I just want to add some information so that we are all be better educated as a buyer of temperature sensor
The architecture that @greglsh mentioned used dedicated temperature (in this case come with humidity) sensor. These kind of sensors is built to be much better than temperature sensor that come in the MCU.
Most suggested devices that you put in Freezer to measure the temperature is using MCU internal temperature sensor. The makers, who used these sensors, in turn, advertise as one of the feature is that it is a temperature sensor. As a buyer, I think we ought to know about this fact to make our decision.
If you search around google, you will find this comments about internal MCU temperature sensor. I do not undermine a specific Mfg because we just looked the internal temperature specification only. This is a great Zigbee Manufacture MCU with a great product. Here is one of the employee opinion on the MCU temperature sensor. I would not bog down about the 0.1% accuracy. But, there are complexity on handling the error with the reference, adc performance and etc.
Sensor like SI7021 is built from ground up to be temperature sensor.
As a buyer, I think we should look at what our goal for the monitoring. If your tolerance is so high that you would say "as long as it is cold", then any solution is good. But, if you start needing to make sure that I want my meat or ice cream from Japan is at -5 degree F, this is an indication that you want a full featured temperature sensor.
I ended up going with Ecowitt seeing as their sensors are dedicated. I know that they are not Zigbee/Zwave but there is a driver for local access to the sensor data.
That’s correct. The reason why the v1 sensors are usually the cheapest is because they use a proprietary zigbee profile that was only intended to work with Iris.
They will work with hubitat (thanks to @mike.maxwell) but personally I would always choose the standard ZHA 1.2-based v2 and v3 devices.
Not that I know of, they should be pretty similar sensors, I believe. I know the iris v3 motion sensors can also report humidity, although I’m not sure about the contact sensors.
If I needed more contact sensors, I would probably go for whichever is cheaper between v2 and v3.
For the contacts, I personally would go with the V3 before the V2. They both work well, I just prefer the look and feel of the V3 units. There were early complaints of the V2 sensors having fragile battery contacts, but I have not experienced that problem. I currently have all three iterations of the Iris contacts connected to Hubitat and have never needed to reconnect any of the V2/V3 sensors. I did have a pair of instances where my V1 sensors all went offline. The V1s do not rejoin properly and need to be added back as new.
I put together the following components in order to get a notification of when my chest freezer has exceeded 15F which is far above the setting range I see of roughly -5F to +5F.
Xfinity XHS2-UE contact & temp sensor (selected for price and battery life from Ebay) Auto paired as a Generic Zigbee Moisture Sensor, had to force it to Generic Zigbee Contact Sensor
Their sensors are rock solid reliable and affordable, their shipping often costs more!
The soldering job was tricky and not pretty but good enough. I just used the long wires that came on the Senasys model I ordered. Should have spliced in thinner wires but this worked out with care taken and I will glue/seal with some E6000 from the exterior for good measure even tho the fit was tight.
First pic is the XHS2-UE which will hang on the adjacent wall providing ambient temp info (puposely did not want to put it and its' battery in the freezer). Second pic is the Senasys temp switch on the edge of the freezer. It is just suspended in the freezer by the wires draped over the edge (wires spread so as not to cause a large gap in the lid seal).
In my opinion, this is another example of a good solution. Thanks for the idea using thermostat. In the case where I do not need granular temperature reading. It require only one digital io pin.
I actually connected with @scunny.
I was so ready to order these I asked him for a case of 12 motion temp combo sensors. I even PayPalled him price including shipping.
I was so excited for my projects this weekend.
Just before shipping them, I realized they were ZigBee instead of ZWave. I have only ZWave devices in my mesh.
I was going to deploy 10-12 of these and there was no way I had enough range to support them without a fully-fleshed out ZigBee mesh.
Then I was bummed and I had already sent the money.
He actually got on the phone with me and I explained, and he refunded me right over the phone.
If you have need to Iris v1 devices, get with @scunny.
I ordered 10 sensors 3320-L from you and receive them today. So far I have set up two of them. They discovered on my hub just fine and I got them configured as devices and set up on dashboards. They show an initial room temperature reading but neither one has updated even once. One is inside the freezer where I previously had another Zigbee sensor that just could not hold up under the freezing temps and went through a battery every few days. When the battery was up however it was reporting fine. How should these be configured to report temperature? Seems pretty unlikely that the first two I pull out of the bag could be defective.
He is a great seller, but probably won't know anything about diagnosis of these. And I am not sure of his return policy.
These devices do work on Hubitat (I have a bunch) so I would likely mess around with them for a few days and see if the problem could be diagnosed. Maybe start a new thread, describe your issue, and give screenshots of the device settings page, any logs, describe your Zigbee network, or whatever else might be relevant to diagnosing why they don't seem to work. Could even be as simple as a low battery or something?
These actually came with batteries. They are reporting 100% but since the temp that shows is incorrect that could be too. I have fresh batteries so with a try. Thanks for responding. I will report whatever the eventual outcome is. I will start a new thread like you suggest if I can't figure this out.
Hope it all works out for you. They are stable sensors. I use several myself specifically for temp reporting. I would perform a factory reset and add new batteries and see if they correct.
FOLLOW UP: After trying several other things I changed the channel on the Zigbee Radio in my Hubitat hub and that appears to have solved the problem. The three devices I have activated so far all appear to be working now. So it was a system problem an not the devices themselves.
Is there a specific driver you used with the XHS2-UE? I've been having issues with them dropping off after inactivity, even with the sensor placed next to the hub.
I've tried adding a few outlets for repeating aswell. The sensors appear on the route info table for a few seconds when triggered but the hub doesn't register anything. Any tips are appreciated.
