Lately the eWeLink Community Website have seen a lot of reports of people having issues with ghost switching on mainly wall switches and devices that can be built into junction boxes. Sometimes other devices seem to be impacted as well. Many tried many possible solutions. Sometimes the possible solutions helps, sometimes they don’t. Sonoff is aware of the issues and explained it is a combination of an SDK inconsistency with the documentation as well as a more profound logical bug. Sonoff now offers the firmware update that should resolve the issues, but being able to upgrade seemed to be a new issue. UPDATE: upgrading now should work correctly.
This article was updated on February 27th, 2023 13:51 UTC+1 to reflect the current solved status of the firmware update issue.
Possible workarounds for the ghost switching issue
A few of the possible workaround solutions we have seen so far:
- Disconnect from Amazon Alexa and then reconnect.
- Remove all devices from the eWeLink account and reconnect them one by one.
- Assign IP adresses above .100 in your router settings. If you use the 192.168.1.x range for example assign IP adresses in the range from 192.168.1.101 to 192.168.1.254. You can only do so on the device providing those IP adresses (a so called DHCP server). In most times your router would be that device.
Sometimes a combination of 2 or more solutions did the trick for some users and other times none of the solutions did work for other users.
Answer from eWeLink
After a long time of complaints on social media of a lot of users we as eWeLink Community Website contacted Sonoff about the issues. We also warned them how angry people got about the issues and the lack of a reply of eWeLink and Sonoff. It weas shortly after that warning when we saw this screenshot of a reply to an user experiencing the ghost switching issues:
Answer of Sonoff
Eventually also the CHief Operating Officer (COO) of Sonoff came up with an answer:
Subject: Apology for Autoswitch Malfunction and Firmware Update
Dear valued customer,
We apologize for the delayed response to your concerns regarding the recent autoswitch malfunction. Our technical team has been working hard to resolve the issue, but we have experienced a backlog due to a combination of factors. Firstly, we have recently returned from the Chinese New Year holiday, during which we were closed for half a month. Secondly, we have received a higher volume of support requests than usual.
We understand how frustrating it can be when a device fails to function as intended, and we regret any inconvenience caused to you. After careful investigation, we have identified two defects that could cause the autoswitch to malfunction. The first is due to an SDK inconsistency with the documentation, and the second is a more profound logical bug.
We are pleased to inform you that we have developed firmware updates (3.7.2 [targeted release] & 3.7.3 [public release next week]) that will address these identified issues. We will be closely monitoring user feedback on these firmware updates and will address any further issues promptly.
We have also noticed that there have been reports on the eWeLink forum of a device (device ID: 10011bf149) from South Africa that has experienced the same issue after upgrading to firmware version 3.7.2. This was somewhat expected, as our investigation showed that this particular issue was not caused by the aforementioned bugs, but rather a power failure. We are currently communicating with the customer to have the device returned for further analysis.
We value your loyalty and your business, and we are committed to providing you with the best possible products and services. We appreciate your patience and understanding during this busy time, and we will do our best to respond to your inquiries as quickly as possible. If you have any further questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Sincerely,
Jerry Shi
Composed with the assistance of ChatGPT.
Source: Facebook / Jerry Shi (COO Sonoff). February 18th, 2023 09:49 GMT+1.
He also wrote a second reply with this content:
As the COO of SONOFF, I understand the significant impact that our current defect is having on our customers.I am closely monitoring the progress of the troubleshooting process and will work to provide a prompt solution asap. Sorry for the inconvenience caused.
Source: Facebook / Jerry Shi (COO Sonoff). February 18th, 2023 09:58 GMT+1.
Firmware update 3.7.3 and the problems getting the update
On February 26th, 2023 we noticed people reporting firmware update 3.7.3 (which should solve the ghost switching issue) was made available, but couldn’t get it installed because it got stuck at 90% progress. In most cases getting an firmware upgrade stuck at 90% the cause is a busy update server, but as this is an important update to many users we as eWeLink Community Website started to wonder whether there could be wrong something else. So we contacted our technical person at eWeLink.
The technical person at eWeLink did contact an emplyee of Sonoff which reported back the update servers of Sonoff are seemed to do fine, but later on it turned out the server got to much update requests to handle. The upgrade mechanism was re-assigned and the capacity expension ws done to solve the issue.
If you experienced the device you tried to update becomes offline (and thus unreachable) you can powercycle the device to get it running again (with the older firmware version). This means you have to de-power and re-power it. In the case of built-in device you will need to power off the circuit breaker and re-enable it. After this you can try to update again.
Still having troubles with updating?
If the problem still persists after a long while and after eWeLink and Sonoff confirmed there are no issues you can try these roubleshooting steps on our Knowledge Base: Firmware upgrades fails at 90% all the time. How can I resolve that?
If these steps don’t help either we recommend you to file an in-app feedback ticket to eWeLink. How to create feedback tickets is explained in this Knowledge Base article: Creating tickets for bugreports and feedback and viewing them
