Something I came across and wanted to share it with the community.
I have 3 Ubiquiti access point in my house.they really work great; have WiFi coverage all over the place, and is of high quality.
I recently bought 4 Blitzwolf BW-SHP6 (3450W). They come with the generic ESP8266 chip onboard. Unpacked them and downloaded the smart home app (uses tuya protocol), and started using the smart wall plugs. The website told me that IFTTT availability was present. So far, so good.
Well, IFTTT support was not there, but heyâŠwe have openhabâŠrightâŠ?
The tuya protocol scares me: settings, when to do a switch, are stored on a server on the internet; in this case a chinese server. Dont like thisâŠat all. I dont want âsomebodyâ regulating the switchmoments in my house. AndâŠwhat else is on the smart switchâŠ?
Paranoid ? Maybe, but when doing smart HOME, Iâd like to loose max dependencies with others. If the site is down, my light will stay off.
I flashed the Blitzwolfâs with TASMOTA, and after that ESPHome software. This firmware makes the switch MQTT aware, and can be adressed by my lovely openHAB server.
Cool, but now the part I want to warn you about: the ESP8266 has unstable wifi routines, that causes problems on my Ubiquiti APâs. There are many reports on the Internet about this.
My APs were sometimes blocking the plugsâŠ
Yes, it is mentioned all over the place here. That was turned off because people abused it adding all their Items and crashing the server. You are free to setup your own server based off the freely available code though.
myopenhab sponsor is forbidden from charging for access and does not have the resources to expand server capabilities.
I think lwolfs means that the Blitzwolf website (or the site where he bought them) told him that IFTTT availability was present to control the Blitzwolf plugsâŠ
I use some of these too. Flashed them with Tasmota and donât have any issues with them. I donât have any Ubiquiti devices tho, Iâm using Fritzbox. I donât see how the device itself could cause a security hazard due to âunstable wifi routinesâ. That would be a software/firmware problem, not a hardware problem. I had some issues with Tasmota devices caused by using core 2.4.x, but those were mainly wifi connection issues. With 2.6.x thatâs no longer the case.
The âunstable wifi routinesâ are being mentioned on other websites. What I see is the following:
In the Ubiquiti management GUI the switch is flipping (ON-OFF-ON-OFF), visible through a red 0%, then a green 40% (for a few seconds).
Also I see the increasing errorcount:
The DHCP server is on my FritzBox (7590). The counters were increasing, until the point I unplugged the switches.
By mentioning a security hazard I mean that I have installed devices from abroad in my home, and I donot know exactly what they are communicating to a foreign website. The generic ESP module could be exploited to gain access to my homenetwork.
There never was one option or question that I agreed with this communication. That bothers me and find it suspicious.
We all know, that the âsâ in âIoTâ stands for âsecurityâ, but I donât see an issue with the mentioned Blitzwolf switches here. You flashed Tasmota on them and they communicate with your MQTT broker. They may access an NTP server from the internet, if you configured one. But again, that is not an issue with the Blitzwolf switch, but with the firmware you use for your esp8266. So in your case you can throw out all devices that use 8266 and any other wifi connected devices.
I donât think this is a ESP8266 problem, cause i have also 3 Ubiquiti APs (dhcp done by Fritzbox) and many devices with ESP8266 (sonoff, blitzwolf, selfmade ESP8266 devices, ⊠) running in the wifi.
But i donât have much failures shown in my unifi manager
@Vradatta Seems like we have somewhat same setup I have 1x PRO and 2x MINI. Especially with the PRO I saw the majority of the issues.
Good for you that you dont have the same issues as me.
@rossko57 I used static IP for the Blitzwolf switches.
I have 4 Unifi AC-PRO APâs in use. For low-level IoT devices, like the ESP8266, I have setup a separate 2G-only SSID, just like Marcel.
No issues, so it hopefully works for you as well.
I have 4 AC nanoHD in my house and I spent days to get everything stable.
At the end, each AC has itâs own 2.4Ghz SSID for " IoT" (but all share one SSID for 5Ghz âHomeâ ). That made everything stable. (and of course deactivate all the âfeaturesâ in Ubiquity software.
Iâm running some ESP8266 devices e.g. to collect temperature and humidity data published via MQTT. Iâve a dedicated 2.4GHz SSID. Most of them are Wemos D1 minis with ESP Easy firmware. and I donât have stability problems. Here is an example:
I have 1x PRO and 2x MINI. Especially with the PRO I saw the majority of the issues.
