Hi all,
does anyone know of a simple, mains powered Zigbee temperature sensor??
I’ve got several of these little things around and they were great for a year or two but most have now started eating batteries - maybe every two weeks! It’s a joke now and unaffordable to feed them AA’s that often so need a mains power sensor.
Look up battery eliminator cables, they replace the battery with a dedicated power instead using the same formfactor contacts and can be powered via usb or have a dedicated power adapter attached on order with some.
But then depending on where your sensor is, it looks pretty ugly. Just this week I’ve embarked on a project to get rid of 6 battery zigbee motion sensors and I’m replacing them with in-ceiling mounted motion and movement sensors using power over ethernet, ethernet cables and it’s part of the ESP home system. It uses a 2450 sensor but optionally you can also add a 2412 which I think is there to speed up recognition.
Company is called Apollo Automation. I’m just in the process of setting up and adjusting sensors but so far, this looks really promising. Of course it helps that I have ceilings that I can access because even though they will work with wi-fi, I would still have to plug them in to a USB adapter and I don’t want to run fire hazards in the ceiling. They were easy to install and they are almost invisible in the ceiling, probably four and a half inches wide with the lip over the drywall. Very configurable through home assistant, dozens of entities. They also are part of and contributors to the open home foundation and have been big supporters of home assistant.
You get the lengths you need and optionally run them via conduit that blends into the paint that you have via the ceiling and corner runs to hide them if you cant run them through the walls with POE based power runs.
You could also get a Broadlink Rm4 Mini
I bought a couple with the USB cord that has a build in Temperature and Humidity sensor.
If you have a need to send IR (or RF) codes and also want to measure the temperature it kills 2 birds with one stone (I use one of them to control a wall mount AC unit).
Note you will also need a USB power source - but you can get the RM4s for cheap on Aliexpress.
Another thing to look at is the quality and age of the AA batteries you’re using. I’ve found that right out of the box some brands last much longer than others. You can even splurge for lithium AA’s if you want longevity. Batteries also have a shelf life, which also affects how long they last once you start using them.
Thanks all,
I’m going down the ESP8266 route, got one up and running, testing the signal in its target location now(garden room)
Thanks all for the advice on this,
I am now running three ESP8266’s with DHT22’s and it’s all working very well.
The only real downside is the power supply but I can live with that in exchange for the better performance.
