Zigbee Door

[Lu Rounsaville]

Recentlyswitched to hubitat after using smartthigs for few years. I have couple of samsung contacs but they are expensive and battery life is not the best. I'm looking to add more contacts to the system and been looking for a cheaper alternative. During my search I found these

Not the prettiest but have 2xAA batteries, so quite compelling as it might have a good battery life.

I've read through multiple topics but can't see any mention of these specific sensors, has anyone got any experience with them?

Most Tuya Zigbee Door sensors are working out of the box using HE inbuilt 'Generic Zigbee Contact Sensor (no temp)' driver. You may need to manually assign the HE driver to the device and repair again. I have two different models Tuya door sensors, all are rock-solid in the Zigbee network.

You may need to wait several hours or one day for the battery percentage status to be sent by the device. This one seems to be using the standard Zigbee clusters, so hopefully, the battery status will appear soon.

I don't have a dedicated driver for Tuya contact sensors (yet), as the only one that I have seemed to me that it worked out of the box with the HE inbuilt Generic Zigbee Contact Sensor (no temp). I had simply mounted it on the window, without paying much attention to the battery reporting .. Now I see that it reports the battery percentage remaining as 120% (!) once every 16 hours. The real battery percentage remaining should be 60%, many other Tuya devices use to send the percentage multiplied by 2..

capability "ContactSensor" // uncomment for _TZE200_pay2byax contact w/ illuminance sensor

Then save the modified driver and assign it manually to the Tuya contact sensor that you have. Please let me know if it works.

I ordered one of these larger contact sensors hoping that the big case would make for easy soldering to add remote contacts. Well. the case is huge and airy inside but the solder points are tiny, so phooey,

I've tried that driver but it did not work, i.e. still no battery status. I've tested NYCE built in contact driver and this one displays battery percentage. It's showing 100 so I'll give it a while to see if it changes.

The shortest answer is that Zigbee is somewhat better than zwave for power management, which allows you to have a smaller device that still has a one-year battery life. And most people want small devices for door sensors because they are visible in the room.

Also I believe the newest generation of Z wave (700 series) is better suited for battery use so I suspect there will be a bit more devices coming out in the next year or two that are Z wave rather than zigbee.

Zwave sensors have been only trouble for me. They often are the culprit of too much traffic and I seem to be changing batteries all the time compared to the zigbee sensors I have. I wish there were more Zigbee options so I guess I am in the opposite camp I am actively trying to replace as many zwave devices with Zigbee as I can.

My experience is a little different. I use both Zigbee (Smartthimgs, Orvibo, Xiaomi) and Z-wave (Fibaro, Aeotec) sensors and the reliability has been pretty even across both. Battery life is also pretty similar although the batteries in the Z-wave sensors do cost a lot more than the coin cells in the Zigbee ones. I also noted that the battery vendors makes a difference. For instance a Panasonic battery will last on average twice as long as a GP or Energizer one. I put the reliability down to the fact that I have a pretty good Z-wave Mesh across my 2 story house and have a Fibaro Dimmer2 or Double Switch 2 behind every light switch.

I am getting ready to add zigbee door locks to my house. The last time I did this was back in 2008 and we used Baldwin locks with C4. I was very happy with their performance but not with the keypad buttons that eventually faded in color and the numbers wore off.

We have the Yale Zigbee locks with physical buttons, and they have all been very reliable and durable. I think the Yale locks with the touchscreens (not the physical buttons) are a little more prone to failure. One other non-C4 related tip -- most of these Zigbee/Z-wave locks have pretty crappy (i.e., easily picked) physical locking mechanisms. We had a locksmith replace the cylinders inside all our Yale Zigbee locks with more secure physical locks. It was quick and easy to do; he didn't seem fazed by the electronic components. Plus, if you have a bunch of locks, you can put them all on a single key in this step.

I have Yale in two homes all with touchscreens. The touchscreens have functionally worked perfect but if one is in direct high UV area sunlight I have had one fade. Yale replaced it though without much fuss.

I have 2 of the Yale Touchscreen locks and 2 Kwikset locks all on Control4. The 2 Yale locks are protected due to covered porches - front and back. 1 of the Kwiksets is exposed to the elements in Southern Texas so the heat wears on the finish. I've seen a Yale lock do the same.

I've had dealers tell me the same thing. They don't understand why C4 sets the price so high on these. I don't like it myself and even had my Yale zigbee card go bad once (very rare for this to happen). Thankfully it was still under warranty and they replaced it immediately for me.

Have 4 Baldwin Locks installed since 2009, zero issues with them and reliable. Have 2 Yale locks for outside gates access to backyard. They have also worked well and easy for service providers (pool, landscapers, etc) to access with their unique codes.

I'm looking to upgrade my 2GIG alarm system to Qolsys IQ Panel 2+, which can be integrated with C4. The Qolsys panel also supports Z-wave smart locks and I would be able to lock/unlock through Alarm.com if I maintain that service.

I suspect Control4 is buying for about the same cost as Amazon sells them for, plus the added cost of the different Zigbee card and development, plus support and warranty overhead by Control4, plus the dealer's markup to you for his warranty and support and overhead.

The other business model would end up costing the same. You buy the lock, and dealer sells you the card. The dealer and Control4 have to profit on the deal to cover their support, liability overhead, so it's going to be a damn expensive card. Then the conversation becomes "How come the card costs $250 and the locks only $150, can't cost $20 to make the card"

Consider your zwave/zigbee coverage also before picking a flavor. Without adequate signal neither work well. So if you have Control4 lights and such, or sufficient controller placement, than Zigbee will likely prove more reliable than a limited zwave deployment.

Why is this so different than buying other third party products, like an Echo Dot, or a Hue light bulb, which, although not a proprietary C4 product, works as a device in my C4 system. I can buy an Echo Dot for $50 and the manufacturer, Amazon assumes warranty, support, etc? Same think with lots of other third party devices? The only difference that I can think of is that the lock uses Zigbee as opposed to Wifi or ethernet. I may pay for a driver but I am not paying large markups.

I guess after buying and trying two different door/window sensors I need a recommendation on one that will actually work reliably... I want to go with Zigbee... and I'll pay... if it works reliably... any recommendations?

In this case, I wanted a sensor that uses AAA batteries so I could easily power it with an AC/battery conversion kit (the garage sees seasonal temp extremes from -25F to 110+F). Appearance isn't important to me out there, just solid performance. The 3R sensor has been great in that respect.

Originally I had the Sensative Strips Guard, which are Z-Wave. I liked that they could be completely hidden - they can be mounted in the frame of the window making them totally invisible from inside or outside. The pairing process, which requires waving a magnet around (as the units are entirely sealed), is a major pain but, fortunately, doesn't have to be done often. I joined them originally to SmartThings then moved them to a Hubitat C-4. When I installed the C-7 I left the Sensative units paired to the C-4 as I didn't want to deal with pairing them again. Anyway, the Sensative batteries, advertised to last "up to" 10 year battery life, all died within about 5 years. That put me on the search for something else. The Nyce sensors are just about the smallest I have found - I didn't what to have to drill the holes that would have been required for a recessed sensor such as the Aeon (I have one of those on my front door). The dimensions of the Nyce sensor allowed me to put them on the inside of the window and still clear the screens when those are in place.

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