Can't get sensor to act as binary

It sounds like it hasn’t completed the update of the device, or the device itself is broken.

If you look at the manual for the device, it’ll tell you how to wake it. Battery powered devices can only be contacted when they’re awake, which they’ll do on a schedule (possibly only once a day), but you can manually wake them.

As soon as you wake it, in the Z-Wave control panel in HA (Configuration -> Z-Wave) use the Refresh Node option for that node (you may want to get that all prepared, so you just have to hit the Refresh Node button). Wait a minute then look at the Entities of this node drop down, just underneath.

great - thanks - I will try when I get home in a few hours.
This is the manual: https://aeotec.freshdesk.com/helpdesk/attachments/6009584697

It mentions holding the z-wave button for 6 seconds and releasing after 8, but I can’t tell whether this will wake the device or ‘abort waking’. But will give it a try.

Reading the manual, you’ve got 8 seconds after manually waking it before it goes back to sleep. You wake it by holding the button for 6 seconds.

That section is simply explaining that if it wakes itself, it stays awake for 10 minutes, except when it is either (2) told to go to sleep, or (1) you trigger a manual wake.

OK, making progress!
I woke the sensor and clicked Refresh Node, now I see this under Entities of this Node:

… and in the ‘dev state’ section I have:

image

and also:

image

then I’ve restarted HA, and now the device name is showing up properly:
image

When I manually trigger the sensor and check the logs, it still shows up as a Basic report:

Over to you, thanks again!

The only thing that matters is that binary_sensor.sensor node. That’ll change when the door opens and closes.

oh ok, great! Where can I see that change? So far I’ve been triggering the sensor (open/close door) and have been checking the OZW logs, seen a Basic report, and thought I was defeated because nothing was changing on my dashboard.

Presumably though I can write some code which triggers something when that change occurs that you’re talking about, but I can’t see where that change occurs.

Even when I open/close the door, these values all stay the same on the dashboard:
image
(I removed / re-added the zwave gear, hence Node 4 has changed to Node 2)

Hmmmm, are none of the other sensor. values changing either?

Now, that it’s reporting as always “on” suggests that the magnet isn’t close enough to the sensor to trigger the sensor. If you manually place the magnet against the sensor, does it trigger then? If that doesn’t trigger then there’s some form of fault with the device (from a failure of the sensor hardware, to something as stupid as the magnet being installed the wrong way around).

If I have a look in the dev-state section, the only sensor. which is now showing up (since the device deletion / re-addition to hass.io) is this one:


… and on that screen, certainly nothing changes when I trigger the sensor, if that’s where I’m meant to be checking for change.

Re. magnet distance from sensor - I’m yet to install the sensor in the door so this is just triggering it by holding the magnet and sensor together in my hands. I can see from the consequent red lights that the triggering is occurring.

every time I do this triggering (putting the magnet up to the sensor, then removing), it shows up in the OZW logs (as basic report) but I don’t see any trace of change elsewhere.

Ok, have you checked the Report Type setting for the device (in the Z-Wave control panel). I suspect the default is Basic Set only https://github.com/OpenZWave/open-zwave/blob/master/config/aeotec/zw089.xml

Also, you should find some zensor.aeotec_zw089_... nodes

I don’t know how to check the Report Type setting as such - what I have done is set the Config Parameter to 1 (Sensor Binary Report Toggle), but this yields no change in the OZW logs, and when I trigger the sensor, I get the same as usual (treated as Basic report, as per my last screenshot).
If I sent the Config Parameter to 121, with Config Value = Sensor Binary Report, this DOES yield a change in the OZW logs as follows:

… but then when I trigger the sensor again, it’s the same old story - treating as basic report, no change registering on the main dashboard, etc.

I can’t see any other sensor. nodes aside from the one I’ve screenshotted above. Here’s the full list (I copy/pasted to excel):

As just mentioned in Discord -> Go to the Z-Wave control panel, find the entity, find the Node config options piece, and Config parameter.

