[HN Gopher] IKEA sensors for doors and windows, motion, water leaks
___________________________________________________________________
IKEA sensors for doors and windows, motion, water leaks
Author : Terretta
Score : 324 points
Date : 2023-11-28 14:02 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| thfuran wrote:
| Too bad it's not zwave.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| At the $10 price point? Z-wave stuff always seems to cost more,
| and my understanding is that is largely due to the requirements
| for compatibility and testing per Z-wave alliance. I'd be
| shocked if this same thing could even be made at reasonable
| margins for $10.
|
| The flip side to this, is Zigbee stuff always has a lot of
| little quirks, problems, or bugs. There's literally an entire
| module/database for ZHA (Zigbee Home Assistant addon) called
| ZHA Quirks that's designed to work around all the little issues
| with various devices.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Agreed. I love zigbee for its HA integrations. Fully off
| zwave now. Recently just added some IKEA motion senors and
| bulbs and everything is working so nice.
| jsight wrote:
| Yeah, I used to be a big fan of Z-Wave, but the effective
| price minimum is killing it. Zigbee and (eventually) Matter
| seem like the way forward.
| meroje wrote:
| Have an older z-wave heater valve that seems to be on a
| version of the protocol no one bothers to be backwards
| compatible with. Never happened with zigbee no matter the
| amount of quirks needed from zigbee2mqtt.
| asylteltine wrote:
| I prefer zwave as well. As long as you have repeaters (pretty
| much any light switch) and a good hub (zwave js ui NOT the
| default one) you will be fine. I run about 20 nodes right now
| and upgrading to zwave js ui over the default fixed my node
| graph so everything had a good signal. I do want to see more
| thread around
| Kirby64 wrote:
| Zigbee does just fine with repeaters as well. You just need
| to be strategic with placing repeater-capable devices around
| the house, since the range isn't quite as good as Z-wave gear
| due the frequency.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Meh, I have som Z-wave switches in the house (some in-wall
| rockers, some wall-wart smart plugs) and the experience has
| been mixed. Flaky switches (GE-branded), flaky firmware
| (SmartThings hub), etc.
|
| I'll be happy when/if Thread becomes the norm and I can just
| run everything through Apple HomeKit. Though for some reason, I
| still don't see a Thread in-wall dimmer available, which seems
| crazy to me.
| function_seven wrote:
| Same experience here. Every once in a while a switch will go
| offline and I have to toggle it to get it to rejoin the
| network.
|
| These switches are all GE (Jasco) units. My Inovelli switches
| are rock solid, as well as my Kwikset deadbolt.
|
| I should probably replace the GEs with Inovellis...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| All my older Z-wave switches are Jascos, and while they've
| been solid for a while now on the Z-Wave part, the relays
| have been failing over time. One day you turn it on, and
| instead of staying on, it starts to cycle on-off, on-off,
| on-off, on-off indefinitely.
| kelnos wrote:
| I've had really good luck with the Leviton Z-Wave switches &
| dimmers. Haven't had a single problem with them in about 3
| years of use.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Ha! All my GE switches have been replaced with Leviton now.
| So far, so good. I think I've had to hard reset and repair
| one of them in 3 years, so not too bad.
|
| But some days I'm tempted to swap them all for Lutron
| Caseta. That just gets a bit pricey (both to swap, and then
| to expand).
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I don't agree. I was an early adopter and I still have some
| Z-Wave devices, but I won't miss them when they're gone.
| Pairing is a hassle, unpairing just as bad or worse, and
| licensing costs mean the devices themselves are always more
| expensive. My USB dongle for Home Assistant supports both
| Z-Wave and Zigbee, and as I add new devices and upgrade old
| ones over time, I'm not buying any new Z-Wave.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| It appears these are all battery powered and wireless. Probably
| also means they're quite easy to jam with a low powered
| transmitter. Still are likely useful to protect against the
| impulsive crimes of opportunity. It's also a bit weird that
| washing machines don't come with water leak sensors but I guess
| manufacturers don't want to highlight the possibility of their
| products causing water damage.
| forward1 wrote:
| More bizarre to me still is the fact laundry rooms are built
| without a drain at the lowest point of the floor. That's in
| fact a feature I would desire in every room of a custom home.
| marcinzm wrote:
| >That's in fact a feature I would desire in every room of a
| custom home.
|
| Some reasons I would not want this is: need to pour water in
| periodically to keep the trap from drying out and the risk of
| a sewage backup covering every room in literal shit.
| mritun wrote:
| "literal shit"? Check the code in your area. The toilet
| outlet goes into 4" pipe straight to septic, not the 2"
| drain pipe.
| marcinzm wrote:
| The vast majority of homes in the US use a public sewer
| versus a septic tank.
| ziptron wrote:
| What's even more problematic is that new North American homes
| are often constructed with a washer/dryer "conveniently"
| placed near a bedroom, typically on the upper level, and yet,
| they are still installed without a drain.
| beart wrote:
| I have a laundry up stairs. However a drain must be
| installed in my area to meet code.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| Drain aside (which, AFAIK, would be required by code where
| I live) I'd love to have the washer/dryer located near
| bedrooms. Having the laundry off the kitchen, garage, or in
| the basement creates needless make-work transporting
| clothes across the house. I don't ever disrobe or dress
| outside my kitchen, garage, or in my basement. (It would
| make more sense if the laundry backed-up to the bedroom
| closets.)
| solardev wrote:
| Wouldn't the noise and vibration get tiresome quickly? Or
| are new machines quiet and stable enough that it's not an
| issue?
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I've got a 12+ hour window every day in which nobody is
| in the bedrooms.
| cornstalks wrote:
| I'm relatively sensitive to noises (analog clocks are a
| hard no-go because of their soft ticking; it's
| infuriating trying to sleep somewhere that has them). But
| I barely hear our dryer when it's running at night, and
| it's just on the other side of our bedroom wall. As long
| as we aren't doing a load with lots of hard buttons and
| things (which make a louder clinking sound when tumbling)
| the dryer is totally fine at night.
|
| The washing machine, not so much. The water lines and
| spin cycle aren't particularly loud, but they're loud and
| distinct enough that it's too loud for me at night.
| alistairSH wrote:
| We usually do laundry on the weekends, during the day.
| It's actually more annoying in the basement, as that's
| where the familyroom/TV are located (and the wall between
| the W&D and family room is just single-layer drywall,
| with the W&D right there).
| kelnos wrote:
| My washer and dryer are in a washer-and-dryer-sized
| closet in the hall near my bedroom, but I guess the noise
| insulation is good enough that I don't hear it when it's
| running at night.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Concur. I live in a 1970s townhouse with a basement
| laundry room. It's annoying to cart loads of laundry down
| 2 levels and back up again.
|
| I'd love to have an upstairs W&D, but I wouldn't install
| one with a secondary drain pan.
| toast0 wrote:
| The downside of floor drains is that drains are bidirectional
| and drain backups come out of the lowest point. That's
| probably ok in a laundry room or bathroom, but wouldn't be
| nice in other rooms.
| tbihl wrote:
| Could you route the drains to plumbing lower down in the
| system? I'm picturing all wet rooms draining to a funnel in
| the basement via a dedicated gravity drain system. He did
| say 'custom home'....
| Kirby64 wrote:
| Many parts of the US don't have basements. The lowest
| point is inside the slab, so drains are relatively
| constrained.
| thedaly wrote:
| Even if there is a basement, a lot of homes will have a
| gravity sewer line that is above the level of the
| basement floor, and utilize ejector/sump pumps for water
| below the elevation of the sewer.
| toast0 wrote:
| Unless you're running a pumped drain system, all of your
| drains must route to plumbing lower down.
|
| If upper floors' floor drains route to lower floors
| before joining with other plumbing on the lower floor,
| that would prevent backups from rising to the upper floor
| drains (unless their particular pipe was clogged, which
| should be unusual in a residential floor drain). But
| you'll have this issue at least at the lowest level of
| the dwelling.
|
| Basements are not common where I've lived, but where
| present in custom houses, they tend to be fully finished
| and plumbed and then they'd have floor drains too.
|
| In some buildings elsewhere, I have seen a less finished
| basement, with only laundry and a slop sink... That slop
| sink may be where a backup from the lateral to the
| utility sewer (or septic system) would come out. But
| that's not a common look for a fully custom home.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| A lotta slop sinks are just washing machine drains. Lets
| your machine pump as quickly as it wants without needing
| to a separate high-flow drain. And buys you more litres
| of backflow before its a real problem. Tho some washing
| machines can pump up quite a few feet if needed.
|
| Lived in an apartment where the front-loader managed to
| pump a sock into the high-flow drain where it got stuck.
| That was fun...
|
| (Also had a front-loader break it's door seal, also a lot
| of fun...)
