Multi-scene buttons are not new, especially Zigbee. I have one or two from Aqara but this new Zigbee “scene switch” has a couple of features worth noting. It runs on a CR2477 battery and has four actual buttons in the one round removable button, which simply magnetically mounts to the supplied standard wall switch plate. A key feature is that it will switch between eWeLink remote and Zigbee modes for those who prefer for example Zigbee2MQTT. Official launch was November 25, 2025.
In the past, I’ve used sensors and buttons by Sonoff and others which are a pain in the bum to remove the battery. In common with others, this unit has a “coin slot” to turn the base to remove it to get to the battery.
The orb has the same, but this time they’ve had the sense to put a little bump in the base, so you simply turn the button around in the base to remove the back. I like it already. You get a comprehensive manual, two standard mounting bolts for switch panels and an adhesive foam strip to put on the back to fasten the unit to the wall, so you don’t need any holes in the wall at all, if you don’t want to do that.
This is so new that right now I don’t actually have the price. I just hope it’s reasonably priced. Sonoff stuff normally is, as long as it works without using the eWLink app. I’ll be happy if I can use it with ZigBee2MQTT. Indeed there is a mode button inside, which I believe does just that.
The default is just Zigbee. So I’m now going to go and try looking up this device in my Zigbee2MQTT.
You could be forgiven for thinking is Peter being a bit premature? This is a brand-new device! Well, let’s see. I’ll look in Zigbee2MQTT and hit the join button and see what happens. Nothing as I forgot to pull out the travel insulation strip. Try again…
Inside is a Sonoff ZB-01M – and it is already fully supported!!
WELL that was easy – I tried pressing each button one at a time – Zigbee2MQTT reported “button 1 single” etc. The I tried double-press – “Button 1 double” – and finally holding the button in.. “Button 1 long” etc. Well, this is a surprise! Not only single and double but also triple press! I’m using early firmware when I use this. So when I hit triple press once and it did a double press after that all by itself. But I guess that’ll go away by the time you see this.
That’s it – a nice 4-button-in-one Zigbee wall mount switch. Not as slim as the Aqara equivalent again with up to 4 buttons – but then the Aqara version has rectangular buttons and doesn’t do triple press.
This is certainly not a criticism of Sonoff, but the only problem with wall-mounted buttons that are battery powered is they can’t have a dim light in the background which goes off when you press, because obviously that would consume too much power. But other than that, great!
You could of course choose to use these with the Sonoff APP but you’d need a Zigbee hub, presumably one of theirs – if you already have Home Assistant then you probably already have a Zigbee dongle or Ethernet Zigbee device – and thankfully it is my experience that Sonoff products are always supported in Zigbee2MQTT which is a readily available plug-in for Home Assistant as well as a stand-alone package.
As usual, only time will tell if this is any good in terms of battery life, but that is quite a substantial battery they have put in there, which probably accounts for some of the height.
I’ll stick the unit up on a wall somewhere in our new home at the end of the year, and leave it running. No doubt, I’ll update this blog in a year or so’s time and comment on battery life.
Just for reference I checked in Home Assistant to see if the device had magically appeared… yes.
And as for it’s “entities”…
I’m sure that’ll all become obvious in the course of time – I did see “Stepmode.Down”, “Stepmode.up” etc.
Couple of things before I go – the output states in Zigbee2MQTT were not entirely consistent.. but I’d imagine any time now an update will be coming through automatically…. Also, as well as being able to mount the button onto its rectangular wall plate, because the magnet is inside the button itself, you could also mount it on one of those cheap metal discs or squares that you get for car use with phones. You can usually get a pack of a dozen for 2 Euros or something from AliExpress, and I always keep a supply of those, so you could mount the unit on one of those if you wanted to.
