I would save yourself some time and effort and go zigbee. I’ve been using these for 18 months and still have not changed a battery. I spray painted some of mine black to blend in with our black aluminium door frames. These are seriously tiny devices.
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Craps me that you can’t get rechargeable button batteries (CR2032, CR2016 etc). I don’t mind changing them if it is only every few years, but when you have lots of devices you tend to generate a fair bit of waste.
Yeah agreed. I just like the reliability for hard wired. Zigbee is great but I often found my zigbee contact sensor battery’s lasting only six months. They were old contact sensors. And they were important sensors for many security automations.
I just figured while I have access I may as well do it right.
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I like (and use) zigbee too. But nothing beats the speed and reliability of hard-wired.
I have Aqara contact sensors on most doors and all windows but three doors have hard wired sensors as the sensors and cabling were there from the previous alarm system.
I have one recalcitrant zigbee light dimmer that takes 4-5 seconds to turn on even though it has an excellent mesh and great link quality 
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There is a way to use dowels and a right voltage supply to turn certain devices to hard wired that I was looking into but I would prefer to try find out of the box options for those I want to replace to not worry about batteries when they don’t have POE options lol
i.e
I was looking into using rechargeable 3.2V 18650 lifepo4 as replacements for some 3V button batteries but didn’t get very far. And dunno if it is a good idea.
Obviously comes with size increase.
You can get rechargable 2032 coin cells but they have a slightly higher voltage and only 1/5th the capacity of a standard non-rechargable version.
Info from here: https://batteryspecialists.com.au/blogs/news/batteries-cr2032
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Thanks, yes I did stumble across those in my travels but they didn’t seem to quite hit the mark.
Guess I’m getting off topic. Boo.
that’s fair enough, I get it.
Is there something you don’t like about the Shelly i4 DC? Basically a 4-input ESP board already in a nice case with a nice software package that integrates really well with HA.
Nope. That would work. But assuming it’s not Shelly app dependant?
All shelly devices can be controlled and setup without the APP, you just connect to its AP and set it up with yours then control it through HA when its added through the plugin.
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Thank you. Seems this is the best solution. I guess I need to workout do I run it all to my network cabinet. Or just have each Shelley for each contact sensor near the door it uses.
Forgot to mention that at the latest CES they have matter versions of the relay’s coming for those that don’t want or need to connect the wifi versions that are currently out.
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I’m currently cutting over all my non-rechargable (primarily coin cell) battery sensors (at least 50) to AAA as I generate a lot of waste and cost. I probably spend $50 a year on batteries at this stage, those 2450 batteries are so costly.
I initially tried just 2xAAA batteries however some sensors either didnt work (this was too low, basically a flat 3V coin cell) or they worked but slowly (e.g. motion sensor taking 1+ seconds to report).
Instead I’ve gone for a 2xAAA battery case, with 1.2V NIMH batteries, and a step up converter to 3.2V (SX1308). Looks like this,
Doing them as they die, so done about six so far. Ikea motion sensor, Smartthings door sensor, Smartthings button.
So far working OK, though will need to see how long they last. Previously the coin cells were spot on 2 years. These 2xAAA should have 750mah, which is double the coin cells, however the boost converter is probably causing a lower efficiency.
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For those using clipsal wiser that haven’t forked out for the over priced and redundant wiser hub:
There’s been some great work done by guru’s in the community to add OTA firmware updates to Z2MQTT. This provides a fix for the dreaded ‘unregistered click’ bug that plagued many early adopters.
These are recent PRs to Z2MQTT so if you want to use / test them, you need to run the Z2MQTT ‘edge’ add-on, which will build form the latest nightly release.
Once on edge, you should be able to see and execute firmware update through the OTA tab in Z2MQTT. These changes will make their way the stable build that updates at the start of each month.
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excellent thanks. I still have a couple of wiser switches / dimmers in my drawer that had that bug, would be nice to use them, and potentially get some more.
Interesting idea, doesn’t look pretty though (sorry)…did you consider a single 18650 with a step down DC-DC to 3.2v?
Or you could just not fully charge it so the voltage doesn’t reach 4.2V and you’d still get around 80% capacity at 3.7V, so maybe 2000mAh or so. Then you wouldn’t need a DC-DC converter. I’m assuming your devices will tolerate an extra 0.5V (YMMV). Or else fully charge it and put a diode inline which will drop 0.5 to 0.7V or so.
I reckon you could package all that into a 3D printed case that looks a bit neater too.
There are some interesting, and way overpriced, optioins here too.
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and bookmarked for when I want to start deleting batteries from my setup, that is exactly what I was looking for when it comes to options, now all I need to make sure of is the USB brick provides enough power out for each one that I setup at the time so I can keep to AUS plug type.
Personally, this is what I would do if I had the chance to do it.
The app is not required, but it does make the initial onboarding very easy (basically just getting the devices onto your WiFi). Once they’re on your network, HA automatically picks them up, and pretty much everything you’d need is configurable through HA (including firmware updates). There are some options that might only be configurable through the app, and I do like having the app as a secondary control interface. Also note that you do NOT have to have the cloud option enabled in order for the app to work on your local network.