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Backflow preventers are common in some areas. But you're
| kinda in the dark if it's activated and shouldn't run
| anything down any drain on your side.
| Marsymars wrote:
| Not only common, but required by building code.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Maybe in newer construction, but in older (ie: before
| flood maps were a consideration, good drainage, grading,
| storm sewers), generally not.
| mrweasel wrote:
| I believe there's a regulation here that requires a drain in
| the floor of laundry room here in Denmark, but the same isn't
| the case for kitchens, so a dishwasher can still do a lot of
| damage.
|
| It is really weird that for all the smart crap manufactures
| want to stuff into appliances, leak detection isn't
| particularly high up on the list. It can't really be because
| it's hard to do, leak detectors are often one of the earliest
| sensor types available for new smart home kits.
| pixl97 wrote:
| The question I guess is reliability of the leak detectors
| themselves. Will the detector fail more often than the
| actual unit leaks?
| alistairSH wrote:
| TIL: A secondary drain often isn't required by code (in the
| US). I'm also shocked by this, seems obvious, especially for
| a machine that's above ground-level.
| some_random wrote:
| If a burglar is sophisticated enough to identify intrusion
| sensors and deploy countermeasures, they're typically not going
| to be targeting residential homes.
| almostnormal wrote:
| > It's also a bit weird that washing machines don't come with
| water leak sensors but I guess manufacturers don't want to
| highlight the possibility of their products causing water
| damage.
|
| A sensor can alert someone but doesn't stop the water. There
| are alternatives:
|
| 1) An electric valve directly at the tap that the machine
| actuates when it needs water. Usually comes with hose-in-hose
| to capture water from a ruptured line and detect and stop
| releasing water.
|
| 2) Quantity limiting devices to limit the quantity that can be
| used contiguously, and reset when the flow stops. Set to the
| maximum needed by the machine. Should there be any leak, the
| possible damage is limited. No electricity needed.
| spankalee wrote:
| I really wish these were Matter over Thread without a hub. I'm
| just looking at adding sensors to a home that already has Nest
| Wifi for the border routers and I don't really want to add any
| other hubs to the mix.
| jsight wrote:
| I agree, but delays seem to be the norm with Matter.
| ars wrote:
| The downside is that WiFi devices have far worse battery life,
| and WiFi doesn't really work well for this use case WiFi just
| isn't meant to have tens of devices all competing.
|
| Also, you wrote matter over thread, but the thread is the same
| as zigbee. From the rest of your post you mean matter over
| WiFi.
| olalonde wrote:
| Why are you saying that Thread is the same as Zigbee? AFAIK
| they are competing low-power, wireless mesh standards.
| bmurphy1976 wrote:
| My understanding is that Thread is basically Zigbee Next.
| Better in some ways, can run on most of the same hardware
| (assuming there's firmware available but not at the same
| time), and unfortunately not backwards compatible. We'll be
| stuck having to run both Zigbee and Thread (and wifi,
| zwave, bluetooth, etc.) from here until eternity.
| TrueDuality wrote:
| Doesn't Matter run over Thread? I thought it was just an
| application protocol not a physical connectivity protocol.
| andylynch wrote:
| Thread builds on the same physical layer as Zigbee, IEEE
| 802.15.4; the big difference is unlike Zigbee it also
| incorporates IPv6. The physical layer is important for low
| power mesh networks, like the sensors and switches here- and
| WiFi is way, way more power hungry. That said, Matter
| supports WiFi too.
| kps wrote:
| Matter runs over IPv6, over either Thread or WiFi.
| ashton314 wrote:
| Indeed. In all fairness, the hub works really well. I have a
| few bulbs and switches from Ikea, and I control everything
| through the Home app on my iPhone. Last week I got an outlet
| from Ikea. As soon as I added it to the hub, it showed up in
| the Home app. Matter FTW!
| Eumenes wrote:
| I just want water leak sensors that make a loud alarm noise, I
| don't need wifi connected crap with hubs. I can use my
| preexisting camera setup to pick up the alarm noise and alert me.
| I'm home most of the time and if I'm not for an extended period,
| I typically turn the water off (not entirely, just in zones).
| Anyone know of any analog water leak sensors?
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| > The Badring water sensor includes a built-in siren (60dBA at
| 1m) that can alert you when it senses a leak
| nickthegreek wrote:
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07J9HZ5VN
|
| These have a loud alarm on them and I don't believe they need
| to be hooked up to the hub to work (just for push
| notifications).
| jonahhorowitz wrote:
| Six dollars - https://www.homedepot.com/p/resideo-Water-Heater-
| and-Sump-Pu...
|
| There are a bunch of options at Home Depot, Lowes, and your
| local hardware store.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| Any idea how these leak sensors work? Is it just waiting to
| potentially be dripped on by a leak? If so, could you just
| replace the sensor with a gapped circuit that would be bridged
| by dripping water?
| rpearl wrote:
| They are usually just two exposed contacts waiting to be
| bridged by water, yeah.
| seszett wrote:
| You can find this kind of sensor on Aliexpress for a few euros,
| if the hardware stores near you don't carry them.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I am disappointed that these are not matter out the gate, the
| door/window sensor and the motion sensor would be instant buys
| for me (likely several).
|
| IKEA does do a good job with Homekit support (unless the new hub
| is different) but really wish I did not need that hub anymore.
|
| I am glad that someone is trying to push down the insane home
| automation tech prices.
|
| Side note: I really hate modern SEO. There is not a single link
| to the actual Hub mentioned in the article, but there are 2 links
| to the same article about said hub twice.
| Gareth321 wrote:
| I've been wanting to jump into home automation for YEARS but
| the awful mix of incompatible products and standards coupled
| with the frequent deprecation of products which often require
| an online presence, and the outrageous prices being asked for
| these quite frankly beta products, kept me away. Once matter is
| standard I expect prices to drop and that's when I think it's
| safe to jump in.
| civilitty wrote:
| Just use HomeAssistant and find ESPHome compatible hardware.
| It drastically simplifies everything and there are even
| vendors like CloudFree [1] that support it out of the box.
|
| I've got several outdoor and indoor hydryponics systems set
| up that way and it's been a joy (except for the RaspberryPi
| SD card dying on me, which I've since replaced with a more
| reliable SSD based SBC)
|
| [1] https://cloudfree.shop/
| thesh4d0w wrote:
| What kind of hydroponic automation are you doing?
|
| I've got an indoor living wall that I'm thinking of
| converting to hydro.
| SparkyMcUnicorn wrote:
| Zigbee was the solution that solved these complaints for me.
| My home automation works 100% offline, thanks to Home
| Assistant + Zigbee.
|
| Posted it in another comment here already, but this is my go-
| to resource to figure out compatibility:
| https://zigbee.blakadder.com/
|
| And pretty much any zigbee device can be compatible with any
| gateway. In many cases it's just whether someone has taken
| the time to wire it up in the software or not.
| nicholasjarnold wrote:
| As another sibling suggested you should seriously consider
| HomeAssistant here. A main selling point is it's ability to
| seamlessly integrate with an arbitrary mixture of
| Zigbee/ZWave/Matter/Kasa/<etc> devices under one management
| interface.
|
| I've been running it for years, keeping up to date with the
| regular new versions, and haven't had any major complaints
| for basic use cases like: "I want to turn on <set of lights>
| when <arbitrary condition occurs> (e.g. sundown, certain
| sensors detect < X lux of light, wifi device is seen by
| access point based on its MAC). Super useful. Huge world of
| possibilities, limited only by your hardware and imagination.
| pbowyer wrote:
| HomeAssistant works, but I'm always surprised when it is
| praised on Hacker News given the preponderance here for
| rewriting every program in Rust.
|
| Home Assistant is an unwieldy monolith where spitting out the
| components would give you so much more control. The side that
| receives the data works well, however. The quality of the
| plotting in it is substandard, as is the inbuilt data storage
| and access. Configuring via YAML is painful, especially when
| you want derived values (e.g. calculating absolute humidity
| from RH sensor readings. HomeAssistant comes with no way to
| clean up dirty data which is something you'll see on their
| forums that many people request, as cheap sensors are
| notorious for spurious readings.
