Warning about Aeotec Multisensor 6

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Recently we had a thunderstorm come through which caused a tree to fall on my neighborhood's powerlines that feed my house. We lost power for over 12 hours. Fortunately I have a Raspberry Pi monitoring 2 UPS's that power my Unifi network, NAS, and HE hubs and it gracefully shut things down. When the power came back on I noticed that things were a little off with my Zwave mesh. Random switches would turn on and off and my Zwave water valve would close at random times. Having no water caused major family drama so I had to figure out what is going on.

Fortunately I have a UZB Zniffer, you can read more about that here, so I started monitoring my zwave mesh and noticed my master bathroom ceiling mounted Aeotec Multisensor 6 was spamming the network constantly (I have another in my garage), both USB powered. This MS6 was reporting motion, humidity, etc as it should but I decided to pull it down and remove power to see if the Zwave mesh improved. After removing power the water valve stopped closing and random switch's toggling stopped. I put the MS6 aside until I could find and receive a replacement sensor.

Fast forward a few days as I waited for delivery of a NYCE ceiling motion. After installing the NYCE sensor, I powered the MS6 so I could properly exclude it from my HE hub and immediately my water valve closed and a few switched turned on - I had setup a rule to notify me about my water valve closing and I immediately got notified. This confirmed this darn sensor was the cause of my zwave issues.

I bought the Aeotec Multisensors because I like the in-Ceiling "Recessor" and look of them installed. Too bad they are terrible devices. They have been slow to detect motion and slow 9.6 speed even though they are Zwave Plus. I almost upgraded to the MS7 and glad I didn't, I am done with the Aeotec Multisensor's. I have no experience with NYCE sensors but have read good comments here in the community and will likely replace my garage MS6 too as I just don't trust these sensors.

Hopefully this post is useful to others if you have MS6's and are experiencing random zwave mesh issues. You might try powering them down to see if things improve.

Now off to destroy this crappy sensor Office Space style! :rofl:

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What firmware are they on there have been loads of fixes to these devices over the years.

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Version 1.14, updated them in past few years.

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I have a few, they are excellent as far as motion sensors go. Unobtrusive (I put them in bathrooms because they don’t flash when detecting motion), fast to trigger and reset, great battery life.

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Do you have a rule that closes the water valve when the sensor detects something? I can’t see the sensor causing the valve to close without a rule.
The sensor was trying to reconnect to the hub after you put it back in the mesh.

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Yes but only if any water sensors report wet, but they are all zigbee.

I totally agree with you and don’t understand how this sensor can cause a water valve to close and other switch to turn on but it happened hence this warning.

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This is possible if direct Z-wave association was configured (Inovelli provides such a tool).

It is also possible for Zigbee devices if a Zigbee group messaging (or direct binding) is configured. HE Groups and Room Lighting apps can do that.

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True. But none was configured and doesn’t make sense for this situation.

Not trying to troubleshoot this issue at this point as I have removed this bad MS6. I am sure most of you are scratching your heads not believing me but all good.

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