Aeotec Recessed door sensor 7

7 Hubs! Very Impressed!

Your experience with the to platforms coexisting is welcome news.
I actually had the ST ZW-enabled hub coexisting nicely with the Hubitat when I started migrating the devices. Then recently, the 2 ZW locks on the Hubitat stopped responding until I disabled the ZW radio in the ST Hub. Based on your experience, I'll re-activate the radio and see if the problem persists.

What Hub model do you have? What do you mean by partially connected and failed to join properly?

Without knowing more, I can only address the Aeotec Recessed Door Sensor 7, because I have that device and had issues with it on my C-5 (now retired) and C-7.

First, both on the C-5 and C-7, the Hubitat hubs seem to have smaller antennas than other hubs. The fix for that, if you will read these forums, is to install a Z-Wave repeater near your hub and to put repeaters around your home. Like many parts of life, I practice the Serenity Prayer and choose a path that fixes the issues I cannot change.

I suggest the Ring Alarm Range Extender 2, for several reasons (I’ve got 4). First, they are rather inexpensive ($24.99 on Amazon), and they have internal battery backup so your mesh stays up during power fail. Second, they seem to work well. Third, you can trigger a rule on power source switch from mains to battery which is useful if you have garage freezers powered on a GFCI circuit, as I do. That circuit also powers outlets on our patio that occasionally trip the GFCI, leaving our freezers unpowered. The Rule I set up sends me and my wife a notification so we can reset the GFCI. On the negative side, I have found them difficult to pair, and they apparently only report power fail events if paired securely, as reported by Bryan Copeland in these forums. Go figure.

Now, as to the Aeotec Recessed Door Sensor 7 (I’ve got 3). A bit of history. When they were first released, Hubitat came out with a driver (Aeotec Recessed Door Sensor 7) that worked well, at least for me. Aeotec also had a Door/Window Sensor 7. I have one of these on our garage door so that the Hubitat MyQ Lite driver can sense when the garage door is closed. When the Aeotec Door/Window Sensor 7 came out, Hubitat came out with a driver (Aeotec Door/Window Sensor 7) that worked well, at least for me. Then, to reduce code maintenance, Hubitat combined the two drivers into one (Aeotec Door/Window Sensor 7 Series) that is, in my opinion, very buggy. Search the forums, you will see some of the issues.

Once the Consolidated driver was released, the older, working, drivers became “Deprecated” and could no longer be selected as a driver for newly purchased Aeotec devices (like yours and mine). Hubitat has confirmed that there is no way for users to avail themselves of these Deprecated drivers. I have, multiple times, in my bug reports, requested a “Deprecated” section of drivers that could be chosen for regression testing and for a fall-back position when new, superseding, drivers are released. My suggestion has not, to date, been adopted. Perhaps if others turned in similar requests with their support tickets, this might receive priority attention. Seems reasonable to me.

I have turned in MANY bug reports (support tickets) on this driver. After many months of support tickets, I recently received a reply that the issues would be resolved in the next Hubitat release (2.2.4, the Holy Grail that we all await) that, as far as I know, has not yet moved into beta testing (search these forums).

So here is where we are: I have been able to get my Aeotec Recessed Door Sensor 7 devices and my Aeotec Door/Window Sensor 7 device functional, not bug free. Some of the devices, same device, same driver, report differently. One of the Recessed Door Sensors thinks it has a tamper switch (no, the device does not). Some of the devices report a serial number with a string of zeroes as long as your arm.

Bot here is what I had to do to get there: First, I have NEVER been able reliably to join the Aeotec devices to my C-7 unless paired next to the hub. I believe this is because Z-Wave 700 chips enter a low power mode during pairing to lessen the possibility of snooping. Second, although the documentation doesn’t clearly say so, the ONLY way you (or at least I) seem to be able to set parameters on the Aeotec devices is to wake them up (quickly hit the wake-up button or tamper switch, as appropriate) and IMMEDIATELY hit the Save Preferences button in the driver. Otherwise, the device never updates its parameters.

We wait for the next firmware release. Candidly, the C-7 introduction has been very rough, but things are much better. I hope you’re experience improves. Post in these forums with issues - it’s a good community, very helpful. An turn in support tickets for your issues. These forums are not official Hubitat support. If a ticket doesn’t get turned in, bugs don’t get addressed.

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That’s huge! Thanks for the great suggestions.

