I’m assuming the answers going to be no, but just in case I am missing something I’m going to ask anyway.
My house has a ton of windows and sometimes my family likes to sleep with the window open. This causes a problem because my thermostat thinks it needs to heat or cool. Short of putting a sensor on every window is there anything else I can use to turn my thermostat off should someone leave a window open? Maybe temperature difference or something?
I was trying to avoid window sensors because in the past it seems like batteries just got drained quickly or they failed frequently.
I went with a Zigbee contact sensor on every window. But I got them very cheap (under $5 each), so the expense wasn't so bad. The Iris V2 contact sensors I have last over 4 years on a non-rechargeable CR2 battery, and about 18 months on rechargeable ones.
For my use case, I also don't turn off the thermostat off when a window is open. Instead, I just send a notification that the HVAC is running while a window is open. In my case, I just want to close the window (and not affect the rest of the house).
Iris V2 contact sensors, bought on clearance/surplus. No longer readily available.
Lots of people recommend the Xfinity ones posted above, but I don't have any. I dislike that they use CR2450 button cell batteries, as such have given me poor battery life in other Zigbee sensors. But I have no experience with these exact devices.
I’ve been using the Sonoff contact sensors (2032 battery), Iris V2 (CR2) and Linkind (2032). They all have worked well. I think the Sonoff are the only ones still available. I bought them a few years ago on Itead for $6 a piece. They have the build quality of $6 sensors, but they work well, are very small, and the batteries last at least a year. They don’t report anything but contact and battery, and the battery only reports when it’s paired or the battery is replaced, but I can’t complain.
I have some sensors that behave like this as well. However, if I run the REFRESH command on them, they will report their battery level status to the hub. I wrote a Rule Machine rule that refreshes all of these non-reporting devices once a week, to allow the battery monitoring automations to notify me when one needs to be changed.
I have some Tuya/Smartlife contact sensors that use 2xAAA batteries and can be purchased at Aliexpress for about $6 each. They are the ONENUO brand. The only issue is the supplied magnet is weak. Otherwise work great with generic driver. Reports battery daily,
