I’m ready to throw in the towel on my first gen Wyze door sensors I would still like to run through HA and not run through a cloud service anyone have good experiences with something other that Wyze you would recommend?
Zigbee, as for “best,” it doesn’t exist. “Best” for one, may not be the “best” for another.
Check eBay for zigbee door/window sensors, I bought mine for under $5 ea. (10pcs)
3 Likes
Ha yeah I probably should have said better than what I have right now
1 Like
Anything (almost) is better than what you have now.
I really liked the Wyze Sense, but durability isn’t their strong suit.
after Wyze, I went zigbee (zigbee2mqtt) and have been very satisfied, both in price and performance.
No one has named an actual device, just a protocol. I have found these to be good.
1 Like
These are also working excellent with Z2M without any hiccups (no Tuya Cloud/Tuya App needed, when in pairing mode they connect to Z2M seamlessly):
I have used the Aqara MCCGQ11LM Zigbee door/window sensors and I believe these are arguable the “best” from a price/size perspective. They really are very small and the battery lasts well.
If you have Zwave and a nice door that you don’t want to spoil by srticking a sensor on it then the Aeotech concealed sensor is great although it is expensive by comparison. I have one on my front door and I mounted it in the top so that it is not even visible when the door is open.
The wyze gen 2 work with the same integration as gen 1. Supposedly the Mac address issue has been fixed. I changed 2 of mine with no issues. They are selling 3 packs on Amazon for around $30 US. Bigger than version 1 as it uses a triple A battery. I never had an issue with the Wyze motion sensors so I did not change to another method yet. As ZigBee will be built in to the new Amber hardware I would choose this method.
Since I have hands on with Sonoff and tasmota I’ll be trying these thanks for all the input!
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_id=333737646864&_nkw=Sonoff+Smart+Home+ZigBee+Bridge+Temperature+Humidity+Motion+Door+Window+Sensor
Yeah I went through having 10 v1’s go bad they replaced them but with v1’s so problem with bricking is still real I too have had no issues with the motion sensors they just work but my door sensors no longer report activity even though HA is picking them up when I scan
My version 2 work with no issues.
Probably the best is Smatthings zigbee multisensor.
I’m pretty content with Shelly DW and DW2 (Wifi).
What is common to both devices are built-in tilt sensor useful with tilting windows.
I don’t know other device neither wifi nor zigbee which sense the tilt.
I have sliding windows no tilt
Is this a concern I don’t see contact sensors listed:
Home Assistant - Wyze Integration
This is a custom component to allow control of various Wyze devices in Home Assistant using the unofficial API. Please note this mimics the Wyze app and therefore access may be cut off at anytime.
Highlights of what WyzeApi can do
- Control Wyze Bulbs as lights through HA
- Control Wyze Plugs as switches through HA
- Use Wyze Cameras as motion sensors NOTE: Disabled following API usage incident with Wyze
- Turn on and off Wyze Cameras
- Lock, unlock, and view status of lock and door for the Wyze Lock
I don’t think there is an issue but with any and all devices manufactures change firmware all the time. I have had many add ons / integrations over the years that have stopped working due to changes by the manufacture of the devices. Sometimes people in this community have figured out work around for these changes and other times I needed to move on to other devices.
I use the repo: https://github.com/kevinvincent/ha-wyzesense. No longer updated by Kevin Vincent, but it was updated to support version 2. Eventually I will most like move to Conbee II hub and Zigbee, but all my door sensors and motion sensors are working now so I do not see the need to move there yet.
One of the great things about HA is that there is always some way for us to get the job done. You are never stuck with what a manufactures thinks you want.
1 Like
My real issue besides that they will brick if you don’t catch the battery in time and the battery level is never correct is that they know full well this is a design/device flaw and are unwilling to my knowledge to not replace a defective product with the current version I paid for a device that is defective and now have to change my whole ecosystem for sensors as a result
If you want something fairly cheap and fully local you can do what I did. I bought a bunch of these 433MHz AAA battery powered door/window sensors from AliExpress.com. When I bought them in March of 2019 they were less than $4 each and free shipping. I don’t like the idea of battery powered anything but if I do have to use batteries I want them to be common and cheap! I bought 25 of them (for just shy of $100) because of all the windows and doors on my house.
They are all bright flat white plastic finish and much of my house has wood trim (from 1982) so I just found some similar-colored spray paint and painted some of them to match. They blend in nicely:
Anyway, these units are very reliable and surprisingly feature-rich and energy efficient! I’ve had them on my house since early 2019 and they work great. They send out separate open vs. close signals and though I had no way to test a low battery state that I had read about in forums, I programmed my 433MHz demuxer to recognize the theoretical “low battery” message hoping that it might come from the unit (it was just a least significant bit change). For example:
'30BA0A': ['Front_Door', 'ON'],
'30BA0E': ['Front_Door', 'OFF'],
'30BA06': ['Front_Door_Battery', 'ON'],
Just a month ago one of them started sending out the low battery signal! I pulled it down and its battery was around 900mV. So, I wrote an automation that creates a persistent notification in HA to tell me which sensor needs a new battery. I’ve had three more send out the low battery signal and they’re always right around 1V.
Finally, I’m amazed that all of their AAA batteries lasted for 2.5+ years! I’m very happy that this Chinese gamble worked out so well. My only gripe about 433MHz devices is that there is no encryption on the signal so if someone wanted to mess with me, they could just listen for the signals and rebroadcast them at weird times to cause my automations to do things. I haven’t had that problem but being a prankster I’ve thought about building that kind of device. 
I actually purchased one of those RTL sniffers and I’ve monitored the 433MHz band at my house to see if there are any of my neighbors using 433MHz devices and there aren’t (yet).
4 Likes
Agreed it was bad on their part. They did replace 5 of my version ones. They cost me $5 each and I got 2 plus years. Not that bad as I was learning HA and automations at the time. If starting today I would not go with Wyze.