Zigbee Contact Sensor Failing in Closed Status

[jeffreyrdubois]

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?

[waffles]

What's the signal strength on it? I would also place it where the signal travels the least amount a cross the garage door if its metal

[ogiewon]

Has the battery been replaced recently? Do you have any Zigbee devices that act as Zigbee repeaters to strengthen your mesh?

[jeffreyrdubois]

There is no metal between the sensor and the hubitat, just 1 interior wall. Is there some location to see a signal strength metric?

[jeffreyrdubois]

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.

[aaiyar]

@jeffreyrdubois

device is only 40 feet from the hubitat separated by a single wall.

That is not close. Even without the wall.

[jlv]

@jeffreyrdubois

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.

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:

[RELEASE] Device Activity Check - Get notifications for "inactive" devices

(Putting this at the top to make it easier to find...explanation of the app is below.) This app is available on GitHub and is also available from Hubitat Package Manager: To install, just add the app from the above (raw link: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/RMoRobert/Hubitat/master/apps/DeviceActivityCheck/DeviceActivityCheck2.groovy) to "Apps Code." Or, find it in Hubitat Package Manager. App Description: While there have been at least a couple apps with similar purposes, none did exac…

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.

[jeffreyrdubois]

Thank You! This is exactly what I was looking for

[neonturbo]

@jeffreyrdubois

Is there some location to see a signal strength metric?

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.

You want to go to http://192.168.0.xxx/hub/zigbee/getChildAndRouteInfo (substitute your correct IP address in the first part)

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.

[Tony]

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).