Cheap open/closed door sensors - UK Edition

Hardware
1

Having scoured these boards for several hours, and going down I-don’t-know-how-many paths to find supported, cheap and uk-available doors sensors I always seem to hit dead ends. So I figured it was time to ask a question, reather than just keep digging away.

I’m looking for a cheap sensor to monitor doors, windows, dog food container, fridge, washing machine, dryer, … many things, I need somewhere in the reigon of 25 sensors to cover everything, and so need something cheap. I considered mail-forwarding Wyze’s sensors as they seem like a perfect solution to me, but I worry about the range and if something is/goes wrong it would mean shipping things back to the US, which isn’t cheap.

I’m not invested in either Zigbee or Z-Wave yet, so happy to go down any route really, HA is hosted on a VM, and I can pass-through USB dongles fairly easily.

Thanks!

2

I can highly recommend the Aqara door/window sensors. They are ZigBee and I use them together with a ConBee II ZigBee dongle instead of the Aqara hub. Rock solid for over 2 years and dirt cheap. I got 15 of them for less than 100 bucks in a sale.

3

These actually look pretty good, very cheap on aliexpress, how long do batteries last?

4

depends on how often the door/window is opened. From my experience on average more than 1 year.

5

Here is a comparison of the 2 best 433mhz ones in my point of view :

6

You could try Sonoff’s wifi Door/Window sensors:
https://www.itead.cc/sonoff-dw2.html

Not too expensive, and you could tazmotize them as well. However, considering they’re wifi, I have a feeling you’ll be swapping out a lot more batteries than a zigbee/z-wave/rf based sensor.

7

@Burningstone
Where did you buy the ConBee II from? I’ve been looking and can’t find it anywhere in the UK, plenty in Europe though it would seem.

8

I bought it from a local store here in Switzerland. Don’t know where you can get one in the UK.

9

I can second the recommendation for the Xiaomi / aquara sensors - cheap and reliable and I haven’t changed batteries on mine in about 1i months.

I’d avoid the conbee though and go zigbee2mqtt.
It can get you going much cheaper than conbee and imho is more flexible.
I had a conbee myself but found the whole thing a faff compared to zigbee2mqtt

10

That’s only around 20 bucks difference maximum.

I never had any problems. What’s really nice about DeCONZ is a service for smooth dimming and stopping the dimming of lights. No complex automations or logic needed to implement a smooth dimmer.

11

In the US maybe, but over here in the UK the stick was about £40 iirc :laughing:

Maybe it was just my setup, but I had nothing but hassle pairing the conbee stick.
Could have just been the kit I was using though.
Glad it works for you :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like
12

Thanks gang!

I ended up ordering some of these - https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000066345735.html
and one of these to connect them - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B085MFRK9W
The CC2531 ended up dying on me, I burnt through two of them before deciding to spend the cash and get a Conbee II from Amazon (I still used zigbee2mqtt though).

Looking forward to having a play, and if all goes well ordering more and seeing what other Zigbee sensors I can use!

1 Like
13

OMG ! £14.99 for a CC2531 !! For that money you could have got a Sonoff Zigbee bridge.

14

Yeah there were a few cheaper options, but I didn’t want to wait 20-40 days to start playing!

15

:laughing: :+1:

16

Hi,

I’m in the same situation as the OP. Isn’t it correct that the Sonoff Zigbee bridge would need flashing with tasmota to work with non-Sonoff devices (like Aqara)? Which would involve doing electronics-type-things with a “USB-TTL” and “dupont jumpers”?

The Sonoff bridge sounds like a better solution and I’ve done OTA flashing of tasmota onto plugs before but never actually done any circuit board connections!

Thanks!

17

Yes, it needs flashing Tasmota, no soldering required.

18

Agree. I use Aqara sensors with the Xiaomi hub. Haven’t had to think about them once since installing them.

19

I use the Z-Wave variant of of Neo-CoolCam Door/Window sensors & for the most part they have been really good, apart from the minor issues when setting up the mesh, once its up and running its good.

20

Just to conclude this thread, I plugged the CC2531 in, followed the guide to install + configure Mosquitto & zigbee2mqtt, paired the sensors and it all worked swimmingly. I unfortunately got a duff vibration sensor which will not pair, but I have got 12 other Aqara sensors paired successfully, so just got unlucky once.

Costs -
£14.99 CC2531 Coordinator
£7.61 per door sensor
£8.21 per vibration sensor
£7.71 per temperature sensor
£9.00 for a Magic Cube (no idea what I’m going to use this for!!)