Humidity Sensor Advice?

I’ve had success with the Zooz 4-in-1 (Zen40) sensors for this purpose, but they are also chatty and only work properly on a C5 hub. They have a new sensor that might work better. I would not recommend the Zen40 unless you have other options unfortunately due to general feedback. And if you have a C7, they should be avoided.

I have good success with a cheap Tuya Humidity sensor I got off ebay a year ago. It took some time creating a custom driver last year, but it appears the built-in drivers have been modified/updated and now support the device fully. There's even a nice battery gauge on the display.
The battery has lasted about a year, and updates every so often (more than sufficient for my needs).
The only hitch/con is the on-device temperature display is clearly a non-US device with Celsius only, but the hubitat driver does conversion to Fahrenheit automatically for dashboards and rules.

here's the device which easily purchasable on ebay. Just search "Tuya Zigbee Humidity".

Zigbee Temperature And Humidity Sensor | Temperature and Humidity Sensor | Tuya Expo

Do you have a way to power this sensor (from mains/USB, not battery)? If so, your options may be more open: most mains-powered devices should respond to a "refresh" command to get (in part) new humidity values, so if you have some way to trigger that--say, a switch/button or motion event or specific time of day--you may have more options (though I suppose that won't really help with the chattiness, a problem I don't doubt but haven't seen much with the Multi 6, a device I wasn't really a fan of for other reasons). Many battery powered Zigbee devices will respond to a "refresh," too (Sonoff and Xiaomi are likely exceptions), but most battery-powered Z-Wave devices won't, at least not 500 series or earlier (or any 700 I know of at the moment). Even if you can do this, I'd do it with caution--again, it definitely won't help with chattiness, and for battery devices (if it works) you're more likely to drain them faster.

The other issue is accuracy. I have a Zooz Q Sensor, and it's pretty different in humidity reports from most other devices I have (usually higher, but I'm not sure if it's consistent and able to be compensated for/calibrated). If you just want to be notififed for some amount of change, I suppose that won't matter too much. I'd mostly pay attention to the configuration parameters on your devices (if Z-Wave, which tend to expose a lot of these options as such; Zigbee devices should respond to configuration, too, but not all drivers expose many options for this). Many offer time- or percent/change-based reporting options, and in most cases I prefer the latter. You can do both, but then you're usually just causing more traffic for no reason.

Moreso some thoughts than any specific recommendation, as I have thought about this a bit but never put any automation into place for it--haven't found the right sensor myself yet, either. :smiley: (I probably have one, just haven't tried it in the bathroom and found how it reports what algorithm I could use to trigger the fan...)

@wogfun Here ya go, these work very well NYCE Sensor Solutions

Have you successfully purchased a nyce sensor recently?

I’m not sure of the last time I saw them actually in stock on Amazon.

Bummer, because they are really good (and well worth the price IMO).

@marktheknife I picked up a couple on amazon about 6 mos ago... Didn't know they were getting scarce. Seems everything is, look at Dome

Yeah I think they're all out of stock

If i can be attached to mains then i would suggest you look at Hubitat with Homemade Temperature, Humidity, Pressure and Light sensor
I have had his sensors before and it worked well. I used it to automate a humidifier in the winter and it seemed very reliable. The only possible issue is does he have any available now as he makes them in batches. Only downside is that it doesn't really have a case so it isn't the prettiest device.

The secondary benefit of it is that it seems to function as a good zigbee repeater.

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I still prefer my Konke Humidity/Temp sensors. Cheap, decent battery, report quickly on changes in temp or humidity.

But as others point out, there are TONS of options here - especially if you can mains power it. If I could mains power it I would just use an arduino/esp32/esp8266/D1-Mini though and build my own as I could do so for ~$6-8, but I'm weird.

Although consider that mains powering something like humidity usually means you have to put it in suboptimal places, as it really should be higher up on the wall or on the ceiling (if you are trying to measure humidity from a shower and turn a vent on/off anyway).

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I just bought one of the no-LCD on ebay and it arrived today.

A year later, I wonder if there is something new? Aeotec 6 is garbage as a humidity sensor, so I am looking for a replacement.

The NYCE ones are back in stock on Amazon for ~$50. Are they worth the price?

What are your requirements/expectations or use cases?

I just picked up a pair of Sonoff temp/Humidity sensors. They seem to be more accurate than my Ecobee's internal Humidity sensor. Also fairly repeatable when using the salt-water-exposure calibration.

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I ran this calibration test when I first received the Sonoff. My goal was to figure out just how bad it was and create a correction fudge factor. Instead I learned that it was right and my hygrometers were wrong.

Responsiveness is not critical for my applications. The built-in drivers have been updated to address earlier complaints, but I have not looked to see how this changes actual behavior.

I want to automate bathroom fan based in humidity.

Sonoff or NYCE sensor, any fan switch (z-wave, zigbee, clear connect)

Needed a bath fan solution myself...

Sonoff - really wanted to like these -- they're cheap, reliable, and it would always spike up to 99% for shower (which made it easy to create my own simple fan rule instead of using a bath-fan app). But the killer for me was the 5-minute minimum reporting period... That is simply too long for a bath fan use-case IMO.

Aetoec aerQ -- nice tweakability, but it has some major battery issues - I do not recommend. Plus, it's Aeotec, so it's bizarrely expensive lol

Zooz ZSE44 -- this is what I'm using now, and I'm pleased with it. It has a lot of reporting tweakability for triggering, and the battery life has been good. I'm using the community Bathroom Humidity Fan app, and although it's taken me some trial-&-error to dial that in, I've now gotten it working exactly the way I want it (shout out to @napalmcsr for help lately with that!)

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What driver were you using?

IIRC, just the generic zigbee humidity driver. A stock one, anyway. I think there may be a community driver that may address the report timing, but I'd already moved on before knowing that so I'm not familiar with the details.