Recommendation for a water leakage sensor

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1

Hi,

I need to purchase a water leak sensor. My goal is to purchase a sensor that is known to have a good communication record with HE (or at least ST).

The only other requirement is to not have a local alert or at least one that can be disabled.

Any experience or recommendations would be appreciated.

Thanks
John

2

I'm happy with my SmartThings Water Sensors (F-WTR-US-2). Hubitat detected them as Generic Zigbee Moisture Sensor, temperature and wet/dry info work well (and fast).

I believe these units are made by Centralite, and are the same as the Iris one.

Only gotcha was they were perhaps unexpectedly slow to pair with the hub, at first it seemed like detection was failing ... but I walked away and left them for 5min and when I came back they had shown up. (placed sensors about 3" from hub while pairing).

oh, and they're silent, no beeps like with the Fibaro that I used to use...if that's what you were meaning by "local alert".

3

Lowes has an Iris brand that is basically the same as STs version. They go on sale from time to time. I bought the ST versions in Dec when they were $19 a piece. If you can wait I am sure that will repeat.

4

I second @martybird 's recommendation. The Centralite water sensors (I have an Iris branded version) are rock solid, but yes, no beeps from them. TheLeakSmart 2nd generation also work well, beep, have a flashing LED on top and don't require a special battery (3 AAA batteries are required). They work with a community provided driver originally written for ST, but it's a direct copy and paste into the Hubitat custom driver window. A bit expensive though. Avoid the first Gen Leaksmart sensors unless you know they are firmware version b34 or later (which you can only find out by viewing them in a SmartThings hub or a Wink hub). The first gen had a battery door issue that would cause the batteries to loos contact it they were pickup and set down too hard, and if their firmware is old, it won't upgrade properly with Wink Hub or even a Leaksmart bridge like it should, so they will drink batteries like there's no tomorrow and/or exhibit a wake from sleep issue.

5

Thanks for your suggestions. I probably should have specified Z-Wave as I have no other Zigbee devices. Still It might be a good option.

Thanks
john

6

LOL, Yeah, that's important to know. Anyway, I have no repeaters in my house and don't have an issue with them falling off. However, nothing is that far from my hub. Xbee seem to work very well as a Zigbee repeater, (according to several others here, I don't have one) and they're really inexpensive.

7

I am using Xiaomi leak sensors. You can get them on sale for $9.99 from gearbest or lightingthebox.

8

I agree that the Xiaomi Aqara leak sensors are good and for me, in my particular setup, they have been solid performers so far. But I don’t think it’s fair to say that the Xiaomi leak sensors fit that profile for everyone, and so not exactly what @JohnRob is asking for.

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9

What driver did you use for the LeakSmart Sensor that you had positive results with. It looks like ST has a few community drivers for this sensor.

I actually found this one once set to compatibility mode it looks to work great.

https://github.com/ericvitale/ST-leakSmart-Sensor/blob/master/devicetypes/ericvitale/leaksmart-sensor.src/leaksmart-sensor.groovy

10

I used the DTH from @krlaframboise. The battery level does not work in Hubitat and Kevin said he has no plans to modify it because he never had the valve to begin with. If you want to modify it so it does, I'm sure that would come in handy. Just give proper credit to Kevin as the creator of the driver of course.

I have two LeakSmart sensors, but only one is the current firmware, The other would not update from either the LeakSmart bridge or the Wink Hub, so its battery drains very quickly and it gives false alarms. They sent me a replacement. All my other sensors are Xiaomi, and one Iris (Centralite).

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11

The one that i linked above works great for the battery as well. It even allows you to adjust the min max voltages so then when you use a rechargeable battery it reports correctly. When using EBL AAA rechargeables i used 4.2 Volts for 100% instead of the 4.5 Volts.

12

I tried a DTH previously for the sensors that I grabbed from ST. Can't remember which one it was. Might have been the same, but I'm not using the LeakSmart sensors at the moment. However, I don't think Eric has a DTH for the valve, so you have to use Kevin's driver, but it doesn't report battery level of the valve when used in HE.

13

@brianspranger - I hope you are still around as I would love to know how (if at all) you have your Aqara water leak detector on a dashboard and if so what “template” did you use (IE water, contact, etc.). I’m a noob and have one Aqara leak sensor.