Monoprice Hank HKZW-DWS01 Zwave Door Sensors Died x3

Been running HA for a few years now. Recently did a complete tear-down-rebuild of the entire thing, fresh install of 2022.8.6 on an RPi 3b+ with an Aeotec 5 USB stick, brand new A2 Micro SD, factory wiped all devices and sensors. I have 6 Monoprice / Hank HKZW-DWS01 that have generally worked OK for the last few years. I discovered one of them wouldn’t factory reset when I did my rebuild. It was on a door I never really use so I guess I never noticed. No worries, I didn’t need that door sensored.

however, since rebuilding - I’ve had two more sensors go kaput within a few weeks. They just stop reporting anything. The blue light still comes on when activating by magnet, tamper, or push-button. But nothing reports on the z-wave log. I tried hard resetting the sensor by pressing the button for 20 seconds, but after blinking for about 9 seconds, the light goes out and never comes back on (normally it will blink for 20 seconds then go solid to indicate reset complete). Device still responds to magnet/tamper/button, but won’t take a factory reset.

Any thoughts? One of the sensors literally registered the door being opened, then 3 seconds later I closed the door and it was dead. it never registered the door being closed. I’m gathering from the forum that these are generally garbage sensors, but I hate the thought that 3 of my 6 sensors are completely dead. any suggestions on how to revive them? I’ve tried fresh AAAs, I’ve left them unpowered for a week, i’ve removed them to another location 1000 miles from my stick and tried to reset them there - nothing seems to work. Thanks!

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Hi, did you figure this one out?

I am currently having the same issue with an Aeotec Door/Window sensor 6. It will not show me the correct gradient led color after conducting factory reset method. I have reset 5 other identical devices, and now they are all up and running. This one sensor only shows constant green led.

I am using the ZW112 with fw v1.2.

Regards,

sigh, no. at one point I had as many as 6 of these doors sensors, and they generally worked really well. Then one by one, even two in one day, they just started dying. I thought de-energizing them for a couple weeks might help, it did not. I looked the entire board over front and back with a high-x magnifying glass to see if I could spot anything abnormal, and it all looked fine. I opened a couple tickets with Monoprice support and nobody ever wrote me back. Eventually I just threw the dead ones away, and swapped the remaining live ones for non-critical doors. I have two that are still in service and seem fine.

I tried a few other sensors that I’ve had mixed feelings about - the HomeSeer HS-DS100+, and the Wink. I think the HS-DS100+ is just another version of the Hank/Monoprice.

Eventually I found Zooz and have been pretty happy with their ZSW41 open/close sensor. i’ve only been using them for a couple months so time will tell if they last. I do have a few minor gripes I plan to send to Zooz some day:

  1. The circuit board attaches to the part of the housing that gets screwed or glued to the door. This is doubly annoying as their recommendation is to attach the sensor to the moving part of the door, and put the magnet on the frame. I’m sure I could separate the circuit from the housing if needed, but this isn’t ideal.
  2. There is no tamper sensor. Not a huge deal, but for some of my locations it was nice to know if someone was fiddling with things.
  3. The housing can be difficult to open once installed, making battery replacement tough. The pry hole is against the bottom of the housing, so you need to carefully consider placement and orientation of the sensor when you install it to make sure you can replace the battery some day.

BUT even with all that, so far I’m much more satisfied with the Zooz ZSE41 than any of the above sensors.

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Thanks for thorough answer and recommendations with pros and cons. I just had one that appearently died out of the blue. Might as well look for replacement sensors I guess. Cheers.