Based on your feedback, , I decided to try again with pairing the Aeotec Recessed Door Sensor 7 with the C-7 hub. This time with the sensor next to the hub.

After 3 attempts, it came to life after following your advice to keep the sensor awake.

Keeping my fingers crossed that it will continue to work tomorrow!

The older z-waves appear to have died. Only 1 lights up. Attempted resetting and rejoins with the three without success. Even with them next to the C-7. Just so strange that all 3 worked earlier this week on the C-7, then 1 by 1, failed. Don’t know if it’s worth spending much more time attempting resurrection on these.

Also, I just ordered 4 Ring Alarm Range Extender GEN2s. The C-7 is definitely power limited.

Do you have any suggestions regarding repeater deployment? For example, is it necessary to rebuild the mesh from scratch before adding the devices, or simply run z-wave repairs after each extender is deployed?

Considering that the C-7 antennas most likely the problem in my environment, my place has 5-6 levels plus detached garage/workshop, I would think it’s best to locate the 1st extender next to the C-7; the others trial and error.

Finally, I liked your suggestion for the garage freezer power monitor and actually built a power failure detector earlier this year for our Covid freezer. I jerry-rigged a z-wave switch to a small relay, and then wired the relay to a ST moisture sensor. Loss of power closes the relay contacts and the conductors on the sensor. Works perfectly.

Also constructed a temperature sensor for the freezer interior using another ST moisture sensor. Trick was removing the batteries – don’t survive long in freezers – and connecting the battery contacts to an external 5v DC power supply.

So that’s it for now.

I’m anxiously awaiting the upcoming firmware release.

Thanks again for the great advice!

Well, in an ideal world, you would build the mesh from the hub out. That’s nice if you are starting from scratch, but hard to do if you’ve got a working house.

It’s also problematic if you rip out a mains-powered device that the mesh likes to route through, because then you end up with stranded nodes.

If your devices are Z-Wave Plus, they continually try to figure out better routes on their own. The C-7 route column is confusing because it’s not real time, and lags updates by a half hour or so.

So, for Z-Wave Plus and C-7, the collective wisdom seems to be that there is no reason to do a general Z-Wave repair, and that can, in fact, make things worse because it will undo route information that has been learned by the mesh over time. That’s the reason that C-7 devices have single-node repair, which is all that you should use. Might be a good idea, though, to do node repairs on the new repeaters so they can make a good first attempt on routing.

It seems to take a few days for the mesh to stabilize with the routing discovery.

Now, with Z-Wave non-plus, this background re-routing does not happen AFAIK, so a Z-Wave repair is needed.

So I just got an Aeotec recessed door sensor 7 today and paired to my C-7 with no issues. I might recommend before the next attempt you shutdown the hub pull the power cord and wait 15 secs or so then fire up and try again. I am in the process of migrating all Z-wave devices from my 2 C-4 hubs and the only issue I had was some Inovelli 4-in-1s that may have been slightly out of range and partially paired which then left me unable to pair anything else. Was able to do the shutdown thing and pair my Z-stick and eliminate the ghosties and start over. All good so far. When I set up the C-7 I added a bunch of repeaters beforehand radiating outwards from the hub. This has proven to be immensely helpful even though a lot of devices I own are already powered and should theoretically repeat just like the repeaters... ymmv of course.

I was just looking at ordering some of these recessed sensors this evening, and glad I read through this whole thread. I appreciate everyone notating their experiences and how they worked with things as they currently stand.

I understand the hub update is probably still required to gain 100% reliability and functionality as used to be before the consolidated driver, but I am willing to wait if they will work.

I wanted to add that I use the Iris outlets, which have Zigbee protocol for the outlet switching, but also Z-Wave Repeater built in.

I have 10 plugged in all the time, another 5 are used during the holidays for lighting.

These Iris outlets have proven well worth the purchase as my mesh network has never been an issue with these scattered throughout my house in combination to switches and other devices with Zigbee/Z-Wave.

I found the outlets on Ebay in 5 packs, very reasonable at $10 outlet. It appears they are very scarce now.

Here's another source..