|
| It's easy and polished which is why I and I suspect others
| use it, but I wish there was a modular rewrite.
| outworlder wrote:
| I agree with the monolith comment, but I am not sure the
| jab at Rust is warranted.
|
| If we are rewriting HomeAssistant, let's do it in Rust :)
| Only half joking.
|
| That said, I refuse to write automation in YAML. Logic
| doesn't really belong in YAML. Declarative stuff would be
| decent if all you did was to specify a desired end state
| and let it figure out how to get to that state. But
| triggers with the equivalent of 'if' conditions that run
| actions? Let me write the IF. It makes a big difference if
| you say "Lights should be on between X and Y" versus
| "condition: after: x before: y: action: turn on". Trivial
| cases are easy, but when you start combining them it
| becomes a nightmare.
|
| I have done a lot with NodeRED but it is... strange. It
| does save me from writing YAML (I do enough of that on my
| day job), at the expense of being weird and not easy to
| debug.
|
| As for plotting data, you can send that to Prometheus or
| InfluxDB and go from there.
|
| I also wish there was an alternative. And more modular
| "plugins". And a "HA" option. As it is, I have a single
| raspberry Pi that, while backed up and could be replicated
| if needed, will go offline for updates and the like, not
| able to run any automation in the mean time.
|
| It does work though.
| yetihehe wrote:
| Would you buy a hub that adds matter to old zigbee devices?
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| Of course. Rather replace the hub than 23 sensors.
| yetihehe wrote:
| Working on it, expect it after summer.
| Zigbee+ble+thread+wifi, but currently only sold in EU and
| for now only supports our own zigbee devices. Search for
| Ferguson Digital FS2SH. This hub already has ZB, we will
| add thread via dongle + firmware update. We plan to add
| matter support to all devices which we can control (slowly
| adding more, we want them all, but are limited by number of
| programmers). It's also a little HN worthy, because we plan
| to use standard nrf dongle and hub will program it on the
| fly after insertion (for other protocols in future), so you
| could buy it cheaply yourself. Plus, it has unhindered
| openwrt root console on easily accessible header inside
| (will void warrranty though).
| leephillips wrote:
| > I really hate modern SEO.
|
| I totally agree, but the real problem is people uncritically
| sharing and promoting articles from low-quality publications.
| In other words, your wrath is better directed at the HN users
| who submit and upvote articles from these low-effort sites.
| There are plenty of publications, such as LWN, that use links
| to help the reader, rather than to help themselves through
| Google's algorithms.
| mithr wrote:
| Same here. I also find myself peeved at the article author, who
| for some reason decided to spend half a paragraph essentially
| parroting the company's PR over just how justified this delay
| is, despite earlier mentioning that they promised Matter
| support over a year ago.
|
| > Ikea ... has "decided to delay this functionality" and will
| provide an update "when it's time." The ongoing delay is
| understandable given that Ikea's products already integrate
| well with other platforms, and the company is focused on
| keeping things as simple as possible for anyone who delves into
| the smart home on a whim while shopping for a new bookcase. And
| when you consider the hurdles required to get everything
| running on Matter networks during this period of transition,
| Ikea's delay is more than justified.
| jkestner wrote:
| > insane home automation tech prices
|
| And yet some comments are complaining that it's more expensive
| than a Tuya-based solution or whatever. I think this is at the
| heart of the problem: people want the longevity and cost of a
| dumb-home product, but the value of these things is rooted in
| software. Cognitive dissonance ensues--"you want me to pay a
| subscription for a door lock?" At least here, IKEA is allowing
| point-to-point communication that could eliminate moving
| targets of other companies' software.
|
| The new hub is different, and does not work with the old Ikea
| system.
| SparkyMcUnicorn wrote:
| I really like the zigbee ecosystem. There's a lot of great
| resources, cheap devices, months/years battery lifetimes, and
| reliability has been top notch for me.
|
| Being able to pick your own coordinator/"hub" and use devices
| across all different brands like Ikea, Philips Hue, Aqara, etc.
| is a really great experience.
|
| This is a fantastic community resource example:
| https://zigbee.blakadder.com/sensors.html
| Terretta wrote:
| Curiously, I submitted title revised from Ikea smarthome
| sensors to Ikea zigbee sensors since this is a hacker community
| who care about such things, but some time later title was
| edited to remove the reference to zigbee.
| Mister_Snuggles wrote:
| I've got a bunch of Xiaomi Aqara Zigbee water leak sensors and
| they have alerted me to leaks which could have caused a lot of
| damage if not caught right away. The siren on this Ikea one is a
| very obvious improvement and the price seems to be in line with
| the Xiaomi sensors that I currently use.
|
| The motion sensor looks like a decent improvement on the existing
| one. I have to admit that I don't have the battery life issues
| that many people seem to have with the current model, but I've
| only got two of these sensors so maybe I got lucky.
|
| The door sensor looks weird though. It seems a lot larger than
| the equivalent Xiaomi Aqara sensor. Maybe it uses AAA batteries
| instead of coin cells or something.
|
| Generally speaking, I really like the Ikea Zigbee stuff.
| Everything I've got is well-supported by Zigbee2MQTT, including
| OTA updates. Most of my Ikea stuff has never even been paired to
| Ikea's hub.
| twisteriffic wrote:
| How have you found the battery life to be on your Ikea zigbee
| devices? Mine have been generally disappointing. In the range
| of 3 months on the dimmers that are maybe 10 feet from the hub.
| Just got a couple of their newer dimmers, hoping those will be
| better. The pairing experience was certainly less painful.
|
| Zigbee2mqtt is the bomb. ZHA can't hold a candle to it in terms
| of reliability, features and device support. The tiny increase
| in complexity is so worth it.
| Mister_Snuggles wrote:
| I find that the battery life seems fine, but I haven't
| tracked it closely.
|
| I have noticed a difference between Duracell coin cells
| purchased at Costco and Amazon Basics coin cells. The Amazon
| Basics ones didn't last long at all, the Duracells seem much
| better.
|
| The newer dimmers (STYRBAR) use AAA cells instead of coin
| cells, so I'd expect them to last a lot longer.
| twisteriffic wrote:
| I'll try switching up battery brands. The out of the box
| cells from Ikea were dead in weeks, the store brand ones at
| least gave me a few months.
| filterfiber wrote:
| Battery brands (or even skus in the brands) can matter a
| _lot_.
|
| Related, Panasonic's rechargable eneloop have worked very
| well for me, I'm kind of excited to see AAA be used in
| the IOT devices where it can fit.
|
| I have a lot less of a problem swapping batteries if I
| just have a few charged ones on hand and get at least
| many months in-between replacements.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| >Related, Panasonic's rechargable eneloop have worked
| very well for me
|
| Just a heads up: IKEA's brand of rechargables are likely
| rebadged eneloops at about half the price, also made in
| japan. Though for the AAA's they only have eneloop
| regular equivalents not eneloop pros.
| ssl232 wrote:
| Top tip: IKEA rechargeable batteries are probably
| rebadged Eneloop Pros.
| sowbug wrote:
| What exactly do you mean by a "dimmer"? Everything I have in
| my home that dims lights is mains-powered, so battery isn't a
| concern.
|
| I have 45 Zigbee devices in my home, 33 of which are battery-
| powered. Those are door contact sensors, PIR motion sensors,
| climate sensors, and a few button remotes to control
| lighting. They're mostly from Sonoff and Aqara, with a few
| unbranded Aliexpress devices that identify themselves as
| TUYATEC, and a couple from Third Reality. In almost every
| case, the battery life has been extraordinarily good -- well
| over a year. The only exception is the Sonoff SNZB-04 contact
| sensor, which seems to need battery changes about every six
| months. Probably not coincidentally, it's the only sensor
| that uses CR2032 batteries, rather than AA or AAA. I would
| happily replace with a slightly larger sensor to get both
| longer battery life and less e-waste through the ability to
| use a standard rechargeable AA/AAA battery.
| twisteriffic wrote:
| Ikea refers to several of their zigbee remotes as dimmers.
| This is the older one that I've had issues with:
|
| https://www.ikea.com/ca/en/p/tradfri-wireless-dimmer-
| smart-w...
|
| This is the newer one: https://www.ikea.com/ca/en/p/rodret-
| wireless-dimmer-power-sw...
