Tasmota flashing (using the Tasmota online flasher and the RXD and TXD wires for flashing), I’ve now entered my WiFi access point – next – the pin assignments – as previously:

Because of the pins they used, I’ve made sure after initial flashing, only 3v3 and ground are still connected to the module while I do Tasmota pin assignments). Again GPIO12 is relay, GPIO5 is button, GPIO1 is LEDi. Weird – but hey, it works.

They couldn’t use fewer power components if they tried – but note – at least once again they have decent track spacing and wide tracks on the underside.

Note the lower thick track (photo on right) is neutral (in and out) and the upper thick track is live to the output (from the relay) on the right.

Once again the no-hole pads for (right to left) ground, nothing, GPIO0 (grounded when powering up to do initial flashing only), RXD on your FTDI ,TXD on the FTDI, VCC in that order.

Ok, I know, for enthusuasts with time on their hands.. but the whole operation including soldering the FTDI leads to the board, flashing, unsoldering and getting to the Tasmota console took all of a few minutes the second time around. Again the standard 10A 250v relay (absolute maximum non-inductive load, I tend to stick well below that).

So with the WiFi set up using my phone browser, as usual I went over to the PC, set the Tasmota module as a generic(18) to give me access to all 8266 pins, you can see the assignments I put in on the left.

After checking and giving the board a name under settings – WiFi and settings – other then adding that name and going to MQTT settings under settings – mqtt, I then disconnected the power wires from the module and put it back in it’s box. I could have also enabled Alexa capability at this point (configuration – other – tick Belkin WEMO).

I’ve used a Tasmota SETOPTION in the console to show the IP address (handy) in the console so53 1 and also so65 1 to stop the unit from resetting after multiple power failures (that happens a lot in rural Southern Spain).

Of course if one wanted to use these boards in a timer situation where a hall light once turned on would go off all by itself in say for example, an hour – adding 100 to a pulsetime in seconds would give the desired effect. Again in the console: pulsetime 3700. Timed events are also easy – all locally with no server and no cloud. The whole thing can be set up on a mobile phone though I find it easier once the WiFi is up, to use a PC browser instead of a phone browser.

To take one of these boards after setup to a different local WiFi, all that’s needed to revert for a few seconds to the local AP is to press the button 6 times in quick succession. Checking mobile phone will show the AP is available with whatever name was assigned. Once the phone is connected to 192.168.4.1 a new local AP can be assigned.

Voila, another dirt cheap local access only mains controller, bearing in mind, because I choose to control these devices from a single Raspberry Pi or my PC, external access without using any kind of Tuya cloud is still easy via TailScale VPN (I’ve covered that in another blog entry).

At this point I expect the odd “Home Assistant” comment. I don’t want to use Home Assistant as I’m happy with Node-Red-Dashboard. Is this a good time to mention that Dashboard 2.0 (a complete redesign) has just been released as v1. 0 – I’ll be looking into that real soon.

Finally – a comparison with the new Sonoff BASIC 4 unit.. the latter uses an ESP32 hence has an internal overheat sensor – and works with MATTER (though once converted to Tasmota I’m still not able to get MATTER working with the Sonoff unit) but other than that – judge for yourself (photo below)..

On the surface of it, you have less control over button use on the Tasmota-converted version than you do on the original Tuya – but the simplest delving into tasmota COMMANDS will show that this is not the case.

As an added bonus – see this article on running these Sonoff BASIC look-alikes on 12v instead of high voltage. I can only vouch for the units I received.

End of update