I have several of the NYCE door hinges. I’ve never had a problem with any of them. Super quick response and paired instantly. We just built a house and moved in a couple of months ago. All of the door hardware is the oiled bronze and naturally all my NYCE sensors are silver. They have proven hard to find in the 4” model. At least hard to find at a decent price. So was thinking of maybe moving on to a different type of sensor. Maybe door hinge pin or something similar. Something preferably that isn’t as noticeable as a sensor stuck on the outside of the door. Suggestions?
I use Xiaomi Aqara with IKEA Trådfri Outlets for Repeaters. Very good reliability now and very inexpensive.
I have them embedded in the door frame and I take out the magnets and embed them in the door. I can post a photo later if that interests you.
That’s would be awesome. I’m intrigued!
Ok. I’ll take some snaps and you can see if it will work for your situation.
I am using the Aeotec Recessed door sensors. Have been working well for a few years now. Battery life is decent.
It looks like there are other brands available now as well.
I like Aeotec, non recessed. They have terminals you can hook up something like a pressure pad also for getting creative.
Interesting. Please do share photos. This would hide them nicely.
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I have one of the Aeon recessed sensors on my front door. Has been reliable with good battery life (but it doesn't report battery status). I just had to get over drilling some pretty big holes in my door and frame (mahogany).
I have six of the Sensative Strips for window sensors. They are incredibly slim and so easy to hide. The double sided tape mounting system leaves something to be desired and I ended up using contact cement for several of the magnets. Kind of a pain to pair in that they are entirely sealed so any command actions are performed by moving a magnet in a certain pattern/sequence. They are expensive. If the battery really lasts ten years I think they are worth it but if the battery dies much sooner I will not be a happy camper.
The rest of the doors and windows have old SmartThings sensors that are surface mounted (visible). The first generation ones are great. They use AAAA batteries that seem to last forever and are fairly easy to find and inexpensive. I have a few of the later generation ones that take the 2450 Panasonic (only) batteries. I'm not a fan of that battery or the way it fits in the sensor but they have been reliable and battery life has been good.
I have 8 of the Aeon Recessed Door Sensors. I like them. A long time ago, on this forum, someone complained that they got jammed in the hole and thus changing their battery was impossible. I don't have that problem. All of mine slide in and out reasonably easily. They don't want to be too loose, but jammed in?? No. It needs a 3/4" hole, but once you've drilled one door, the horror evaporates. 
Lucky for me, I'm a wobbly driller and the hole isn't tight.
Had I known then what I know now, I'd have put them in a different spot. I put them on the hinge edge of the door. Works fine BUT there's the least swing there (obviously) so the Door Open and the Door Closed come almost on top of each other AND it doesn't detect a not latched door at all. First, I would have mounted it on the Top surface of the door (Magnet above in the Jamb. It DOES want to be tight/jammed ) and at the door handle end.
I have exactly zero doors done this way. 
So...you're saying my idea of putting them on the side opposite the hinge side (but on the side and not the top) is a bad idea? I was thinking about getting a couple, so I'm happy to learn from others' successes and failures before I do. 
As for what I'm using now, I have a lot of Iris v2 sensors. I also have a couple of both Monoprice sensors (with and without tamper, the latter of which also has screws for external contacts...though I'm using one for couch occupancy and not doors) and a Xiaomi or two. The Iris are, as usual, my favorite, but none are bad as long as they mount where you want them and don't look terrible (again Iris tends to win).
Wanting to keep what I have and not buy new if possible, I'm about to try something and see if it works before I go recessed. I have an old house that had rim locks that I recently replaced with Schlage Connects (slowly; it takes a while to drill and chisel where you never had a deadbolt before). I also had to repair the new hole in the door frame where part of the rim lock sat, which I did with some faux wood epoxy. As I was doing that, I jammed the magnet from an old Iris sensor inside so I can hopefully not worry about mounting the magnet (always the tricky part on my old doors--getting it close enough when the door is actually closed, as there's a lot of detail and dimension in my frame and it's hard to get it close). I'll still have the contact sensor itself mounted on the surface, but the Connect is so huge and this will be right next to it, so I'm thinking it will blend in enough.
If this doesn't work or I don't like the look, I'll go the recessed route. Just figured I'd give a "hybrid" approach a chance while I had this opportunity. 
I've got a real mix of door/window sensors.
Some Zwave, some Zigbee and they all seems to get along pretty well.
