In today’s postbag, a new Sonoff Zigbee smartplug – S60ZBTPF type F/E – so an EU plug… nothing special to look at – just an EU-fitting Zigbee 3.0 smartplug with no lights anywhere – not on the manual on-off button, not around the frame… for testing you can just hear the relay when pressing the manual button.
I took the smartplug out of the box, plugged it into 220v mains – and went to my Zigbee2MQTT panel inside Home Assistant… and told that to look for new devices (Permit join (all).
Seconds later the usual incomprehensively long number popped up and the device was also identified as an S60ZBTPF – so – I renamed it and updated the Home Assistant entity ID as below.
All very straightforward in the Zigbee2MQTT web panel once you’ve done this a couple of times.
Of course I could have paired the smartplug with the eWeLink APP but I tend to use Zigbee2MQTT for pretty much all supported devices – good that this is supported already as the device is new. The only things apparently exposed are power on/off and powerup state.
I’ve had issues with some Zigbee lights (which I returned to AliExpress) not powering up in the state I set – so I set the smartplug to power up to “previous” meaning the state it was in before a power cycle.
I plugged in a standard bulb into the smartplug and the light was ON, so I disconnected the smartplug from the mains and reconnected… the light was still on. I turned off the smartplug and repeated the operation. This time OFF. Exactly as it should be.
Nothing else – that seemed to be it… a straight forward energy monitoring smartplug. Now, on the box is the ability to overview energy use, inching and other modes but at least for now these do not appear in Zigbee2MQTT.
HOWEVER when I went to Home Assistant, I noted sensors for current, power, “summation delivered” and voltage. I turned the 9w light on and sure enough – 9W consumption.
Current showed up as 0.1A but then the accuracy at that wattage I would not expect to be high. At 248v it should be nearer 0.04A
Overall provided the device is reasonably priced – fair enough. I have several other Sonff Smartplugs and they all seem to work well. Maximum load on the box – 4000W. The “Inching” support clearly comes with eWeLink – as no mention of it in my Home Assistant config.
Next: The Sonoff SNZB-02LD and SNZB-02WD. The former has an external sensor (waterproof stainless with a dallas chip hence supporting temperature only – the latter does temperature an humidity. Both look substancial and waterproof and use a CR2477 battery. Both come with a lanyard.
The SNZB-02WD went straight into Zigbee2MQTT and though claiming unsupported, battery, temperature, humidity and link quality all showed up. In Home Assistant the entities showed up no problem.
For the SNZB-02LD I had to venture inside the battery compartment to find a small black (dark) hole – and insert a pin. It turns out behind the hole is a reset pin – I left it pressed for 5 seconds then initiated the JOIN.
The cable for the temperature sensor is white, like the casing and at first glance is over a metre long – handy for pools or even the bath, really.
After that all was ok. This device shows battery and temperature in Home Assistant.
Incidentally after leaving the two sensors lying on my bench next to each other for 15 minutes or so , the temperature readings were identical – that’s good.
I’m hoping these larger CR2477 batteries give the units more running hours between replacement batteries – I seem to be replacing CR2032 batteries in my Aqara sensors far too often.