|
| I have a few SmartThings motion sensors that are at 2-3
| years battery life, though they use big lithium cells so
| that isn't surprising. A few sonoff temp/humidity sensors
| on coin cells seem to be heading for at least a year
| battery life as well. So far it's only the Ikea buttons
| that have issues.
| avel wrote:
| You probably have battery issues because you are using
| SmartThings as the zigbee hub and it's polling the remote
| way too much.
|
| I have switched to HomeAssistant with a Zigbee USB
| adaptor and there are no more battery issues.
|
| SmartThings are aware of the issue but do not care enough
| to fix it.
| twisteriffic wrote:
| I do use a few SmartThings branded zigbee sensors but not
| the hub. I'm using homeassistant with the sonoff
| efr32mg21 dongle.
|
| I'm well aware of how terrible SmartThings the company
| is. I'd suffered through their inadequacies until April
| 2023 when they deleted my account during a failed backup
| purge. After 3 months of waiting on their support to
| unlock my hub I gave up and went to homeassistant.
| thesh4d0w wrote:
| You need to upgrade the firmware on both your devices +
| controllers, this is a known problem that I think is mostly
| resolved now.
| twisteriffic wrote:
| I'm up to date on both the coordinator firmware and device
| firmware. Updating the coordinator firmware was necessary
| to get device updates working on the newer Ikea devices,
| but I haven't noticed a difference in power consumption.
| Adding repeaters and reconverging didn't seem to make a
| difference either.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| My STYRBAR dimmers last for more than a year, definitely. But
| they're only used like < 10 times a day.
| twisteriffic wrote:
| I'm seeing poor life regardless of usage. I'm guessing that
| either something is chatty in that part of the network, or
| some config is set incorrectly and causing them to wake
| more often or more fully than they should. No idea how to
| troubleshoot either case, just hoping the newer aaa-powered
| buttons might be better.
| jq-r wrote:
| I got at least a dozen on/off/dimmer switches and couple of
| sensors. They last months, and I would maybe say even a year.
| I do use those coin Duracell batteries most of the time,
| makes quite a difference.
| moogly wrote:
| All the new contact sensors seem to be that large now,
| including Philips' and Aqara's new ones. They do indeed use
| larger batteries and they claim several years of use. But man
| they are so bulky I don't see myself using them. Total
| eyesores.
| andylynch wrote:
| I really like this change and suspect the reason why is part
| of their motivation; they button cells used in the common
| smaller ones are non-rechargeable and this is really quite
| wasteful given how popular and good AA/AAA Rechargeables are
| moogly wrote:
| Are they good really? Like half of my AAA devices don't
| even work on 1.2V. I've dabbled in USB-C rechargeable Li-
| Ion AA/AAA, but they're quite expensive and the charge
| lasts a short time. They're mostly useful in remotes and
| things like that, kind of like NiMH rechargeables.
|
| Meanwhile nonrechargeable batteries get cheaper and cheaper
| so I just buy them in bulk now. Call me selfish, I guess.
| andylynch wrote:
| The USB-C ones trade on capacity and different ones have
| different self-discharge rates. Some manufacturers
| specify Panasonic Eneloop batteries. Some other brands'
| are made by the same company and are very similar
| (including IKEA)
| sangnoir wrote:
| You can purchase rechargeable coin-cell batteries. Device
| manufactures tend not to care about batteries except for
| the crappy one they ship in the box - if they bother to do
| so.
| UberFly wrote:
| I would be worried about putting anything Xiaomi into my home.
| They have repeatedly proven to be a major privacy concern.
| Maybe security concern as well.
| andylynch wrote:
| That is a valid concern, but not such an issue with Zigbee
| stuff since you can run it with your own hub giving the
| sensors 0 external connectivity.
| orphea wrote:
| Their sensors are fine, just use a non-Xiaomi hub like SONOFF
| Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Sonoff is chinese, doesn't fix the security issue
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| What's the threat model for a usb dongle? It won't have
| network access... I suppose it could spontaneously become
| an HID device and try typing its way to trouble, but
| that'd be very OS-specific...
| nickthegreek wrote:
| USB is like the most well known physical threat. Look up
| OMG Cables.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Right, but that's intended for the attacker to connect to
| from nearby? Also of course presumably if it's got enough
| hardware crammed in there to cost $170 random Chinese
| tech companies are not going to include all of that in
| their $25 dongle "just in case" you turn out to be worth
| compromising?
| nickthegreek wrote:
| I think you are overestimating the cost of inclusion.
| Surely you have had mandatory IT training about not
| plugging in unknown usb drives at work right?
| fabianhjr wrote:
| I am more worried about US stuff with the whole PRISM
| thing and other three letter shenanigans.
|
| Aditionally the comment you are replying to is a dongle
| to provide a single board computer (or a computer in
| general) with ZigBee conectivity.
|
| Ideally you would run a trusthworthy open source OS and
| hub software.
| jquast wrote:
| Agreed, I would rather a foreign agency with no power or
| authority over me to have my personal data than a
| government that has the authority to wrongfully tax,
| investigate, jail, prosecute, and imprison me for that
| same data.
| brandensilva wrote:
| Now I'm imagining a self destructing roborock vacuum
| burning down my house when China goes deep in anti US
| territory.
|
| Best policy I abide by is to prevent any data from
| exiting my network or remote control period. I don't care
| who is spying.
| cgriswald wrote:
| You should choose the devices that are the most secure,
| using the information you have available at the time.
|
| Choosing a foreign government to spy on you rather than
| your own government isn't a clear choice. While a foreign
| government is less likely to be interested in you
| personally and likely less able to directly cause you
| harm, you also have less recourse against them than
| against your own government and their interests are less
| likely to be aligned with yours.
|
| Additionally, your government may be able to co-opt the
| compromised devices anyway and would certainly have an
| incentive to do so.
|
| I'd also question that a device that is by-design-
| compromised is otherwise secure from bad actors. It is
| difficult to imagine the incentive structure that would
| make that possible.
|
| Finally, once this personal data has been harvested by
| either government, there is nothing to stop these
| governments or rogue elements within these governments
| from trading or sharing that data with your own
| government or other actors.
| andylynch wrote:
| These Zigbee sticks don't have much opportunity for
| naughtiness. Like others I've used, they communicate over
| serial with their host (no IP ), and are based on a TI
| chipset which you can flash.
| filterfiber wrote:
| As other's mentioned, they communicate via serial to the
| host, this is not a device I'd be greatly concerned about
| as a threat.
|
| Unless you took great care with sourcing your electronics
| then they're already packed with chips/parts from china.
|
| If you _really_ want to you can use a nRF52840 (Nordic
| Semi is from Norway), or I think a few TI chips (USA),
| and use those as a gateway instead with home assistant
| (might need to add an extra library). Even then, both
| companies have manufacturing plants in china AFAIK so...
| Mister_Snuggles wrote:
| All of my Xiaomi stuff is Zigbee and runs through
| Zigbee2MQTT, I'm not too concerned here since there's no
| Xiaomi stuff that's capable of connecting to anything except
| my Zigbee adapter.
| giobox wrote:
| > They have repeatedly proven to be a major privacy concern.
| Maybe security concern as well.
|
| Thanks to Zigbee being a standard, you can use a Zigbee
| hub/adapter from any vendor you like. The Zigbee sensors
| themselves have no network connection and therefore noway to
| warrant privacy concerns really. There is no WiFi/Ethernet or
| internet involved with anything Xiaomi here.
|
| I'm using a bunch of these Aquara Zigbee sensors with the
| open source Home Assistant software and hardware, they are
| for the most part fantastic.
|
| I would take Zigbee home automation devices over crappy wifi
| ones any day of the week - its a vastly better
| protocol/methodology for hooking these sorts of devices up.
| Your home's lights functioning properly ideally should not
| depend on bulbs/switches being able to get an IP address etc
| (sigh)...
|
| > https://www.home-assistant.io/skyconnect - USB adapter for
| Zigbee from HomeAssistant you can plug into any box you like.
|
| > https://www.home-assistant.io/yellow/ - HomeAssistant
| server hardware with Zigbee radio built in.
| AdamTReineke wrote:
| The Aqara temperature sensors[0] wouldn't stay connected to
| my SkyConnect USB dongle. No issues with my Zigbee switch
| and thermostats though, so I think some vendors aren't
| fully Zigbee compliant but it's probably the exception.
