You still using these? How’s the reliability been?
Any down falls?
Yup. They seem to work fine.
Seem hard to find. The Ring Z-Wave Plus contact sensors can be ordered for pickup from Home Depot Canada for $25.98 (or Lowe’s for 25.99) each, or $55 for two if you’re into paying more for no reason at all🤣
The Generic Z-Wave Motion sensor driver works with them just fine and they are very responsive sensors. They don’t have temperature, but the battery, tamper and motion device details all work.
Lots of them on eBay last time I looked.
What’s the battery life.
I was more curious about zigbee and not zwave.
These are on Ebay 10 for $50. The seller has been reliable for me and others on here. I have 5 of them and they all have their original batteries after being in use for over 2 years.
Problem is there is no magnets.
Too new to know. Purchased in December. Still showing full in the app on a very active door. They are CR123 batteries, so they should last a long time. I’ll remove the battery when home and test.
Those will work but are huge. I’ve been using small round ones even out one on my mailbox door with contact underneath
https://www.amazon.com/Diameter-Industrial-Strength-Neodymium-Countersunk/dp/B07FL7NCYN/
Regardless @mik3 you can use any magnet and ones above have a small screw hole as example.
Sorry.. Was replying to the original post.. Didn’t notice how old the thread was..
Post a link if you can. They look nice and small and the temp measuring is a nice added feature. I looked today and only found two sellers. Asking $36 CAD shipped and $40 CAD shipped.
The temp measuring stinks though as it reports in 1 DegC resolution. Mike says the driver asks for 0.5 DegC, but it definitely doesn't report that way...
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I have 2 Visonic MCT-340Es. One's used in the fridge door (so inside the fridge) while the other is used at the bottom of the fridge (outside the fridge). On both, I get false opens (we open the frigde or fridge door, close it back but the sensor stays at "open"). This happens every 5 days or so (so probably 1 in 100 opens). It's annoying and makes the notifications less reliable.
Anyway to make this more reliable? I doubt it's a mesh issue but maybe I'm wrong. The fridge is a wall and about 10ft (through the wall) away from the hub. If signal is using door, then it's probably about 30 ft away.
If it's an unreliable contact sensor, any recommendation of a more reliable contact sensor?
Thanks!
I’m not familiar with that sensor, but one of my Iris contact sensors used to do this about as often as you describe. It made it hard to trust the notifications as you have experienced. I’m inclined to chalk it up as a mesh issue since it stopped happening after I put all of my end devices on their own HE with a handful of very reliable repeaters. Being an end device, it is unlikely to be joined to the hub directly, no matter how close it is, unless there are no repeaters on your mesh.
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Hello Everyone,
Bringing this thread back as I'm looking to getting new sensors. I find that my current ones, ST multipurpose sensor, battery life is not that great (roughly 9 months). Is there a way to make the sensor report only open/close and to "turn off" everything else (i.e. temp)? Otherwise, is the Xiaomi mijia sensor still the one that has great battery life as per the previous comments in this thread?
tia
Hello.
I have given this a great deal of thought, but I haven't (yet) done any objective experiments.
My hypothesis is:
"The larger the battery, the greater the battery life".
As I stated above, I can't prove this, therefore this is simply one individual's speculation.
It's important to me, because when I provide a client with sensors, I don't want to have to come back simply because the battery failed.
One last point. (Especially important for those of us in The North.)
Cold weather kills battery life. If it's outside here, accept a much reduced battery life.
So, a CR2032 is smaller than a CR2450.
A CR2450 is smaller than a CR2.
A CR2 is smaller than a CR123A.
My approach - Your Mileage May Vary.
I quote from one vendor that has battery management and battery critical level reporting down better than most on motions...largely because they want their Security System installations to be able to achieve UL Certification.
In the case of batteries I think they've learned that "bigger is better", as long as you have the component drain/usage management down to a level that is fit-for-purpose but "sippy".
Visonic MP-840 Motion Sensor - ZigBee version
"
Internal Battery 3V Lithium battery, type CR-123A. For UL installations, use Panasonic and GP only
Nominal Battery Capacity 1450 mAh
Battery Life (with LED on) 5 years of typical use
"
Tru the Sensative. They have a non-replaceable battery but they last 10 years. Allegedly. I have a bunch of their other sensors and I really like them.
