I thought I would share my experience with the YoLink Outdoor contact sensor and the speaker hub and the new X3 Hub. I also setup the YoLink App/driver for Hubitat integration.
First, my hub(s) are in the house 250’ from my front gate where I want to use it. YoLink “claims” it can do 1/4 mile, 1,320 ft or 402 meters. Prior to this experiment I used a standard outdoor case on a Zooz door contact that just would NOT work at my distances.
So after reading 1/4 mile and an outdoor contact I was like BINGO and a Hubitat App to allow me to use rules and HSM, so figured I had a solution…
So I thought…
I first got the speaker hub for the sensor, hooked it up in the house, WiFi worked with my Eero mesh in 2.4ghz mode and got the Drivers installed and alerts working with Pushover Critical alerts…
So far so good…
Then I installed the contact outside on my gate 250’ straight in line of sight of the hub.
Opened gate, received Pushover alert… working..
Next day.. Amazon guy came and NO alert??? WTH??
I contacted support and after back and forth they said the hub was not compatible with my environment… seriously? Not a why, just that I needed the X3 hub…
So as I prepared to send it all back to Amazon they sent me an email saying they will give me the X3 Hub for free! This one has Ethernet, WiFI and 5G, score !!!
So I thought…
I got it installed using Ethernet since I have a switch near my firewall and internet router, so no WiFi needed… figured that would work even better. Tested inside, like the first hub, it worked so all good! I tested the gate and got the alert… all fixed now…
So I thought…
Next day I went to walk the dog and… no alert ;-(. I contacted support again and went back and forth with them. They suggested I use WiFi??? So I tried and the X3 hub is refusing to work with the Eero 2.4ghz WiFi… not that I thought this would help any, and this is their latest hub???
So back to Ethernet…
Since they had me take off the sensor and make sure it was working closer to the X3 hub… I tried several tests.. every 30 feet or 10 meters I opened and closed the sensor all the way to the gate, every time getting the expected alerts…
Conclusion…
The LoRa 1/4 mile distance is BS, a bunch of hooey.. kudos to whoever made the YoLink integration to Hubitat, that worked perfectly, but if you are looking for a longer distance than Z-Wave or Zigbee provides… this YoLink stuff is NOT it. You would have to put the hub outside, which it is not designed for to have a chance for it to work.
What’s next?
First off your comments, 2nd I am going to get a Zigbee extender that I will plug into my porch outlet to eliminate the house wall and use a Zigbee contact sensor on the gate since Zigbee can go 100', it may work… Z-Wave at 50’ already tested with the Zooz setup, so let's see how this does…
Anyone have ideas for gate 250’ away from the router solution?