|
| [0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07D37FKGY/
| giobox wrote:
| I've had great results with their buttons/light switches
| and Home Assistant Yellow, and the SkyConnect prior to
| that, for what its worth. I especially like the PoE
| version of Home Assistant Yellow - can power the entire
| server from its ethernet port.
| gruturo wrote:
| That's the beauty of Zigbee. You can run your own hub if you
| want, and no information leaves your home. Of course this is
| less, or not at all, true if you run a manufacturer's hub.
| dheera wrote:
| I have a handful of Aqara motion sensors because some idiots on
| Youtube recommended them. They're shit compared to the Hue
| motion sensors though, and take 3+ seconds to respond while I
| look like an idiot waving my hands around and sometimes even
| need to take off my shirt and wave it like a flag to get the
| lights to turn on. The Hue motion sensors respond almost
| instantly in comparison.
|
| All this low power electronics designed to run 3 years on a
| coin battery bothers me. If it's that low power why not get rid
| of the battery, slap a tiny solar panel (the kind they used on
| calculators in the 90s) and a supercapacitor, it should be able
| to power itself indefinitely on normal levels of room light,
| never go into deep sleep states, and can even turn the room
| lights on automatically if it needs more power.
| Mister_Snuggles wrote:
| I don't have any Aqara motion sensors. I do have two Ikea
| ones though and they work fine.
|
| One is in my home office to turn the lights on and off, it
| works fine and I've never had problems with it not detecting
| me. It's not instant, but always responds within a second or
| two.
|
| The other one is sitting by the cat litter boxes and is used
| to trigger an automation involving an air cleaner. It senses
| the cats at a range of about 1.5m just fine.
|
| The next thing I'm interested in is the crop of mmWave
| presence sensors. There are a lot out there and I'm not sure
| if there's a clear winner in this space yet.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| Do you put water sensors anywhere besides the obvious places,
| like under the sink and water heater?
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| So is IKEA turning into an AI company by deploying billions of
| new control sensors in a giant time series network?
| nerdponx wrote:
| Maybe not AI, but certainly it's a great way to make a side
| business as a data company.
|
| > detect opening doors and windows, motion indoors and out
|
| If these devices are sending that data back to Ikea, they're
| surely planning to monetize it somehow.
| exar0815 wrote:
| Except they don't. They are ZigBee-Devices - which means they
| connect to your Local Hub, no matter what manufacturer. Now,
| what the Hub does is something else, but NOT controlled by
| IKEA . Also, the IKEA the Hub does not need any Internet
| Connection at all to work.
|
| Also, it seems like they did their homework.
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371121017_Security_.
| ..
|
| I am all for shitting on BigCo when they do something bad.
| But when someone does something right, it's just fair to
| point that out too.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| These devices are Zigbee, IKEA has been selling those for
| years. They can't send data to IKEA, because they can't send
| data anywhere, except the rest of your Zigbee mesh.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Its rare to find a company like IKEA that are only releasing
| home automation where you DONT have to worry about being
| spied on.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| No, didn't you read the article? They're 'democratizing' the
| smart home.
| bmicraft wrote:
| I do have to say, I really, really hate that word. Not once
| have I seen it used correctly - for anything other than to
| promote a product that's $5 cheaper than the competition.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > Parasoll is a typical window and door sensor that can be
| discretely mounted to trigger an automation
|
| Discrete sensors are a benefit to IKEA (to help them sell them),
| but consumers probably care more about them being discreet.
| manishsharan wrote:
| Each one of these is definitely cheaper that my Rapberry Pi Pico
| W project with my son but not nearly as much fun.
| martincmartin wrote:
| What's the best Zigbee repeater, to get signal to a different
| part of the house? I used to use a smart bulb, but people kept
| turning it off at the switch or moving it.
| pitzips wrote:
| I find the Ikea outlet switches are great repeaters. Always
| plugged in, easy to move around.
| twisteriffic wrote:
| The old SmartThings zigbee outlets are rock solid as well,
| and also have current monitoring. I used mine both as a
| repeater and to detect a jammed auger in my cat feeder.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I've also had good luck with the Sonoff outlet switches. I've
| got several of those around the house doing nothing but being
| mesh repeaters.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| I also have a few of these, mine serve as actual switches
| though. Sonoff stuff is solid.
| SparkyMcUnicorn wrote:
| I use the Ikea outlets and Hue bulbs.
|
| An important part of my setup is that all the switches in my
| house still work, and won't actually cut power to the bulbs.
| There are decent options available to add a Zigbee (or wifi)
| dimmer/relay/remote behind an existing light switch, which is
| also great for controlling lights that aren't Zigbee and/or
| multiple devices simultaneously.
|
| This has the added benefit that the stuff it's controlling
| doesn't have to be on the same circuit, and "rewiring" a light
| switch is done very quickly in software instead of physically
| rewiring.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > all the switches in my house still work, and won't actually
| cut power to the bulbs
|
| It sounds like you really mean the switches _don 't_ work?
| Shouldn't they cut power to the bulbs?
|
| A core part of my home automation is that it fails
| gracefully. All my switches work with or without any Internet
| or home assistant server. My electronic locks still have a
| keypad and physical key, etc. If all the brains went away
| today, the only impact would be living life the old way.
| Under no circumstances do I want to find myself in the dark
| because my server crashed or the Internet connection failed.
| avar wrote:
| The Hue wall switch dongle creates a "fake" switch, the
| bulb is powered 100% of the time, the on/off on the wall
| switch just tells the hub to tell the bulb to switch
| on/off.
|
| You'll find that the failure mode is the opposite of what
| you're worried about. If you rip out your hub and flip your
| main fuse off/on you'll find yourself in the blinding
| light, not the dark. When the bulbs are powered on and
| can't reach the hub they default to 100%.
| filterfiber wrote:
| > When the bulbs are powered on and can't reach the hub
| they default to 100%.
|
| This is actually one of my favorite features.
|
| If I mess up my HA setup or anything like that, then
| worse case my "smart bulbs" are functionally identical to
| "dumb bulbs"
| SparkyMcUnicorn wrote:
| > Shouldn't they cut power to the bulbs?
|
| Yes, but only if the light it's controlling isn't zigbee.
| If the light itself is Zigbee I never want that device
| offline, because it's frustrating to have inconsistent
| state when controlling it through the various ways we're
| used to.
|
| > A core part of my home automation is that it fails
| gracefully.
|
| Same. Most of my light switches have a Zigbee relay (or
| Shelly) behind them controlling non-Zigbee lights, and I
| can flip the physical switch (which still works if/when LAN
| or Zigbee is down) or use remotes/voice/automation through
| HomeAssistant.
|
| I do have a couple light switches that I've hard-wired to
| be always-on and the switch itself relies on HA to
| function, but that's only because they were hooked up to a
| single outlet and became much more useful as a "remote"
| rather than a hardwired 110v toggle.
| odiroot wrote:
| These (motion sensors) are gonna be great for a cheap DYI alarm
| for bicycles/motorcycles when parked outside.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| I have had smart lights in my apartment for years - Philips Hue
| uses Zigbee. Every time I am in a hotel or a guest somewhere, I
| feel like I am visiting the 19th century.
|
| Touching light switches seems savage to me now. I walk in a
| bathroom, and the light needs to come on, _and it needs to be
| very dim after 10pm_.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| You're braver than I am. I won't use Hue bulbs because I
| require that my automation setup fail gracefully back to plain
| old 'just works the way it used to' functionality. It'd be just
| my luck that the server, hub, or Internet would fail right when
| I needed the lights to work and I'd be stuck in the dark.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| My lights are all set to turn on after a power cut. That way
| if Home Assistant dies, I can flip any light switch off, then
| on, and it will work normally. My area doesn't have any
| actual power cuts though.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| Not really - these lights are always on, so if the hub
| croaks, your lights can still be turned on/off the old-
| fashioned way.
|
| I actually got touch guards installed on all the switches so
| the guests don't press them - you can still poke it with a
| pencil and toggle. In almost 10 years, I have never had to do
| it.
|
| The only drawback is that if the power goes in and out - all
| the lights come on. This is where remote functionality is
| useful, if you are away.
| extrapickles wrote:
| Hue bulbs by default emulate a dumb led bulb. This is
| configurable so you can have them be "dumb" in a way that you
| prefer, eg: customize color, brightness or do whatever you
| told them last.
|
| I have several that some of the time I use a regular light
| switch to turn on/off and you wouldn't know they weren't
| standard led bulbs.
