Full Sonoff device support

Hi
I wanted to ask the community and the developers if there will ever be "standard" support for the vast Sonoff range. I find it very strange that these well made devices which can be flashed with other firmware are not natively supported by the Hubitat? They almost have a switch or device for every scenario. Maybe the developers could look into supporting the Sonoff ecosystem natively.

Sorry just a request.

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I don't have any sonoff devices myself but from what I understand is that you can just sent http calls to them because they have a API endpoint built in. Http calls can be made from within rule machine. So in fact Hubitat does support them. Source: https://blog.ipsumdomus.com/sonoff-switch-complete-hack-without-firmware-upgrade-1b2d6632c01

I think part of the answer to your question lies within your statement above. Since the Sonoff devices do not really have a standard firmware that 100% of these devices run, it is very difficult for any home automation platform to try and support these devices natively. What would work for one user would not work for another user. There are multiple community developed integrations for Sonoff devices. I would suggest you take a look at these and pick the one that aligns best with your requirements.

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I guess what you are really asking for is support for Tasmota, ESPurna etc.

Hi Ogiewon and at9

Yes what at9 says, we don't need every firmware supported, but it would be great if say for example Hubitat says "To connect any of the Sonoff devices this is the version of Tasmota you need to flash your devices with", then if you want to use them flash with that version and then they only have to maintain that "firmware" for the Sonoff devices.

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Well the new sonoff zigbee switches are maybe supported naively...thus Itead made some weird zigbee protocol.

Those devices can't be flashed with Tasmota because they don't have ESP8266 chips in them. They have zigbee chips in them. And anything zigbee can work with hubitat if you know how to write the driver.

I think that would be endorsing a hacker's method for using a device off of the use intended by the manufacturer which I don't think Hubitat would want to endorse. Plus, it's not a very user-friendly method for integrating a new device. Can you imagine the number of support emails that Hubitat would receive from new users unable to flash Tasmota onto their sonoff's? It would be unfeasible for them to help users do that. That's not what they do. Devices have to come to the table working or not working. And sonoff's don't work out of the box to connect to anything except the ewink app.

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Hi Ryan780

If the Sonoff manufacturers wanted to stop people changing the firmware they would have by now. They even sell the Sonoff basic with a jumper you move to enter flash mode. I agree with you with regards to the flashing, but there must be at least 20 video's on you tube on how to flash the Sonoff devices. So they could just link to those and people would learn. I think the vast majority of people who are going to buy the HE are tinkerers anyway and most would probably be able to flash the devices. I just think that at the price point these come in at they are well worth getting support from HE.

Just use the Community supported drivers. As @ogiewon pointed out there are several. HE will not directly support this. It is just potentially too flakey.

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That is the problem. Support from Hubitat. Why would Hubitat want to support users flashing Sonoff Basics? Plus, the devices aren't even UL listed for in-wall installations. I just don't see the Hubitat team devoting any time to building an implementation for this device. Nor would I want them to waste their time doing so. We already have several implementation that are working perfectly without causing any hub slow-downs. Name's, @ericm's great driver/firmware (the new Tasmota one). No app required and local changes are captured by Hubitat. No muss, no fuss. What more do you want?

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This maybe of use if you have a MQTT broker.
https://community.hubitat.com/t/release-sonoff-tasmota-intergration-via-mqtt/23458

Again, I would consider any MQTT solution to not be fully integrated with Hubitat since it requires another system to control them. The firmware method does not require a broker.

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100% agree with you on this point. @ericm drivers and firmware are the simplest way to integrate sonoff/tuya devices into HE.

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Totally agree, it simply does not make sense if you are going to pretend to support devices and then need to upgrade the devices to a different system why not have an upgrade that directly supports Hubitat.

It has been my experience over many years in the computer industry that it is better that you have control of software and not be dependent on others. Sonoff is a large and very successful manufacturer who moves ahead cautiously. I have for the moment abandoned my Hubitat as it really on supports ZigBee and Zewave, and I already have hubs that do that. What I want is a one stop shop for all of my home automation and I suspect many other do also.
Every proposed solution so far does part of this not all of it and the company who resolves this issue will become the "Windows" of the home automation i.e the Standard by which all others will be judged. What is it at the moment that sets aside Hubitat from Smart Things Broadlink etc. Nothing it is just a hub that does some of the integration of some of the things. This must be a transparent support not a thing for Nerds as the market is not made up of mainly Nerds. The last thing Hubitat wants is to become a product for Nerds, it needs to be the product for the mass market.

Many Hubitat users are interested in home automation that is completely independent of cloud services for reasons privacy and independence. The other products you mentioned don't provide that.

I feel your pain. I have decided to accept a hybrid system. I'm not going back to SmartThings but I will use Alexa, LIFX, Tuya, Broadlink, and any other cloud service that works with devices I have or want to use.

Integration remains a challenge but, as I have said before, worst case I can always turn things on and off with the switch like the pioneers did.

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Sorry this is a pipe dream. Why? Because all the other hub manufacturers would rather you buy their hubs rather than support a third party, especially a relatively small one (no offence guys) like Hubitat.

You are in the fortunate position that Hubitat has such an active dev community. Most (85%) of the drivers I use have been been created by these great bunch of guys (at NO cost to us I might add other than voluntary contributions). Many of these drivers did not exist a year ago.

Yep, and when your ST/AWS/etc cloud service goes down your entire home is a brick.

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If that is what you want I would recommend just using the Samsung Smartthings hub and Smartthings devices.

Samsung is a big company with the money and other resources necessary to support and expand a robust smart home product line.

Wait ....

What?

You're kidding!

Welp, Samsung just discontinued the Smartthings hub.

Never mind.

Go fish.

They killed it as soon as they cut off the ability for users to add drivers.

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