UK Sonoff T-1

.
This is easily the most difficult Sonoff to flash.

Getting inside the T-1 is no big deal. Pop the top off, pull out the next board, and you don’t even need the bottom part. The Serial pins you need for flashing are right next to the wifi antenna. The square one is 3v and they are in the same order as always. The reason this specific model is so hard to flash is because you can’t hold down the button when you power it up. You have to power it up, hold down the button, and reset it. Then you have to make sure you let go of the buttons in the right order.

To start off you have to plug in the FTDI adapter with the 3v wire going into the square hole, then of course RX, TX, and Ground. Now in order to be able to know that we are in flash mode, we’re going to use www.putty.org to communicate with the T1.  So you open up putty, click serial, and in the box where it says speed, you put 74880, and then type in the com port. It might not give you the option, based on what you have plugged in, I just know that on my computer, the USB port that I have pugged in I just know that on my computer, the usb port that i have it plugged in always shows up as com4. Than you click open. Next a putty terminal will appear, which should show a message when it is in flash mode. If you have any more buff potions, now is the time to use them. Hold down the button, push the reset, let go of the reset, then let go of the button. Putty is listening at the 74880 bod rate. To retirate, you press the main button, press the reset button, release the reset button then release the main button. And BINGO! If you have a T1 with more than one button, it will always be the one further to the left. To make sure that you have done it, look at the LED at the top of the board. It should be off and the light under the button should be dimmer than before if you did everything right. If you see the LED blinking at all, you are not in flash mode. Blinky no beuno. If you didn’t do it right, you’ll have to do it again. Now that you are in flash mode, time for FashEZ and Sonoff.bin. FlashEZ is really FlashESP8266.exe and can be found at github.com/letscontrolit/ESPEasy/releases

Sonoff.bin is available at githhub.com/arendst/Sonoff-Tasmota/realeases. Open up the old faithful FlashEZ, open up Sonoff.bin, flash and go. It should be complete. Next you open up Termite. Termite is a simple Serial Communications app to connect to the Sonoff without wifi. To find that go to https://termite.soft112.com

Ever since I started to learn how to use Termite and backlogs, I’ve kept all of my information that I typically load onto the sonoffs on a small text file. Take that text file and copy it into termite. You may need to change anything as needed. Click the blue button at the top of the terminal to connect it. It should say “Click to connect”. Sometimes you have to wait a few minutes for it to connect. If it doesn’t work right away, just unplug your serial adapter from your computer and plug it back in. Now paste (or write in) your backlog command. In this case at the end of the backlog I added Module 28 because that is the Module number for Tasmota for the 1 switch T1. It is different if you are using the 2 switch or 3 switch T1s. There is nothing confusing at all about how they named those. Hit enter and it should be ready to go. Before you disconnect from Termite, one of the things that you will want to do is to set option 13 to 1. There is something about the way that they’ve connected the button, makes it so that if you don’t set option 13 to 1, it may detect multiple button presses. Just type in setoption13 1 hit enter than it’s onto the next step.

There is one more thing to do in termite to make life just a little bit easier. From here we can find the IP address that the router gave to the device. If you type in ipaddress1 and hit enter, it. Don’t try to connect it to the bottom half where the relay is if all you are doing is powering it through the serial pins. Now you can put it all back together and power it up with 110v. I hooked up a light bulb and it worked pretty great. Now for the home assistant part.

switch:
 – platform: mqtt
   name: UK_1
   command_topic: “cmnd/UK_1/power”
   state_topic: “stat/UK_1/POWER”
   qos: 1
   payload_on: “ON”
   payload_off: “OFF”
   retain: false
 

Where it says UK_1 you put in your topic for your device. How about a cool automation? That sounds like a good idea.

 – alias: Porch lights on at Sunset
   hide_entity: true
   initial_state: ‘on’  
   trigger:
   – platform: sun
     event: sunset
   action:
   – service: switch.turn_on
     data:
       entity_id: switch.UK_1
 – alias: Lights off at midnight
   hide_entity: true
   initial_state: ‘on’  
   trigger:
   – platform: time
     at: ‘00:00:00‘
   action:
   – service: switch.turn_off
     data:
       entity_id: switch.UK_1

This is an automation that makes the light turn on at sunset and turn off at midnight, just in case that’s something that you are interested in doing. Make sure to put in the entity ID under the data topic and the entity ID topic as well. Now test out the sonoff. And boom.

Until Next Time

Adios