Although for Z-Wave repeaters I'm now leaning toward the more expensive Ring Range extender which has a battery backup built in and can detect power failures. It depends on the use-case though as the zigbee outlets are very useful.

https://www.amazon.com/Ring-Alarm-Range-Extender/dp/B07ZB2VP4K/

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Yesterday I finally got around to installing the three of these sensors that I bought from Monoprice, wow, my C5 hub reacts super fast to them opening and closing. Would definitely recommend (and I think they are just $22 right now on Monoprice's site)

Do you have a link? I might be interested in grabbing a couple. I only see the monoprice version at $29..

https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=15268

Thats the link, they were $22.99 on Saturday for sure (and had the $29.99 priced strikethrough-ed next to the sale price)

Issue Status: Issue resolved - I removed S2 security, as advised below, from the ZW187-A and it started working as expected. I’m not sure about the impact of removing S2 security, but will research.
Model: Aeotec ZW187-A
Device Type: Generic Z Wave Contact Sensor
Hub Firmware: 2.2.3.148
Aeotec Support Ticket: #1460045

I’m unable to get the recessed door sensor to consistently work with my system. I’m able to include it and the hardware light works as expected when I close the contact. Occasionally I can get it to register open/closed in the device page when I remove the magnet, but it usually only works for an open/close cycle before failing to report. I can force it to work by pressing the button on the hardware for 5 seconds to wake it up, but it stops operating after 1 open/close cycle. Logs do not show activity after a few open/close cycles. Has anybody seen this behavior and have advice on fixing?

(Edit to add more info) I also have an older version of the recessed door sensor (ZW089-A) that I connected to my system to experiment. The ZW089-A works as expected, it opens and closes just fine when the magnet is removed. Could this be an issue with the ZW187 firmware?

ZW187 Device info:

[This is my first post to the community, btw. I have recently migrated 82 Zigbee & Zwave devices from ST and am loving the C7 platform. This is the first issue I’ve encountered.]

Welcome. I’ve got 3 of the same Aeotec Recessed Door Sensor 7 devices on my C-7 with 2.2.3.148 firmware. You may have read my posts upthread here:

and here, in another thread, regarding how to set preferences:

I strongly suggest that you exclude, factory reset, then re-include the Aeotec Recessed Door Sensor 7 devices WITH NO SECURITY unless these truly are external door sensors. S2 security is problematic with C-7 and 2.2.3.148 firmware. These issues are expected to be fixed when 2.2.4 comes out, probably next week. You could just wait for that. I was never able to make mine work reliably when paired S2.

You may have mesh issues. Hubitat doesn’t seem to function as well as other hubs in presence of a weak mesh (I, like you, was on ST for awhile before coming to Hubitat). I just accepted this and installed repeaters. I use the Ring Extender 2 devices (I have 4) for two reasons:

(1) they have internal battery backup, and thus will keep your mesh up during power fail, and

(2) they report power fail events (but apparently must be paired S2 in order to do so). I have one in our garage in order to report loss of power for our freezer.

One other thing: the C-7 with 2.2.3.148 frequently reports that the Aeotec Recessed Door Sensor 7 devices are “failed” or “not responding “ even though the devices are working fine. I just ignore these messages. Support has indicated to me that the Aeotec Recessed Door Sensor 7 issues are expected to be fixed in 2.2.4 firmware.

Hope these suggestions help get you up and running. Welcome.

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Great info - I removed S2 security and now it works. Thanks you for helping me on this!

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Great, glad I could help. If you have any other issues, don’t hesitate to post and someone with your devices will try to help. It’s a pretty friendly and helpful group of users.

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It doesn't look like this has been resolved with 2.2.4.139. Just included this sensor via smart start. It included very fast, Just like my Ring 2 Extenders did. But unfortunately, it has only registered a close event.

I've performed their signal strength test and it passes. just no open/close events :frowning:

Can you turn on debug and open/close and send the logs?

Mine is exactly the same problem.

Okay, So here is everything since the device was installed:

There were several open and close events during this. I'd say you're seeing about a tenth of them.

Just noticed, there is another platform update. I'll hold off updating until you let me know you've had a chance to look at this. Unless you like to change a of bunch variables while debugging :wink:

I’m looking at this log and I see a closed and opened and closed event.. I’m confused..

Yes there a few events that are getting captured. But, as I said, you're only seeing about 1/10th of the number of opens and closes that happened during that time.

Edit: Here is the log where I opened the door (this was the only thing you'll see in the log). Then after 10 seconds, I closed the door. waited 2 minutes, repeat. I did this a total of 3 times and the hub only caught the first open.
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