Two identical buttons, and "long" means different things

There is a button by the flat door in Merano, a SONOFF SNZB-01. A second, identical one is in the bedroom. Both know three gestures: short, double, long.

And “long” does something entirely different on each. At the door it means departure: heating down, water off, door locked. In the bedroom it means alarm: four sirens.

That is exactly the kind of decision you think is clever while building and regret six months later. How it nevertheless turned out well is below.

But first: the button was mute

Paired in a minute and a half. The model was recognised, the three actions were reported. And in Home Assistant there was still only battery, voltage and firmware — not a single button press.

The reason was in the discovery:

.../action_single/config
.../action_double/config
.../action_long/config

Button presses are reported as device triggers by default, not as an entity. In the bridge configuration the corresponding option was switched off.

After changing it and restarting the bridge, the entity was there with all three gestures.

That belongs in every recovery guide. Set the radio bridge up again and forget this option, and you get a package that stays mute — without an error appearing anywhere.

An hour of searching for a setting that never shows up as a cause. On the second button the same evening it was a footnote: the option was already right and the entity was there immediately.

Renaming does not rename

Another trap of the same kind: renaming through the radio bridge carries over the display names, not the entity IDs. Those were still named after the device’s radio address.

They were corrected through the registry, to the names the package expected anyway.

While doing so, something was switched on that ships disabled: the report of when the device was last seen. A dead button at the door is exactly the silent failure you notice only when standing in front of it — hands full, in the rain, and nothing happens.

The assignment

Door:

Gesture	Effect
short	Present — heating up, water on
double	Guests here
long	Departure — heating down, water off

Bedroom:

Gesture	Effect
short	Departure board onto the TV
double	TV fully off
long	Alarm on all four camera sirens

Two identical buttons. The same gesture. Once “everything off”, once “everything on”.

The risk, and how it was solved

I had noted that as a risk and suggested labelling the buttons.

That was unnecessary. SONOFF includes symbol stickers, and the ones supplied matched the assignment exactly: the one at the door carries a house, the one in the bedroom an SOS.

That is better than any self-printed label — it is there from the factory, it cannot fall off, and it is readable by anybody standing in front of it for the first time.

The lesson still stands, just the other way round:

Change the assignment later and you have to think about the symbols. An SOS button that turns the heating down would be worse than no label at all — because then people believe it.

That is the point at which labelling turns from a help into a hazard. An unlabelled button makes you careful. A wrongly labelled one makes you confident.

What actually disappears

Leaving the flat previously meant several actions in different places: turn the heating down, shut off the water, arm the cameras, flip the privacy switch.

Each one is small. Together they are the reason it never happens on the way out — your hands are full and the car is waiting.

Now: one long press in passing.

And the way back the same. Arrive, press briefly, and the flat rearranges itself before your shoes are off.

Why the alarm toggles

One detail I consider correctly solved: the alarm is not a switch with two positions where you have to remember which one it is currently in.

Pressing long again switches it off. The same gesture, toggling.

For a button operated in the dark and in panic, that is the only defensible design. Anyone who has to think about whether to press short or double in an emergency presses wrongly.

So what?

1. Check whether your radio bridge reports button presses as an entity. If not, everything stays mute and no error appears anywhere.
2. Switch on “last seen”. Otherwise a battery device at a door fails unnoticed — and you find out at the worst possible moment.
3. Use the symbols that come in the box. They outlast any sticker and are understood by guests too.
4. Make dangerous gestures toggle, not latch. Anyone who has to remember what state something is in gets it wrong in an emergency.
5. If you change the assignment, change the label with it. A wrong label is worse than none.

What surprised me most about this project is how little technology the best solution contained: two buttons for forty euros, two symbols from the packaging, and a gesture you make in passing. All the rest — heating, water, cameras — was already there. The only thing missing was a way to touch it without getting the phone out.