Zigbee – The Ongoing Sonoff and Electrorama Story

You may recall for a while I got fanatical about Zigbee – I’ve not lost interest – it’s just that by and large, Zigbee just WORKS – in particular, I have a load of Zigbee sensors around the house, mostly AQARA, mostly running on CR2032 batteries and the (rather short-range without repeaters) Zigbee network is nicely expanded by the use of the odd Zigbee mains-powered switch around the house, specifically Sonoff Zigbee DIY mains power controller and a couple of Sonoff ZBMINIs running house lights – as they are plugged in permanently, these extend the Zigbee mesh network to cover the whole house.

Initially I used the inexpensive, original Sonoff Zigbee dongle which worked well with a range of devices but which didn’t have the best antenna in the world. That prompted me, back in June 2021 to get an ElectroLama ZZH unit which uses a better chip (a TI CC2652R 2.4 GHz multi-protocol wireless microcontroller) and a better antenna to increase range and the number of units it can handle.

At that time, Sonoff were working on an improved model – some of us received samples – but they asked us to hang onto them as they made final improvements and mine just arrived. It is called the Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 Dongle Plus. With a working temperature of -10C to +40C it is just within range of temperatures likely to occur in my office here in Spain (I’ve seen the office go well past 30c if I go out in summer and forget to close the blinds).

Power consumption of the new Itead (Sonoff) unit is 100ma max at 5v (USB). In keeping with the name on the website, the dongle itself is marked (on the back) as ZBDongle-P and on the front as Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus – and comes with a detachable antenna. I use this with Zigbee2MQTT on Raspberry Pi 4.

So, first things first, solid aluminium construction – you would expect that to put the price up compare to the original. Four tiny screws hold the unit together so of course my first instinct was to pull it apart to see if the insides have changed. The price IS still reasonable – and Sonoff recommend a USB extension lead quite sensibly – even my ZZH “coordinator” does not work plugged directly into RPi4 due to interference so I have that on a 1M extension lead and it works a treat.

Gone is the original chip and Sonoff now use a combo of the TI CC2652P + CP2102N with a claimed 20dBm gain antenna (the aformentioned ZZH unit uses the SLIGHTLY different CC2652R chip). Despite the suffix variation, the upgrade should put the new Sonoff on a par with the ZZH – except that the ZZH isn’t as cheap as the Sonoff unit – if you are interested I suggest you compare the two – price variations may depend to some extent on where you live.

No doubt about it, the Sonoff is the prettier product with that substancial aluminium housing – which works best is yet to be seen – read on. Both of course work with ZIGBEE2MQTT (I have only come across one Zigbee 3.0 client priduct that DOESN’T work with Zigbee2MQTT – a cheap AliExpress light+temperature+humidity sensor).

October 2021 Update

The Sonoff unit should now be widely in stock and it is possible to upgrade the firmware using the free TI tool I used on the ZZH firmware upgrades, the performance of the ZZH being just fine after months of 24/7 use.

It seems that the Sonoff unit has issues pairing with sensors that the ZZH does not. Mat at NotEnoughTech has gone into this in depth, so that while the new Sonoff device SHOULD be much better than its precedessor partly due to the claimed gain of the new antenna, in reality the ZZH still wins out – neither of us have any axe to grind on this subject. The issues faced by the Sonoff unit are not limited to pairing sensors from other companies – the issues apply to their own products as well.

Because the software is community supported, Itead are relying on said community to help improve the situation. Meanwhile I’m sticking with my ZZH. As always however, Sonoff pricing remains very competitive – which is what brought the name to popularity in the first place and we can always hope that more upgrades will fix any issues. The Electrorama unit is almost 3 times the price – but just WORKS and has enabled me to experiment with countless Zigbee devices such as those featured here – without even thinking about pairing or other issues.

June 2023 Update

Just out of sheer apathy I have the ElectroRama ZZH unit running here (keep an eye out for updates, they now have newer units using Ethernet rather than USB – seems like a good move) – I had the Sonoff dongle working back in the UK before we changed UK houses (not yet set up the new house there properly though I have an RPI4 ready to go) – so the Sonoff unit is probably the better value. What IS IMPORTANT is to ensure you have an up to date Zigbee2MQTT – easy on the RPi (and probably other systems but I’ll stick with the Pi here).

# Stop Zigbee2MQTT and go to directory
sudo systemctl stop zigbee2mqtt
cd /opt/zigbee2mqtt

# Backup configuration
cp -R data data-backup

# Update
git pull
npm ci

# Restore configuration
cp -R data-backup/* data
rm -rf data-backup

# Start Zigbee2MQTT
sudo systemctl start zigbee2mqtt

Above, I’ve replicated only the upgrade code from the Zigbee2MQTT site – always refer to their site if in doubt. 7 drop-in lines of code you run as user pi – total time – a couple of minutes and you’re done – no need for a reboot. I needed to do this update just this week to make sure the new sensors (SNZB-01P button and SNZP-02P temperature/humidity) from Sonoff worked in Zigbee2MQTT (no joy until I did the update).