Thanks for the help in discord!
Just to close this off for future viewers, the reason why my Report Type wasn’t changing from Basic to Binary was because I hadn’t woken the device before doing so. I found the manual for the device online, it said I need to hold the button down for 6 seconds to wake the device up for a few minutes, and that did the trick.

@alltherage
Did you ever get this working with events showing in Hassio?

I have the ZW089 returning binary sensor reports (after setting parameter 121) however the old and new values are always the same?!. I suspect this is the reason why they’re not showing up in Hassio Logbook or History.

E.g. note the old and new values are both true in the second line below:

2017-09-06 13:00:10.924 Info, Node011, Received SensorBinary report: Sensor:54 State=On
2017-09-06 13:00:10.924 Detail, Node011, Refreshed Value: old value=true, new value=true, type=bool
2017-09-06 13:00:10.924 Detail, Node011, Changes to this value are not verified
2017-09-06 13:00:10.924 Detail, Node011,   Expected reply and command class was received
2017-09-06 13:00:10.924 Detail, Node011,   Message transaction complete

I also tried changing config parameter “1: Sensor Binary Report Toggle” but that changes both new and old values to false…

Cheers,
Justin

Hi Justin, yep my old and new values seem to be changing from False to True as they should, and state is changing from off to on, etc:

2017-09-10 01:24:57.475 Detail, Node002, Refreshed Value: old value=false, new value=true, type=bool
2017-09-10 01:24:57.475 Detail, Node002, Changes to this value are not verified
2017-09-10 01:24:57.475 Detail, Node002, Notification: ValueChanged
2017-09-10 01:25:00.820 Detail, Node002,   Received: 0x01, 0x09, 0x00, 0x04, 0x00, 0x02, 0x03, 0x30, 0x03, 0x00, 0xc0
2017-09-10 01:25:00.820 Detail, 
2017-09-10 01:25:00.820 Info, Node002, Received SensorBinary report: Sensor:192 State=Off
2017-09-10 01:25:00.821 Detail, Node002, Refreshed Value: old value=true, new value=false, type=bool
2017-09-10 01:25:00.821 Detail, Node002, Changes to this value are not verified
2017-09-10 01:25:00.821 Detail, Node002, Notification: ValueChanged

sorry I can’t be of more help

Thanks for this @alltherage
So in the end I removed the sensor from the door, played with it a bit (and everything worked) and then remounted it to the door frame, and it all seems to work fine now? I don’t know if it was misaligned (hard to see how though)? Either way, thanks for the reply, you inspired me to try further and get it working!

ah I’m glad! :slight_smile:

Guys I have spent literally hours and hours trying to get my Aeotec Recessed Door Sensors to work to no avail. Finally stumbled upon this post via a link from another post and now all is working perfectly!

Thank you so much! :grinning:

I’m having the same exact problem as you mentioned but I can’t seem to get this to work. I’ve tried everything mentioned here … the sensor won’t get out of sleep mode.

Hi in the end the issue was that I wasn’t having success in changing my sensor to a binary one because my sensor was always asleep when I was trying to implement the change.

I woke the sensor by holding the button on it for 6 seconds, then changed it to binary immediately afterwards and this time it stuck! Basically you need to wake the device before doing anything to it.

Hope this helps!

I was messing with this for the last 6 hours and between a few threads I was able to get the sensor into a mode that reported many variables rather than one sensor. I think I pressed the tiny button for like 20 seconds, then restarted HA. I also tried setting 121 to 4, or 8. Neither of those worked. Set parameter 121 to 16. With that, the “binary_sensor.aeotec_recessed_door_sensor_gen5_sensor” went from always on to changing with the magnet. Then I could get that info into an if/then/else setup in the configuration.yaml so I could make clean sense of the sensor in Lovelace. Ask if you’ve got questions, but 16 is the answer I found somewhere kind of unrelated. Second post by the taco.