Good Door/Window Sensor - ZIGBEE

That's pretty expensive for a door sensor... wow..

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Sonoff and Aqara. I didnt do enough research and bought before I should have.

I have xiaomi and sonoff, xiaomi every two times three drops, and sonoff, I don't like the delay of 2 or 3 seconds that it has when opening

Should work without issue. How many zigbee repeaters do you have?

Yes, not cheap.

Originally I had the Sensative Strips Guard, which are Z-Wave. I liked that they could be completely hidden - they can be mounted in the frame of the window making them totally invisible from inside or outside. The pairing process, which requires waving a magnet around (as the units are entirely sealed), is a major pain but, fortunately, doesn't have to be done often. I joined them originally to SmartThings then moved them to a Hubitat C-4. When I installed the C-7 I left the Sensative units paired to the C-4 as I didn't want to deal with pairing them again. Anyway, the Sensative batteries, advertised to last "up to" 10 year battery life, all died within about 5 years. That put me on the search for something else. The Nyce sensors are just about the smallest I have found - I didn't what to have to drill the holes that would have been required for a recessed sensor such as the Aeon (I have one of those on my front door). The dimensions of the Nyce sensor allowed me to put them on the inside of the window and still clear the screens when those are in place.

I have been quite happy with the Nyce sensors - not quite as invisible as the Sensative but easier to pair and they have a replaceable battery. They have been in-place for 16 months now on the original batteries.

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Aqara are actually excellent sensors, and will not drop if they’re on the right controller. Almost all my sensors are Aqara or Mijia. They are joined to a ConBee 2 stick on Home Assistant and then brought into Hubitat via Home Assistant Device Bridge. Very solid setup, and a lot more cost effective to add the ConBee 2 and HA, than to outfit your home with NYCE sensors. Nothing against NYCE, except the price (not so nice).

Sonoff do tend to drop if you have them too far from Hubitat. As @aaiyar mentioned, you will need repeaters for those. They probably would do better on the ConBee as well, but I only have a Sonoff motion sensor and its located close to the hub, so I couldn’t say for sure.

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I am curious SmartHomePrimer why you run HA AND hubitat. Seem's like if you got through the learning curve of HA you would not need Hubitat? No?

I like the ST now Aeotec multi sensor, just the price point that's the issue. Used some rebadged Sonoff (Cygnett) as well that have worked ok.

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• I like Rule Machine and Basic rules. No YAML
• I like having another hub for integrations that HA cannot match. The Lutron integration for example.
• Best way to control my Insteon devices.
• It’s great to be able to use Hub Mesh for distributing different types of devices across hubs.
• Backups work well.
• Moving back and fourth between versions works well.

It’s a worthy hub. HA is not much more than a device bridge for me.

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Makes it easy to present devices to Google Home/Amazon Alexa as well, without a sub.

I don't feel I have a need for the extra bridge with the devices I have available in AUS, but it's a decent approach.

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I am using Singled devices and so far working well.

Sengled Smart Window & Door Sensor, (2-count)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QHDXQXJ/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_i_dl_ZGG8PT2X39HGA89KQW8K?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

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BTW, in addition to the sensors mentioned above, there are also dozens of different makes and models Tuya based contact/door/window sensors that are produced under different white labels ( LIDL, Conrad in Europe, Mercator Ikuu and Brillant Smart in Australia, etc, etc.. ) that also work OK with Hubitat. Just checked Walmart.com and it is full of such contact sensors under different white label names.
I am not aware of any problems like dropping off the Zigbee network or similar. Well, the build quality is something that varies from model to model...

I've found HA to be great at augmenting the feature set of HE (and it runs Node-RED :heart_eyes:). Tribute to HE's and HA's flexibility.

Not sure I would spend the time to incorporate just a set of sensors though - there would have to be other compelling reasons and you'd need at least a Zigbee stick (Sonoff Zigbee USB 3.0 dongle is nice), dedicated server (pi/vm/NAS etc) and some patience.

In my case I am currently running HA sans radios (no Zigbee or Z-Wave) in order to handle my Ring devices + and as a host for Node-RED. Am also experimenting with HA as a Homebridge replacement. All of this ties back to HE which is my primary hub.

If you are into tinkering and ultra cheap somewhat dubious smart home devices it's worth messing around with. IF you just want a "set and forget" system then sticking with the native HE environment and using compatible devices is the way to go.

clarification: not all devices need to be of "dubious nature" in order to connect to HA, just that you'll probably have better luck doing so than using HE.

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My contribution would be find something that works reliably with HE and that is likely to work in your setup. That may include testing a small number of the sensors that make your shortlist, before you expand out to a larger list of the devices you need long-term.

I'd echo (no pun intended) the recommendation for Samsung / Aeotec sensors. They are expensive in terms of battery replacement over time, but do a great job.

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A fair argument, but the setup time of HA is insignificant. No building the OS and then installing Home Assistant like in the past. It’s all ready to go for you. Just image a microSD card and pop it in the RPi, or download the ready to roll image for a VM like virtual box. For some, the latter will be plenty, and the spare computer already available for no additional cost. So even if you bought the most expensive Zigbee controller, which would be the ConBee 2, it’s less than the cost of one or two sensors (depending on the brand), and very frequently less than the cost of one smart switch.

Setup is pretty easy to learn, and for a device bridge, there’s not much you really need to know. Just adds so many options for so little cost, and honestly very little effort anymore.

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Don't get me wrong I agree with you ... and for my use-case it's exactly what I am doing... I did fib a bit earlier, I do have Zigbee2MQTT setup with a Sonoff USB but no devices connected and am not really adding anything (I have a conbee stick and a few UZB-7s as well)... but again I like to tinker and am into most things tech.

There are smart people here who either lack the desire to go deeper with this stuff or maybe feel doing so might be too technical a challenge right now so for them I would recommend the "Hubitat Way"... :wink:

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I think a key issue is (or should be?) what happens when I'm not here. I do worry about having too many moving parts in my home automations. I'm already over complicated with two hubs, three Pi's (actually four, but only three are currently linked to HE stuff) and now I'm playing w/using HA on another Pi for some of the uncooperative (but very small) Tuya contact sensors.

I've written up and keep current a summary of all my networking and home automation stuff, but regardless I can imagine how my wife will react when I'm turned to dust...and very glad I won't be there to see it! :wink:

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That's what I am pondering during any key device purchase or rule change....

Or just nightly (hourly) when logging onto the Community...

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Getting off topic here but you know you can probably consolidate a bunch of stuff under one PI using HA - that's what I did with Node-RED. HA has an addon for Node-RED and Mosquitto Broker and a million other things. It's kind of being used as my "external app" manager now.

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You guys are funny. You know that no matter how simple you make it, something will eventually go wrong. When we’re not here and something goes wrong, our wives will throw it in the garbage like they have wanted to do all along. :laughing:

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