I’m looking to buy some affordable But reliable motion sensors. I’ve seen Iris being mentioned but they’re discontinued. Is it worth it to buy them off eBay or should I go with something else such as Aqara?
I find the iris motions terrific.
I doubt that you’ll hear a bad word about them.
Grab them while you can 
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Just do it! They're awesome sensors at a great price.
and grab these to create a solid Zigbee mesh. (They are also Z-wave repeaters as well!)
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I've gone through a good few in some order:
- Sylvania (Zigbee), I like these, temp, simple, fast and sensitive, few controls though
- Dome (ZWave). Look pretty? Lots of controls, fast and sensitive. Lux reading is less useful than temp. They re-trigger constantly every 8s though, which is pretty darn often.
- Lots of older gocontrol zwave sensor, or cheap ones on amazon. The batteries have lasted for ever...though they are big and ugly. They're fast enough for a garage, and the temp data is crap.
- Zooz 4:1 lots of stuff, but they feel slower? Lux is a weird scale, and humidity doesn't detect me taking a shower. So not sure how to use this for something useful.
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I much prefer my Aqara motion sensor to my Iris v2's. I had nothing but trouble with those whereas the Xiaomi's are rock solid (but slightly slower to respond and don't give any visual notification unlike the Iris' which blink green on motion). Just note that the original Xiaomi motion sensors don't report temp or anything else - just motion. The latest ones do report temperature, plus lux I believe.
Make an offer on these. The seller will deal down a bit and is reliable.
I had one goofy one in the lot of 10 motion detectors and got a $5 refund for it. They also did come with batteries (YMMV) with the pull tab still in them though some were slightly down from 100%.
The plugs can be a pain to pair up on zwave (do zigbee first) but have improved my mesh significantly. I don't think I had one of the 5 plug's zwave pair the same way. I did resets, different button presses, etc. The first one went in and paired zwave right after the zigbee and the other 4 were a real struggle. I had one far from the hub but close to other repeaters than would not pair zwave until I moved it closer.
The same seller has Iris V3 motion sensors that do humidity though a few points off what my Carrier Infiniti is showing. Single orders at a slightly higher price, but also open to offers for multiples.
FWIW, this is the mfr shown in hubitat for the V3 sensor:
- model: 1117-S
- manufacturer: iMagic by GreatStar
I’ve been looking at importing these Iris to the UK as my Xiaomi (mixture of Aqara and original) simply wont stay connected. This is with 3 Xbees in my mesh too!
Does anyone know of the speed of motion detection between the Xiaomi and Iris? I want to buy them, but do like the speed of My Xiaomi sensors, when working that is.
Ha, I have the exact opposite situation! My Iris v2's keep dropping off. The Xiaomi's have been rock solid. So strange isn't it how we have different experiences with the same technology. Maybe it's house layout, wifi interference etc. I dunno. Anyway, my experience is the Iris are a little faster to respond than the Aqara. They also reset at 30 seconds whereas the Aqara resets at 60. Also the Iris blink green on motion trigger which is quite helpful, the Aqara have no visual signal. I think the Aqara look a lot more modern (personal opinion of course).
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My iris have been rock solid once I spread a few peanut plugs around the house.
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The best motion sensors in my home are the SmartThings v2 motion sensors. They are fast and reliable.
My other motion sensors:
- Zooz 4-n-1 - slow to respond
- Iris - stop working all the time and slowly being replaced
- Bosch - REALLY slow and unreliable for active areas. Also HUGE devices
The problem I've found with them is the battery tags are really pathetic and don't always connect to the battery. I had one snap off completely when refitting a new battery and trying to bend it a little to make better contact. Silly me.
Iris v2?
Iris v1
Not suggesting this as a way to start out, but I’ve seen a lot of posts lately where people are just giving up on Xiaomi sensors. I get your reasons, but it’s a costly choice since you might not be able to resell the Xiaomi, and you then have to purchase much more expensive sensors.
If you’re a Homebridge user and have an Apple TV 4, iPad that can run the latest iOS or a HomePod, there is an alternative that I’m using myself. It has not failed once.
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Purchase a Xiaomi Aqara HomeKit Hub for $38.99 USD
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Pair all your Xiaomi sensors to the Aqara HomeKit Gateway.
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Create a virtual switch in HE for each sensor and expose it to HomeKit via the Homebridge MakerAPI app.
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Create a HomeKit automation for each sensor active and inactive state to turn the virtual switch on and off respectively.
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Change your automations in HE to use the virtual switches you created for the sensors, instead of the sensors themselves.
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Enjoy stability and the knowledge that you can now buy more Xiaomi sensors without concern of them dropping off.
Limitations:
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No way to use a temp/humidity sensor for comparison to another temp/humidity sensor in HE. My Xiaomi temp/humidity/barometric pressure sensor is still paired with HE and I have to re-pair it about once a month, despite the TRÅDFRI outlet that is just 3 feet from it.
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This version of the Aqara HomeKit Gateway only allows up to 32 end devices. I have only read anecdotal reports of the Xiaomi outlets working as repeaters to increase that limit. The new Xiaomi Zigbee 3.0 HomeKit gateway will allow up to 90 end devices, but it has not been released for sale yet.
NOTE: HomeKit automations are very susceptible to just disappearing on you if a device is removed. Be sure to protect your work by also purchasing the Controller Pro app to backup your HomeKit Rooms and Automations.
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Thanks for this. I’ll hold off for now as I’m having a shift around with devices. My Ikea bulbs have been great repeaters for Xiaomi, but the issues start when the lights lose power, or SSWMBO happens to turn them off (she’s bloody dreadful for unplugging things if they don’t work on the first flick of the smart switches 
)
So I’ve linked a lot of Ikea bulbs to my Hue, and hopefully this will enable my Xbees and Ikea plugs to become the parents. If this doesn’t work, I may go for the Iris 
I’m just at the end of my tether with my Xiaomis’ dropping all the bloody time. Driving me mad 
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Hope you find a solution that works for you. I bought the Xiaomi Aqara HomeKit gateway just to play, but then discovered that it paired soooo easily with their devices, and never drops them. Response time is instant, and stability has been 100%. I forget exactly how long it’s been, maybe six months or so. I now just buy Xiaomi sensors without hesitation when I need them, because I know they’re going to work with the HomeKit set up.
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I’ve been considering the same thing. I’ve recently bought a load of their switches to replace the Hue dimmers I had, and also get rid of a lot of smart bulbs.
All my window contacts and motion sensors are Xiaomi too. I then read that they had local execution, which is awesome! I’d love it if there was a way HubConnect could work with them directly rather than via Homebridge. I’ve had pretty much zero success with getting that working. But the Xiaomi hub is not out of the picture yet. I’ll have one more go at getting some stability, if it fails, I’ll be going for their hub
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Give @dan.t ‘s Maker API version of Homebridge a shot if you haven’t tried it. I gave up on Homebridge too, but then tried Dan’s version to get back some functions I was missing. To my joy, it was super easy to setup and very fast. Stability of HomeKit has still plagued some with it, but not me. It’s been a top performer in my house. I even added a HomeKit lock when the Z-Wave version wasn’t available at a Warehouse Deal price. Thought I might regret that decision, but it’s been a few weeks and it’s been working like a champ.
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If they don’t play ball, they’ll be going back on ST for now. Not great relying on the cloud again, but they were always solid on there.
Thanks for the tips and suggestions though. Much appreciated
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If I were to do any cloud solution it would be HomeKit over the rest.
Even with less fuctionality, I would trust their solution before any other cloud solution.
