Yup, that is true. But I only need to monitor me, and me always means me and my phone. 
I like that it doesn't involve home wi-fi at all, as some other presence approaches do. I keep all my IoT devices on an isolated VLAN, so they can't ever see our main network or who or what is connected to it.
My family isn't on-board for any presence sensors, absolute no to being tracked in any way/shape or form. Oh well, you can lead a horse to water... 
Seems complicated, to me at least.
Where do you mount it? There's more bulk with the outboard batteries. Plus, there's the shielding of the car body.
It's in the center console (between driver and passenger seats). Has zero problem with being picked up by the repeater in the garage. The effective range is between 10-20 feet from the garage door (when the door is down).
Excellent. That'll work.
I don't know what it is, but I'm getting great distance. 150-200' possibly. I wedged the little guy at the base of the windshield and put zigbee outlets at the top of the middle door, and on the wall facing the garage (there's an enclosed breezeway intervening).
Alas, battery is down to 12%. As I said elsewhere, I wrote the date installed on the battery and will run it 'til it dies. Maybe fab up an aux bat setup (the 4AA box seems good).
If you're going to stay w/this approach that will be the way to happiness.
No cloud.
Download the Hubitat app
