I am using a Samsung smartthings multipurpose sensor to track if my garage door is closed. I noticed today by accident while mowing that my door was opened but the sensor showed as closed and now I realize it hasn't been reporting to hubitat for many days. After reconnecting it works correctly.
This has me severely concerned because now I can no longer trust this sensor (and all other wireless sensors) to make sure my home is closed up.
Has anyone else experienced this? And what are your thoughts? Is this device just bad? Should I be using two sensors as a fail safe?
Unfortunately I do not have any other zigbee devices, I primarily focus on Z-wave. But this device is only 40 feet from the hubitat separated by a single wall. I can try and buy a Z-Wave contact sensor and utilize my mesh.
This is why I use an app that checks that each wireless sensor has updated recently, which is far better than checking the battery status. There are several available (Device Monitor, Device Watchdog); I happen to use this one:
It's also the reason I like my sensors to also report temperature; this way they definitely send an update at least once a day.
Sort of. There is a Zigbee table of sorts if you know how to access it. But it only shows directly connected devices. So it probably will work in this case.
In that table, 255 is the highest/best signal strength. (the LQI) If yours is anything much below probably 240 or so, it has poor or marginal signal strength. That isn't an exact number, just something I have observed, so don't panic at 239. Not sure there is an official number here.
had a similar issue with my door sensor, and it totally went away once I added a Zigbee outlet for the garage door opener, or you can put it in the adjacent outlet in the ceiling not controlling anything. That repeater gets you above the cars and other heavy or reflective things like toolboxes, shelves, cabinets, and so on.
Check out Settings-> Zigbee Details-> Zigbee Logging for the last hop RSSI; it should appear each time the device transmits (if it goes through a repeater, note that you'll be seeing that repeater's RSSI reported instead of the device's).