| filterfiber wrote:
| > I won't use Hue bulbs because I require that my automation
| setup fail gracefully back to plain old 'just works the way
| it used to' functionality.
|
| Maybe there's a setting that was changed? When I mess up my
| HA setup mine just work as "regular light bulbs" with the
| light switch.
| Marsymars wrote:
| > I walk in a bathroom, and the light needs to come on, and it
| needs to be very dim after 10pm.
|
| You can do this without connected devices, depending on the
| configuration of your bathroom!
|
| You can get night lights that plug into an outlet, turn on when
| it's dark, and brighten when they sense motion. I have some
| Casper ones (that also let you disable the motion sensing):
| https://www.amazon.com/Casper-Sleep-Glow-Night-Light/dp/B09L...
|
| You can also configure you bathroom with multiple lights where
| some are connected to dumb motion sensors. e.g. Panasonic makes
| bathroom fans with a primary light and a night light - you can
| connect the night light to something like a Lutron Maestro
| motion sensor that goes in the wall where your light switches
| are. (Or if you want to get fancy, you can get a ceiling-
| mounted motion sensor and a radio-capable Maestro switch/dimmer
| that can communicate only locally with the motion sensor.)
| amluto wrote:
| What's the practical indoor range like on these? I've found the
| useful range of Z-Wave devices to be embarrassingly poor, and I
| think it's largely because, in the US market, some kind of
| regulatory issue limits transmit power to 0dBm or maybe even
| less. (Z-wave LR is much higher, but it's not ready for prime
| time.). ZigBee apparently allows up to 30dBm, which should more
| than make up for the less favorable frequency range.
|
| Does anyone have any experience with how far it can reach through
| typical indoor construction?
| nick__m wrote:
| Each zigbee device extend your reach and small usb powered
| repeater exists, in practice if you have a few devices, the
| signal reach is a non-existent problem!
| ihattendorf wrote:
| Each zigbee device _that is mains powered_ extends your
| reach. In theory you could make a battery powered repeater,
| but there aren't any on the market AFAIK.
| nicholasjarnold wrote:
| I wasn't aware of the purported regulatory radio limits on
| power, but I can report anecdotally that I found a huge jump in
| usability/signal strength/ownership satisfaction when I started
| replacing my old ZWave 1 stuff with the 500-series or above
| hardware (ZWave "Plus" is the name for these sometimes).
|
| This "LR" stuff you mention is what I think some are calling
| the Z-Wave 800 series. It more than doubles the radio range of
| the 500 series stuff and greatly reduces power draw for battery
| devices. However, I have 500 and 700 series sensors that only
| need a battery change once every ~2 years or so. I don't find
| that to be too much, and the signal strength has been no
| problem for me in an old brick house. I do have a handful of
| powered zwave devices around though, and these act
| automatically as repeaters for the other devices in the mesh.
| amluto wrote:
| I have a mix of 700 and 800 series Z-wave gear, and I find it
| borderline useless -- a mesh hop struggles to reach one room
| over.
|
| LR is a rather different thing -- slightly different
| frequency, very different topology, and it requires explicit
| controller software support. As far as I can tell, most or
| all 800 series hardware supports LR, 700 might with
| appropriate firmware, and earlier chips do not. node-zwave-js
| does not yet support LR, but someone seems to be working on
| it (slowly).
| pbowyer wrote:
| My Zigbee battery temperature and humidity sensors struggle to
| do 10m with 1 concrete wall between the receiver and sensor.
| Tried Aqara, Tuya and Sonoff (avoid the Sonoff one).
| Toutouxc wrote:
| What's wrong with the Sonoff one (except maybe the range, I
| dunno)? I have four of these, they're reasonably accurate
| (within 1 degC from each other) and work fine for me.
| pbowyer wrote:
| I find the Sonoff drops off the network more than the
| others, the humidity sensor is well outside accuracy and
| drifts over time, and is the first to have run out of
| battery.
|
| It's the humidity sensor that makes it a "No buy" for me.
| ars wrote:
| Zwave has better range than zigbee because it uses a lower
| frequency that penetrates walls much better.
|
| Zigbee theoretically can use this same frequency but in
| practice none of the devices do.
|
| Make sure your hub has actual external antennas.
| amluto wrote:
| External antennas on a hub don't help on the hop from device
| to device.
|
| Anyway, I believe that Z-wave _outside the US_ has better
| range that ZigBee. I'm thoroughly unconvinced that this is
| the case in the US, but I haven't seen actual data.
| ars wrote:
| Hopping is widely advertised, but in practice is not really
| used as much as you might think.
|
| With external antennas most of your devices (unless you
| have a really large home) will connect directly to the hub.
| And even the ones that hop will go through walls better
| with the Z-wave frequency - this especially helps if you
| have lath and plaster in your home, or metal electrical
| boxes for the switches/outlets.
|
| The z-wave frequency in other countries is basically the
| same - they are all in the upper 800's, lower 900's MHz.
| https://www.silabs.com/wireless/z-wave/global-regions
| tokamak-teapot wrote:
| Any chance of a sensor that can detect whether doors are locked
| (rather than open?)
| estebank wrote:
| That sounds like it could be a lazer/ir gate in the lock hole
| to detect it being in the way, but the custom job to jam it
| into the frame side of the lock might be quite delicate work if
| it's wood, or even worse if the frame is some prefab unit.
| Another DYI alternative would be to open the lock and see if
| you can stick a magnet somewhere in the mechanism where it
| won't impede movement and that has enough space for the
| solenoid. Neither of these are what I'd call complex, but also
| wouldnt call them easy to pull off. I would have to assume that
| somewhere out there someone is selling this already made.
| notyourwork wrote:
| I have a few Emtek locks which support locking and opening
| detection. Premium brand from Yale, which has a Yale Zigbee
| module. They also have Zwave support.
| nicholasjarnold wrote:
| Schlage makes some that use ZWave Plus (500 series or better,
| didn't check the spec sheet). I have an older model that works
| nicely for this.
|
| https://www.schlage.com/en/home/smart-locks/connect-zwave.ht...
|
| This would give you the "is locked or not" capability you seek
| here, but obviously requires a replacement of your door lock
| (perhaps not trivial if renting, but is a very easy DIY
| otherwise).
| lopis wrote:
| Would have loved a cheap human presence sensor instead of a
| motion sensor!
| SparkyMcUnicorn wrote:
| This might be what you're looking for. It's wifi (I think it's
| Matter), but works without an internet connection.
|
| https://www.aqara.com/us/product/presence-sensor-fp2
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Pretty sure it's not matter.
|
| Source: own it and the website doesn't say matter. Also an
| engineer working on matter products.
| owlninja wrote:
| > With its advanced hardware, the FP2 is able to support
| much more cutting-edge features such as sleep monitoring,
| people counting, posture detection (lying down, sitting,
| standing, walking) and Matter support for enhanced
| functionality
| vineyardmike wrote:
| It's matter support with a hub. They promise matter
| support with an OTA. Notably none of their marketing copy
| or the box says matter support.
|
| > Support of the new smart home standard, Matter, is also
| planned for the FP2, and will be added to the device via
| a subsequent OTA update
|
| https://www.aqara.com/us/aqara-adds-presence-sensor-
| fp2-to-i...
| lopis wrote:
| That's not really cheap though.
| rockooooo wrote:
| yeah, I see tons of models on aliexpress but the software
| support isn't there yet. an IKEA version would be great.
| moogly wrote:
| zigbee2mqtt support a lot of these. I have both 5.8 GHz and
| 24 GHz ones. I guess 60 GHz will be next.
| bilsbie wrote:
| Offshoot topic but is there such a thing as an outdoor leak
| sensor?
|
| I'd love to have one on my pool equipment but it would need a way
| to ignore rain.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Leaks are persistent, weather is not. Either present the raw
| data and interpret it yourself, or gate any alert on potential
| precipitation in your area.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| You'd need something with brains. Detecting the water is easy,
| but you want something that can check local weather and
| correlate with that. Ideally a rain sensor at the same
| location. I could do this with my Tempest and Home Assistant,
| I'm sure. But... I've never had a pool equipment leak that
| bothered me. All my equipment is outside the house and a leak
| isn't a top concern. if it were in the garage, I'd be more
| inclined to put a sensor there, but then rain correlation
| wouldn't be a problem.
