For hidden sensors, see here Xiaomi Aqara Door/Window sensor HIDDEN INSTALL
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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).
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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.
These do not require any other hub to use with HA? If so, how to install? Thanks.
They appear to be zigbee UEI Comcast Xfinity Door/Window Sensor (XHS2-UE) Zigbee compatibility
Although it may pay to check with this guy whether he got it to work Sercomm XHS2-SE
I found this from zigbee2Mqtt site, and it is listed as a Universal Electronics Vendor.
oops. Didn’t realized the link you provided above me is the same.
Although it may pay to check with this guy whether he got it to work Sercomm XHS2-SE
He said he never got it to pair with zigbee2mqtt, but successfully paired to his Nortek ZigBee adapter.
No hub is needed. They work good with z2m
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I got the XHS2-SE (the Xfinity model) to pair with ZHA… but no updates would come through (e.g. it would show as ‘closed’ all the time even when I changed things). I’ve switched to zigbee2mqtt and they’re working well… but I would love to know how to get them working properly with ZHA.
I have those Aqara sensors as well. They have been working very well for the month or two I had them. I can’t tell yet how quickly they’ll run out of battery and how reliably that can be detected beforehand.
I replaced my Wyze door sensors with Shelly Door Window 2 and replaced my Wyze motion sensor with Shelly. I also have a Shelly Flood. No hub, cloud, or problems using the Shelly Integration.
I also got some extra sensors (temp, tamper, lux, battery) built in with the primary Shelly sensors.
The Shelly sensors are much bigger than the Wyze and more expensive but I bought them because they meet my current needs, have better support in HA (the Wyze HACS integration support went cold) and because I think Shelly will be a better company/supplier for my future needs.
I initially chose Wyze because they were cheap. Now I choose sensors based on quality, support, simplicity, and long-term viability. Wyze was a disappointment. I hope I made the right choice with Shelly - time will tell…
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This is what the Aeotech door sensor looks like when it is installed - it is practically invisible!
You have to open the door and look down from the top to see it.
I have these shelly wifi door sensors but i find them rather slow.
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Those are definitively slower than Zigbee. But with recent firmware (I think since v1.10) should react up to 2 secs. It might be still too slow depending on your needs. But it’s lot quicker than year or 2 ago with previous firmware (up to 9 secs)
Hi - I know your post is now 2 years old, but do these still work fine and what’s your experience on the battery life? Also how do you connect these to the 433Mhz hub/interface to HA? I haev Wyze v1 sense door/window sensors half of which have bricked and others are moving in that direction so don’t want to spend more money on Wyze stuff…
If these are good (based on your initial review) I would like to see if they can be a good replacement. Any other insights you can share related to connecting them to HA would be great.
Thx
I’m really very surprised that the batteries last as long as they do. I’ve gotten about 2-3 years from them on a single triple A battery and they send out a “low battery” signal so you know when it’s time to change them. In order to read the signal, you need something like the Sonoff RF Bridge. I am still running that specific device on Tasmota and I’ve thought about converting it to run ESPHome but I haven’t tried to tackle that yet.
I bought a small second set of these devices from AliExpress more recently and the new ones have an additional tamper response should you care if someone pulls the thing off the wall… Pretty amazing actually.
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Thank you for your prompt response. I do have a RF bridge but haven’t used it yet. So from above seems I need to flash it with Tasmota and have these devices paired with it to get the open/close state as well as battery signal, etc.
Also can you share the link from where you purchased the more recent ones as the older link doesn’t seem to work and seems that product/seller is no longer present in AliExpress. Appreciate your help!
Yeah, you’re pretty much there already! This was the most recent AliExpress purchase of door and window sensors I made: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2255800593881608.html
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Thank you again. This is very helpful. I’ll order a few and try them out on my setup. Appreciate you taking the time for the detailed response.
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