Monoprice Devices or something better?

Any HE users a fan of Monoprice? Has anyone tried many of the STITCH devices?

I have been using Monoprice for everything I can and I love their products....

Now that I am joining the HE World, I hope to be adding many more of their STITCH devices to my Home, as long as they have been working well for everyone????

I order a lot of monoprice zwave and zigbee devices. I feel like you might find disappointment in the STITCH devices as they look to be wifi? Nothing wrong with wifi, but I'm not even sure if these have a driver. If you're moving over to HE, then wouldn't it only be natural to want to use zigbee and zwave protocols to keep your wifi uncluttered? I'm not downing the product. And I don't understand it fully, as I only glanced at it, but if I had come across it in research for an application, I would pass up having a bunch of these in my environment. But I don't use any wifi devices in my environment at all for smart home automation.
I did find this post on it when I searched.

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Stitch are not natively supported, and I haven't seen anyone here using them. They might be Tuya-type devices you could convert to Hubitat compatibility via Tasmota and the community integration for that firmware, but my quick Googling is inconclusive on that matter. In any case, Zigbee and Z-Wave devices are likely to work a lot better for you here. Monoprice sells a lot of those, too, though most aren't very good (the door/window sensors are two of few I might recommend if you find them on sale, but you can find prettier ones elsewhere and sometimes for better prices).

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Thanks! I guess I may have prematurely use the STITCH name....

I was mainly looking at the inexpensive motion sensors and door/window sensors. A better option while staying economical would be fine too.

Got lots of doors and windows so any inexpensive solutions would be appreciated....

Is this the non-wifi / z-wave option you were talking about????

https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=24259

The iris contact and motion sensors are very popular here.

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I saw that Iris seems to have been discontinued....

You can still pick them up on ebay.

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Yep, that's one! They have another, too. I've used both. That's not a competitive price (or appearance), but you can sometimes find them on sale. If you have no protocol preference, the new (or really any generation of) SmartThings Multisensor is smaller and cheaper. You can also occasionally find others in sale for less at popular online smart home sellers like Amazon or TheSmartestHouse. Homeseer has one too with the same design but (as usual with them) rarely on sale.

As mentioned above, many people adore the (now discontinued) Iris sensors, but you can still find a lot on eBay. The v2 and v3 sensors both work well; Hubitat technically supports v1 as well, but I personally wouldn't risk it (luck seems to vary, possibly based in sensor firmware, but there's no way to update it anymore). Be aware that many Iris contact sensors may be sold without the magnet portion (still may be worth it if you can find something to use), so checking the listing. You didn't mention motion sensors, but I'm a huge fan of the Iris v2 there too.

Does Monoprice sell Zigbee devices? I couldn't find any on their website.

Oh .. maybe not .. when I find something I want, I look on monoprice first. ha! If they don't have an equivalent, I move on. Guess I never actually searched out zigbee specifically. Good point!

I have had good luck with the Monoprice devices I have bought. The door/window sensor that is an unlabeled WADWAZ works great. The 4-in-1 MultiSensor seems to be an unlabeled Zooz, again very useful. I wish I could get more of what used to be sold as the 11990 (in-wall dual relay switch that also allowed normal switches to work). Cheap and reliable, plus they were REALLY small.

Yes, but sadly the guy who bought the pallets of the iris devices has run out of the motion sensors we all prefer, and is getting low on the dual zigbee/zwave energy monitoring outlets now,

GASP! NOoooooo!

Sadly yes :frowning: I went to buy another 10 of the good motion sensors and he is out. He doesnt expect to come across any more but said if he does he'll let me know. He also was down to I believe it was 9 sets of the zigbee/zwave outlets... I grabbed another set of 5 when I was told that... Cant beat the value

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yah.. just bought another 5 too. I was on the fence with it and decided I'd probably regret not doing it. So, I pulled the trigger.

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I know that nobody asked me but here is my unsolicited long and arduous rant about Monoprice devices...

Simplified; stay away from them.
Unsimplified; I have never had a great experience with the company as it pertains to Z-Wave devices. I have used Monoprice for speakers, wire, cables, connectors/adapters, etc. and for the most part have been satisfied. Their stuff is cheap and is meant to be cheap. Sometimes you get surprised with something that is cheap and good.

But with the Z-Wave devices all they do is buy a huge batch of something to rebrand and then take a hands off approach to it. They don't distribute a lot of information about the devices. They won't tell you what device it really is so you can do research on your own for actual specs or what parameters the devices support, etc. They don't publish or attempt to maintain a compatibility list and again you can't do research on your own.

But the thing that drives me the most crazy is that none of their devices are typically supported by the generic profiles or drivers in any system. SmartThings... required a device handler for full functionality. Hubitat is the same. Ring... often the device is just not supported at all. Okay, that's fine I guess. But what made me extremely angry is that from their site they announced and linked to their "partner" who wrote SmartThings device drivers and their "partner" kept all of the drivers behind a paywall. Surprise! You bought the device for SmartThings, the biggest Z-Wave platform, where they do actually say it's compatible but they don't tell you that you will be paying for the device driver.

(That made me so bothered that I was going to rewrite every single one of that users drivers with full functionality from scratch and post it over and over again in his thread with a link to the my open drivers on github. I'm too busy for that though. Can you tell how I feel about this though!?)

So, I think that's pretty ridiculous. Almost every other vendor that rebrands will cough up the information about what device it really is. Almost every other vendor that sells Z-Wave devices at all does their very best to compile and provide free drivers for their devices. Monoprice did the exact opposite. I've tried to publish reviews on their site on the devices about these issues as well and they will not publish them. I have tried to put them on their Amazon listings and they report them. They were not inflammatory reviews either.

If you can get past ALL of that then, sure, buy their stuff. I bought the following devices from them before I discovered how aggravating their approach to Z-Wave is...

So... that's my personal experience with them. If I had to do it all over again I would probably still have bought the contact sensors with the external dry contact header. I would have bought nothing else. And I still curse and scorn them for putting their "supported" drivers behind a paywall. That's just... so off-putting.

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Bummer for that overall experience @codahq. I will say all my stuff is the older Z-Wave, I have not bought any NEW items (well, HA related at least) from them lately although I really have been tempted by those Door/Window sensors since they appear to be the Plus version of the venerable WADWAZ that I LOVE for projects.

The most annoying part I have run across is the support aspect. Like I said, my stuff is mostly older and sometimes I just want to check a manual quickly for the reset or such. They never seem to have them anymore. Thankfully I have always been able to find the "real version" elsewhere... but it is annoying.

That paywall thing, is that the "RBoys Apps" thing that it mentions? That struck me as really odd sounding, and from your notes it seems even more aggravating than I thought it might be. Thanks for that warning! Maybe I will get those Contact Sensors anyways... but just rework my existing WADWAZ driver to support them rather than look for whatever they are providing (at a cost).

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Yes.

They are different. Here is an explanation from @agnes.zooz:

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I have the 15902 using the built-in Zooz 4-in-1 Sensor. Just double checked one of them too because I have 3 of the Monoprice ones and one of the "true Zooz".

No matter what, the variability in experiences people have had with the Monoprice certainly does not look good.