I'm hoping the Hubitat community brain trust can help with this one.
My refrigerator door "left open" beep is so quiet it might as well be disconnected.
No problem! I have Hubitat Elevation!
I tried a Hue motion sensor that reports illumination. It stopped reporting as soon as I put the sensor in the fridge. I thought it was the cold, or the sensor was just flakey. I tried a 2nd Hue sensor with the same result.
I tried an NYCE contact sensor. It also stopped reporting. I tried a 2nd sensor, but it failed as well.
It looks like my refrigerator is a FARADAY CAGE! LOL
I use an Aqara humidity/temp sensor and it works fine in my fridge but I do have strang Tuya 3.0 ZB repeaters al through the house.
Before I used those I had drop outs everywhere.
My fridge freezer is built into a kitchen unit so it is easy to fit a contact sensor to the unit door and 'carcass' that is hidden.
If fridge or freezer door is left open for 5 minutes then I have an alert sent to my phone via pushover and an alert is played over my Google home device. This repeats every 5 minutes until door is closed.
This may not be a good solution for you.
I bought a new fridge, and for the first time magnets actually stick to the front AND the sides! I now understand that's not necessarily a good thing LOL.
I think a contact sensor mounted OUTSIDE the fridge is the answer. Not very elegant, but I suspect it will work.
I tried monitoring the temp inside the fridge. First issue was that the batteries didn't last long in a cold environment. So I powered it from a AA battery pack under the refrigerator instead.
The other issue was the wild temperature swings. If you open the door and look for too long for that pastrami sandwich, the air in the fridge will be replaced by room temperature air and not reach 36 degrees F again for quite a while after closing the door. Also, the fridge may have a heater in the wall to burn off condensation.
To really do it right, you need to have the sensor in a block of something to dampen the temperature swings. After all, the air temperature in the fridge isn't as important as the temperature of the contents.
If you look carefully, I'm pretty sure you should be able to find a location where you can mount a contact sensor on the exterior of the fridge...the sensor on the door and magnet on body, or vice-versa.
In this area on the top of the fridge I could mount one if I wanted to. My fridge shuts reliably and I've never had a case of the door staying open so I haven't bothered. I "staged" it w/a spare magnet/sensor.
EDIT: Forgot to mention - I prefer using contact sensors for monitoring the fridge because they are drop-dead simple - the door is either open or closed.
I have the Notifications app set up to notify me (via GH voice and text) if the utility room fridge or freezer doors are open for more than 5m, w/the reminder repeating until I close the door.
I use Hubitat Basic Rules to alert me if the contact stays open for 60 seconds. Probably not the best option for in the kitchen (visible) but it works well for me.
That's weird. My Hues has been working great for years.
I have one in the freezer section and another in the fridge section.
It's a Frigidaire side-by-side.
I've even have sensors for a LaCrosse dumb-but-nice thermometer, whose display is magnetically attached to a door, that work great.
The Hues are paired direct to the hub (I have no repeaters).
I have installed the following at a number of clients. Using this device allows me to monitor temperature and if the fridge/freezer has been open for a long period of time.
After extensive testing of many devices, I settled on the Ecolink model 4655BC0-R.
Critical to using this contact sensor, is that I "encase" the sensor with scotch tape, to ensure that the mechanism inside the sensor doesn't freeze up. It uses a CR2450 battery. I stick it on the inside of the freezer (or fridge) with 3M command strips. The magnet part (which doesn't have to be encased in scotch tape), is attached via 3M Command strips on the door. I have found via experience that the battery lasts around 1yr - 2yr, depending on how often the door is opened.
I have constructed "alarms" when the contact sensor is opened for longer than X minutes.
I have constructed "alarms" when the contact sensor reports a temperature greater than Y for longer than Z minutes.
I also have a neat looking Dashboard that shows everything for the client.
The sensors are available on ebay for a reasonable price.
I apologize. I just checked with Amazon.com and Ebay, and these sensors are all sold out everywhere....
By the way, another critical piece has been that a Zigbee repeater should be positioned close to the fridge/freezer door.
I use these, and their kind in 4 fridges. They do well, have decent battery life.
I have been known to take the battery from the ones in the freezers and move themto the ones in the fridges, and put new batteries in the freezer sensors.
If you're referring to Woodsy, it looks like he's using the Xfinity XHS2-SE door sensors (rebranded Centralite or Visonic? IIRC) and those should be Zigbee and will join the hub and use the generic Zigbee contact sensor driver.
They are zigbee, generic built in contact sensor driver.
I have a dozen in use, fridges, doors and a couple or more just for temp reporting.
Sometimes i miss multifamily housing.
I have a Fibaro Motion Sensor in our garage fridge. It is even a model built for garage installation, so has extra insulation and such. Gives me temp, motion and light sensitivity. I mainly use it to monitor the temp in the fridge. I have only had to change batteries maybe 1-2 times in that last 4 years. Signal always works great.
YoLink works great inside a fridge, either temp, motion, or contact sensors - and battery life seems good as well - It's currently cloud based over lower freqency LorWAN, but there are HE drivers for it
Bottom line it can even speak thru an 1/8 plate steel mailbox - 100 feet from my home - Hell, I think they use it to speak to submerged submarines (just kidding, that's ELF). But for sensors either very far away, or in a Faraday cage (steel box), YoLink is my goto answer.
And latter this year, their newer hub (recent thread on this) is to locally support matter - We'll have to see about that bit.
