The lights are flickering without warning

[albukrek]

First of all Thanks, for your wonderful work!

(All devices have Sonoff-Tasmota-5.5.0)

I have installed three Sonoff units a few days ago.

• (2) Sonoff basic
  • This unit is responsible for the 2 night lamps
• (1) Sonoff 4-channel
  • One channel is responsible for the main light in the room
  • The other three channels control the fan.

All the lamps are connected on one side to the old switches on the wall, and on the other side to GPIO 14 in the basics, and the 4-channel lamp switch to GPIO 3.

The old fan switch has been replaced by WEMOS d1 pro so that the Sonoff GPIO is not used for the fan channels.

In general, everything works properly, but when turning on or off one off the lights manually, occasionally without warning the lamp toggles.

We think it happens only in case the old switch is used, so in order to test this hypothesis yesterday and today we lit the light only through the Home Assistant and the occasionally toggling have disappeared, except for one case of shutdown and fire back almost immediately.

I'm sure that I have done something wrong, please advise me how to fix this problem.

P.S. Every unit has a unique topic and group. The client id is generated automatically by default.

Thank's
Arik

[albukrek]

I Think that there is a simple solution for my problem:

1. The Sonoff devices were updated to version5.6.1
2. Change the topic of the mqtt from stat to cmnd (for more detailes see this wiki topic )
   Run commands:
   SwitchTopic 2.
   SwitchMode to 1
   I'm not sure, but maybe this way it the switch state is retained in the MQTT

Anyway, if there will be no more toggles I will close my issue...

Thanks

[albukrek]

The above fix has one drawback, every 50 minutes or so the relay flickers.

Can anyone help please help me?

[albukrek]

Found the problems:

1. Topic name in home assistant was written in lower case, while in Sonoff-Tasmota the name is all in upper case.
2. Some retain topic were left on the MQTT server, these topics were deleted.

Thanks!

[PeggyFree]

How do you check such retained messages ? My mosquito mqtt server is running as a service, I could'nt find any solution to check all the mqtt trafic and the potential residual subscriptions.

…

On lun. 28 août 2017 21:25 Arik Albukrek ***@***.***> wrote: Found the problems: 1. Topic name in home assistant was written in lower case, while in Sonoff-Tasmota the name is all in upper case. 2. Some retain topic were left on the MQTT server, these topics were deleted. Thanks! [image: screen shot 2017-08-28 at 10 19 18 pm] <https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/14253503/29789733-b8846a1c-8c3f-11e7-928d-bfd95885524a.png> — You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#758 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AcMo5a8psHTprNIh5EKrZLnKPufEzOg2ks5scxQhgaJpZM4O8cXP> .

[davidelang]

see the wiki page on poweronstate, it tells you how to check for retained messages

[mkh595]

You can see retained messages e.g. in MQTTfx client. If you subscribe topic, you will receive first all retained messages (if there are any)

[albukrek]

Sorry to report, but the issue had, returned...
This time it only happens when the switch is in an open state (circuit is open) from #665 , #484, #100 and others, I got to the conclusion that the solution may be adding a pullup resistor and capacitor.

The issue happens only in a switch that is about 3m from the Sonoff 4ch. I suspect that there is some electric inteference.

I hope the pullup resistor and capacitor will solve the problem, otherwise my wife will thow me and the smart house out...

[albukrek]

Working fine after adding a pullup resistor and capacitor.

[aspitznyc]

Hi @albukrek what size of capacitor did you use? And where did you put it? Between which pins? Thanks!!!

[davidelang]

anything in the pF range should be ok.

[aspitznyc]

Sorry about my lack of electronics understanding, but could you provide and example? I'm a noob in all this. Thanks for your help!

[davidelang]

see https://github.com/arendst/Sonoff-Tasmota/wiki/Expanding-Sonoffs

…

On Tue, 24 Oct 2017, aspitznyc wrote: Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 04:41:14 -0700 From: aspitznyc ***@***.***> Reply-To: arendst/Sonoff-Tasmota <reply+0021b24f0705e7c71d1d6e1cf2f0f76f7933e7d255b510dc92cf000000011606e8d ***@***.***> To: arendst/Sonoff-Tasmota ***@***.***> Cc: David Lang ***@***.***>, Comment ***@***.***> Subject: Re: [arendst/Sonoff-Tasmota] The lights are flickering without warning (#758) Sorry about my lack of electronics understanding, but could you provide and example? I'm a noob in all this. Thanks for your help!