Listing them out goes like this.....
2 x Iris Door/Window (Zigbee)
3 x Fibaro FGK-10x (+ temp.)
2 x Zipato (or Philio) 4 in 1
4 x Zipato (or Philio) 3 in 1
2 x NeoCoolCam
Most of my Door & Window frames are Commercial style Black aluminium so painting the sensor and magnet bodies Black makes them disappear.
Here's what I've done. I'm not fancy, so the look may not appeal to everyone. My house is old and far from pristine.
This one is at the top of the door frame, because a window at the side will not allow enough depth for the sensor. I originally did this for my iSmart Alarm sensors, but at my back door I have less flexibility to add an additional sensor in this way, so one of my Xiaomi Aqara sensors is just surface mounted. This may change, but I'm not sure if iSmart Alarm is going to be around much longer, and I don't know what I'm going to replace it with yet, so that's basically my door of indecision at the moment.
Here's the magnet recessed in the top of the back door. This is unseen so no need to cover the hole.
At the front door, I have a small mortise for the iSmart Alarm sensor, and a very large mortise that was originally for an Insteon sensor. Now that it has a tiny Xiaomi sensor in it, the opening seems ridiculous, but it does the job just the same. I put a small block of wood at the back of the opening to keep the much smaller Xioami sensor as close the opening as possible in this oversized hole. If you get these positioned just right, you can get the sensors to trigger when the door just barely moves. So if the door isn't completely closed, the sensor will still show open, and that's great for a RM condition that prevents your door lock from operating unless the door is fully closed.
Here's how thin the plywood is. Don't remember where I got that really thin plywood from. I think it was a slide open cover from a wine gift box. Hobby shops will usually have really thin plywood available. Screws are counter sunk into the plywood so the door doesn't catch on them.
Here what one of the front mortises looks like. In experimenting, I found the sensor worked better in one orientation, versus the other for some reason. That's why it's marked that way.
I tape tabs of masking tape onto the sensors, just to make them easy to grab when I need to change their batteries.
Here's one of the two magnets that are embedded in the front door, and then the hole was covered with calking. The other (not shown in this photo) is for the iSmart Alarm contact sensor.
NOTE: I did experiment before cutting anything to make sure one of the magnet poles would actuate the sensor and which was the best, since it doesn't expose the side of the magnet to the sensor's reed switch as it does in an out of the box installation.
How to:
- Cut a thin piece of plywood, or as you can see, some random piece of thin plastic will work too.
- Mark the outside perimeter of the thin plywood or plastic, and then cut a shallow mortise for it to recess into the door frame. Position should be centered front to back of the door. When cutting a mortise, the flat side of the wood chisel should always be toward the side where material is not being removed.
- Measure the height and depth needed for the sensor and mark inside of the shallow mortise so you have lines to follow for the deeper mortise you'll cut for the sensor.
- Drill holes to remove the majority of the wood and then finish the mortise with your sharp chisel.
- Take the magnet out of the plastic holder it comes in, drill an appropriate size hole centered front to back on the door, and exactly at the center height of the sensor. Make sure it's just the right depth. If you accidentally drill too deep, you can slide a piece of dowel or thin piece of wood in the hole first, to take up any extra depth you don't want.
- Install the magnet in the hole and fill the end of the hole with calking to match your door color.
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To be clear, side works fine. And NOT hinge side is an excellent place
Agreed. That's a handy feature. My Insteon sensor has that too. But if you can solder, most contact sensors still use a traditional reed switch, so you can also just tack some wires on. It expands the number of sensors you can use for this purpose.
I've used these (on SmartThings) and they worked very well. Invisible when the door is closed (and hardly noticeable when open). Not cheap, though.
If I had to buy new ones today, and could live with an external device, I would get this. But I already have other Xiaomi devices and know my repeaters support them.
Ya, but I'm lazy. 
Wow! You have to really want to hide your sensors at that price. How long to the batteries last?
In packs of 3 they aren't any more than any other hidden sensor - hinge, hinge pin, recessed, etc.
Battery is listed as 10 years. Who knows, though?
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I’ve had trouble with the sensitive strips being very “chatty” and clogging up the logs with repeat status updates - eventually gave up on them as batteries were getting low after less than a year (I got a set of 3 on a special offer).
Anyone else had this issue?
I’ve used aeotec and Monoprice recessed door sensors with great success after getting over the anxiety of drilling the door!
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