| quartz wrote:
| I've got a Moen Flo water sensor I really love. It was something
| like $25 with no monthly fee, has a surprisingly good app (also
| measures temp + humidity) and can even be paired with a valve
| that automatically turns off the water in the case of a detected
| leak.
|
| What I like best about it is it can not only set off a siren and
| notify me in the app, it'll also send a text message and even
| call my phone which is huge because if I have a water leak I want
| to know no matter what.
| jrumbut wrote:
| Where do you put it?
| quartz wrote:
| It lives under my sink where I have a bunch of piping to
| filters that feed the drinking faucet, fridge, and
| dishwasher.
|
| I live in a co-op building from 1929 so it's really the only
| point of failure in the unit that would be my liability if
| there was a leak and it already saved me once when the old
| tailpiece on my drain cracked.
| matthewaveryusa wrote:
| The Moen Flo valve does more than that! Every night it will
| shutoff your water and observe the pressure. If the pressure
| drops when the valve is off it will alert you of a leak.
| They're a bit costly at ~400 bucks, but water damage is so
| expensive it's worth it. I have one and it's great.
|
| Insurance companies will give you a small discount if you have
| one installed as well.
| danans wrote:
| At least for the water leak scenario, the best approach is to put
| a drain pan under any appliances that could leak (laundry
| machines, dishwashers, water heaters). The drain pan should
| itself drain to a pipe.
|
| Ideally, a water leak sensor should be used help to catch a
| slowly failing appliance so you can repair/replace it before it
| does major damage, not preventing it from doing damage in the
| first place due to a sudden major leak.
| narrowtux wrote:
| I agree that this is the ideal solution, but you can't exactly
| retrofit a place you rent with completely new plumbing.
| 93po wrote:
| I've lived in rental apartments where the drain pan has a
| pipe leading to the existing water dump hole that the washer
| drains into
| ihattendorf wrote:
| Most places can fit a drain pan of some sort (I use some sort
| of rubber mat with an edge under sinks inside cabinets for
| example, and of course water heaters should have one) but some
| places like behind toilets, next to the dishwasher, underneath
| the fridge, etc. don't have great options.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Of all the leaks I've had these past 10 years, only two have
| been appliances, and one was high pressure (water heater). The
| other as negligible. Both of those didn't need sensors.... they
| were obvious, and quickly.
|
| The leaks that haunt me though... several under the house in
| the crawl space. Copper pipe pinholes, caused I don't know how
| much damage (including several ruined water heater elements,
| maybe even causing the water heater to fail prematurely).
| Ruined floors. Until they got bad enough that we had no hot
| water (which was about the time the floor started warping),
| there doesn't seem to be anyway that we might have noticed. The
| water bill wasn't unusually high, or maybe it just frog-boiled
| its way up where we couldn't. There were several more copper
| pinholes, but they were noticed as muddy places in the
| crawlspace while fixing the first, or just spidey-sensed. I am
| also very nearly too fat to crawl under the house, let alone do
| emergency plumbing while there.
|
| Another incident involved a squirrel. The idiot owners of this
| house (before us, not the current idiot owners) decided that
| the easiest place to put new plumbing was in the ceiling (maybe
| they were too fat too?). Our attic had a new uninvited guest,
| and apparently PEX piping is very tasty. Or appears that way,
| the squirrel lost his appetite after biting enough of a hole
| that there was a leak from above. This leak though, despite the
| location which should have made it almost instantly obvious,
| happens almost within 5 minutes of a torrential downpour that
| lasted better than an hour. That, plus my unwillingness to
| believe the previous owners had routed plumbing above
| everyone's heads, meant we didn't get that taken care of quite
| as quickly as we might have.
|
| My lessons from this, I think, are:
|
| 1. We might have caught the crawlspace leaks quickly if there
| were a humidity sensor (is that how the leak sensors work?)
| down there, and we could have compared to baseline. That is, if
| spraying water didn't just fry them immediately.
|
| 2. The ceiling leak probably couldn't have been detected very
| early, given the coincidence with the rain and how it would
| have raised humidity. Possibly if we had a water pressure
| sensor, that would have picked it up as a drop, despite there
| being no faucets running.
|
| Plumbing sucks. Houses build 50 years ago assumed that it could
| never fail often enough to make it easily accessible. My next
| house will take into consideration squirrel mitigation
| concerns.
| andylynch wrote:
| The leak sensors I have simply have a pair of electrodes; if
| water closes the circuit they send an alert.
| avar wrote:
| Hindsight is easy, but your first reaction to any sort of
| "water from the ceiling" issue that isn't 100% external
| should be to run to the main water shut-off valve.
| XorNot wrote:
| Humidity is unlikely to help: I have temperature/humidify BLE
| sensors all through my house and humidity varies wildly.
| You'd have to do some sort of calibrated long-term machine
| learning thing to maybe pull out the data.
|
| Much better would simply be digital water meter tracking
| (which is still amazingly hard to actually do) since when all
| the taps are off, if you still have substantial water use
| then you probably have a leak (I would _really_ love a
| decently accurate ESP-based water meter with like, Sharkbite
| fittings on it so I could check the water flow out of all my
| taps or something).
| dingnuts wrote:
| We had a whole-home drain backup some time ago that would have
| been CONSIDERABLY less damaging if we had been alerted to the
| backup when it occurred. Instead, nobody was inside and a
| draining laundry machine hit the clog and pushed black water
| throughout most of the first floor.
|
| Knowing that this was happening would not have likely saved the
| bathroom, or the laundry room, but it might have saved the
| kitchen.
|
| Point is: for water leak scenarios you should think about both
| clean water coming from inlets as well as clogs in your
| outlets.. I should get a couple of these to place behind my
| lowest toilets, where the water came up last time
| wstrange wrote:
| The best solution is a water shut off valve [0] and a bunch of
| cheap zigbee water sensors.
|
| Drain pans won't handle a catastrophic failure. I installed
| this in our house to protect against pipe failure. We had the
| old grey poly-b pipe (since replaced) that was used in the late
| 90s.
|
| You can DIY this if you are handy with soldering copper pipes,
| or get a plumber to install it for a couple hundred bucks.
|
| Apparently water damage claims cost exceeds fire.
|
| [0] https://www.geoarm.com/wv01lfus125-fortrezz-z-wave-
| automated...
| hanniabu wrote:
| Is one of these $10 devices all you need? Or do you need some
| home unit along with it?
| Toutouxc wrote:
| They're Zigbee, so they need a coordinator, which you can buy
| from IKEA or any other brand that does Zigbee stuff, or you can
| fashion one from a Zigbee USB stick and a Raspberry.
| kelnos wrote:
| The question to me is: are they actually good? I've bought into
| the Z-Wave ecosystem, and by and large all the Z-Wave door/window
| sensors available on Amazon have bad reviews. They have issues
| maintaining a connection to the network, they drop events, have
| terrible battery life, etc. The Zigbee sensors on Amazon seem a
| bit better, but still.
|
| I'd seriously consider getting a Zigbee USB stick if I knew these
| function well and have good battery life. I just bought several
| $40 Z-Wave door/window sensors that got decent reviews, but at 4x
| the $10 IKEA price, I'm not going to be buying many of them.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| My home automation is 100% Zigbee and 1/2 of it is IKEA stuff
| (switches, buttons, motion sensors, outlets, lightbulbs, LED
| drivers, air quality sensor, air purifier). No problems
| whatsoever. I believe I haven't touched any of it for a year.
| mikaelmello wrote:
| I've got a single motion sensor, and all light bulbs in the
| house done with IKEA's TRADFRI bulbs, all bought nearly a year
| ago. The stack is a zigbee USB stick, Zigbee2MQTT, mosquitto
| and HA.
|
| The lights are decent, I've had 2 fail so far, but both were on
| the same spot so I suspect something's wrong there.
|
| The motion sensor has been pretty reliable, still working with
| no signs of failure. Delays or "dropped" events (the light not
| turning on) have been very rare and most likely a result of the
| ancient server I have than the motion sensor itself.
| cyberax wrote:
| > Delays or "dropped" events (the light not turning on) have
| been very rare and most likely a result of the ancient server
| I have than the motion sensor itself.
|
| Heads up: you can bind two ZigBee devices directly. So a
| sensor can trigger a light without requiring a hub to even be
| on. It can even work across the mesh network.
| Jeeves wrote:
| I have large zwave AND zigbee networks. They're very
| equivalent. I find that the hub is the important factor for
| ZWave where as each device is important for Zigbee.
|
| Since ZWave is licensed and controlled, I've only had issues
| where (actual example) a siren supported playing multiple tones
| but the hub didn't support that particular feature directly.
|
| My experience with Zigbee is slightly different. Being an open
| standard there are lots of cheap choices however it also means
| that because there is no licensing to use it, not all of the
| devices branded "zigbee" are fully compatible with each other.
| My personal experience leans more towards "Pair the device and
| cross my fingers that it is compatible". If it's not, nothing
| works.
|
| Otherwise; They all use the same basic tech (PIR, Resistance
| for water sensing, magnets and reed switches for door/window
| open closed) so it really comes down to implementation.
| matthew-wegner wrote:
| You'll have a good experience with zigbee if you have a solid
| base layer of lights or smart outlets. Mains-powered devices
| act as repeaters in zigbee networks. Without enough repeaters,
| it might be tricky to place a distant contact sensor and have
| it behave reliably.
|
| Like other commentators, I have both z-wave and zigbee networks
| running. Z-wave has better standalone penetration (lower
| frequency), but if I were to build from the ground up again I
| would go all-in on zigbee. One of the few reasons I have a
| z-wave network at all is a smart lock, but these days there are
| more zigbee offerings there.
|
| All lights in my house are hue bulbs, using a deconz setup
| controlled by home assistant. My aqara motion/contact sensors
| get ~2 years of battery life.
| cyberax wrote:
| Z-Wave is less power-efficient in real life. And you can say
| that because up until recently there had been exactly ONE chip
| that implemented the Z-Wave stack.
|
| You could open any Z-Wave device and find exactly the same
| chip, usually on a daughterboard. It worked well enough on
| mains power, but battery life sucked. This started to change
| several years ago, but battery-powered devices are still hit-
| and-miss.
|
| ZigBee has always had a robust infrastructure of manufacturers,
| who actually compete on quality and price.
| andylynch wrote:
| I expect these will be; the current IKEA Zigbee products are a
| both inexpensive & well implemented; they are very popular and
| well-supported by open source ecosystems like Zigbee2mqtt, home
| assistant, etc.
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| I absolutely love the use of IKEA's smart home products. For me
| they have been very reliable and work with Apple HomeKit.
|
| But nearly all of their electric devices are odd shapes for the
| USA. For example, their Tradfri outlets take are so bulky that
| they prevent two from being plugged into a standard two plug
| outlet.
| hinkley wrote:
| They must have some weird research dept there. The first color
| changing LED strips I found for a reasonable price also came from
| IKEA. It was several years before anyone matched the price point.
| For a while I bought CFLs from them and I don't recall now if
| that was because of price, color temperature, or dimmer
| compatibility.
|
| You don't expect them to have tech stuff but they are very low
| key about the stuff they dohave.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I remember being surprised that there was wireless phone
| charging built into so many products so early.
| mastax wrote:
| My only smart home devices are old "Philips" Wiz Wi-Fi bulbs.
| They were cheap and I could set them up to change color
| temperature and brightness to help me fall asleep and wake up on
| time - it really seems to help. But they were hard to pair and
| every few months they'll disconnect from WiFi and need re-
| pairing. The proprietary app is somewhat annoying and they
| released a new V2 app which is more annoying and (from what I can
| tell) doesn't have any widgets or siri shortcuts so I need to
| launch the app every time I want to turn the lights on or off.
| I'm sure some newer WiFi bulbs work better but by nature they
| have to use the cheapest possible WiFi hardware and I'm wary of
| them clogging up my airwaves, forcing low PHY rates, and being
| incompatible with newer WiFi technologies like U-APSD.
|
| My new LG TV has a built-in Matter Thread hub, so Thread sounded
| perfect. No proprietary apps needed, compatible with everything.
| Just point your phone at the QR code to pair. Fully local, low-
| latency mesh networking. But it's new so the devices are more
| expensive and there's a really limited selection. The early-
| adopters of Thread experienced some reliability issues but those
| have been fixed (?) I can't find much info about LG's Thread hub
| implementation but it seems like I'd need to add new devices
| through LG's app and I'm wary about how LG's integrations tend to
| be unreliable and how they try to turn open standards into de-
| facto lock-in experiences.
|
| Zigbee and Z-Wave felt like old news to me. The last vestiges of
| the semi-open proprietary home automation market for people who
| are already locked in and willing to pay $60 for a light switch.
| I really don't want to have to buy a hub. I also had some bad
| experiences with some very expensive ZigBee wireless relay
| modules I used in a product at work. I think this thread is
| causing me to rethink ZigBee. Cheap, open, compatible. I wanted
| to get a low-power always-on server to host the Grafana/MQTT for
| my Open Airgradient air sensor anyway, so I may as well plug a
| Zigbee dongle in and run Home Assistant. Might get a Home
| Assistant Green or Yellow.
| XorNot wrote:
| Personally I've just gone all in on ESP-based wi-fi stuff, and
| it's working great so far. Wi-fi is ubiquitous, and for plugged
| in devices it means all my stuff just has a regular IP address
| and DHCP identity on my network (on a secondary SSID without
| internet access, thanks to Unifi).
| wdb wrote:
| All the window sensors I ever saw were going inside the window
| frames. Times change I guess
| petepete wrote:
| I'm all in on IKEA smart home stuff. I don't do anything too
| advanced, but having my lamps on timers and being able to turn
| everything off with one button press is amazing. It integrates
| perfectly with Sonos too, so I wake to the news on Radio 4.
|
| Really happy with it so far. Will definitely be getting a couple
| of leak sensors when they become available.
| sandos wrote:
| This is awesome! These are good candidates for building your own
| stuff, I would say. I do really need a garage door sensor for
| example.
| gruturo wrote:
| Very happy with the news! I have about 40-45 zigbee devices in
| the home - 20ish bulbs and switches connected to the Hue gateway
| (soon to be abandoned thanks to Philips' new account
| requirements.... screw them, but that's another story), the rest
| mostly sensors connected to my zigbee2mqtt/Homeassistant setup.
|
| I am very happy with the Aqara devices but they're relatively
| expensive. The sonoff stuff is garbage (sometimes needs re-
| association with the controller for no clear reason, and always
| when I replace the batteries.. which is often), the IKEA stuff
| (switches and motion sensors mostly) has by far the best
| price/performance ratio and is quite reliable, but the battery
| life is quite disappointing on all of them.
|
| The new motion sensor having 3 AAA batteries (rather than
| 2xCR2032) should ensure a rather less disappointing battery life!
| djhworld wrote:
| IKEA have really nailed the smart home thing, the products are
| affordable and unassuming and crucially, all zigbee. You don't
| even need to use their hub you can use your own.
|
| I've got a bunch of IKEA smart lights, motion sensors, plugs etc
| around the house and they've worked flawlessly for years, all
| integrated into home assistant.
| OyinDerry wrote:
| Jumping into the smart home conversation: IKEA's stepping up
| their game with these Zigbee sensors. Affordable, sleek, and you
| don't even need their hub - a win for DIY smart home enthusiasts!
| It's like IKEA meets high-tech without breaking the bank.
| Comparing with Xiaomi's offerings, IKEA's got some neat features,
| but hey, there's that size difference. Maybe IKEA's going for
| durability over discretion? And, amidst the tech showdown, let's
| not forget about privacy - a big shoutout to those mindful of
| what's phoning home. In the world of smart sensors, it's all
| about finding that sweet spot between functionality, price, and
| trust.
| bmicraft wrote:
| I really like that you can increasingly use many of their
| things with rechargable aaa batteries instead of having to keep
| buying CR2032 coin cells. Also they last much longer
| dmacvicar wrote:
| Zigbee is reliable and quite open. Just go for the Homeassistant
| and zigbee2mqtt route. You will be able to interact with almost
| anything from Homeassistant.
|
| I just finished moving all my Hue lights from the official hub to
| zigbee2mqtt + USB dongle, in preparation for the upcoming
| enshitification (Hue app will require online account).
| LTL_FTC wrote:
| Those who have installed smart motion sensors to turn lights on
| and off, why not install light switches with sensors built in?
| Like the kind one finds in office and school environments? I have
| one in a room and it works well. Never have to worry about
| batteries or privacy or security implications with the rest of my
| network.
| bmicraft wrote:
| Because those usually cost about an arm and a leg more than
| buying separately, and also don't allow for the kind of things
| you can automate (read "script") in homeassistant
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