Rain/Solar ZigBee Sensor not working as expected... loosing connection

Hardware
1

Hi,

I have added Zigbee to my HA installation lately.

I am using a (aquara) magnet door sensor and a (Tuya) rain/solar sensor.

While the door-sensor is simply working, without any problems the rain sensor is acting up.

Installation of the rain sensor was simple, but I got a signal “rain” (dry/wet") and one sensor “open/close”. The “solar” sensor is not important to me, so i don’t care too much. The open/close signal does not seem to show any indication of charging or not.
The battery status is also reported, and it seems to be well charging.

I simply wanted to to check if it is raining in my open window.

This is the sensor I have bought:
https://de.aliexpress.com/item/1005007504583342.html
image_2024-08-20_171340598

The problem is, that the sensor looses connection evey few days and is unresponsive then. The only way to get it back up in the network is with re-binding.

I have already changed the physical location. It is now about 3-4m away from the ZigBee hub. The other door-sensor is about 7-8meters away and working just flawless.

Is there anything I can do to improve this, or is the sensor-hardware simply defect?

The nice thing on this sensor is that it does not need to change batteries, as it is solar powered.
But a sensor that is not working reliably is also not acceptable…

I would appreciate any Ideas on that!

Thanks

1 Like
2

Hi, do you have other zigbee devices and do those work fine?

You might have a look at this extensive post about zigbee, it’s from one of our community members and can be very useful: Zigbee networks: how to guide for avoiding interference + optimize using Zigbee Router devices (repeaters/extenders) to get a stable mesh network with best possible range and coverage

3

yes, the magnet-door-sensor is Zigbee and working flawless.

Thanks for the link, I’ll investigate…

4

Do you get a battery level sensor and did you check that it has enough power to keep the sensor connected?

5

How did you connect it ? Tuya hub, ZHA, Zigbee2MQTT ?

6

Hi,

the sensor has plenty of battery power. once connected it never indicated below 90%.

The sensor is connected via ZHA.

7

Updates…

I think I got the issue halfway solved!

I have found this site here, discussing the sensor.

It has a link to this discussion/issue on GitHub.

I had to install a ZHA quirk (i didn’t know what that is), but it seems to work.

With that I was able to get a (up to now) stable sensor data.

wish me luck that it keeps working

8

I have the same problem. Connection was active max 8h. no new data after that. then I tried to reconnect the device from scratch…now it doesn’t connect.

9

Same here. RB-SRAIN01 connected via Z2M and loses connection after it is paired, even if it’s just across the window from the nearest router.

Other devices, even at greater distance, function just fine.

Is it possible that ZHA has better reception than Z2M (doesn’t make sense but…)

I’m going to try and put it directly next to the coordinator and see what happens.

10

Do you special glass in your windows?
Have you paired it with the router or your coordinator?

As you suggested yourself, put it inside to see if that makes any difference.

11

Do you special glass in your windows?

Regular double glass. I should say that the distance from the router to the device is about 1m, so I’m hoping a double glass is not a big interference.

However, when it was inside there were no apparent disconnections for two days in a row… I now placed it outside again.

I’d like to create an automation to send me alerts when the device becomes unavailable.
Using this trigger, I hope it would work:

triggers:
  - trigger: state
    entity_id:
      - binary_sensor.solar_rain_sensor_rain
    to: Unavailable, Unknown

Edit:
Is there a way to do it with an MQTT trigger somehow? Automation trigger variables - Home Assistant (maybe using the trigger.qos ?)

12

Enable:

If you want to monitor all devices:

trigger:
  - platform: mqtt
    topic: zigbee2mqtt/+/availability

If you want to monitor a specific device:

trigger:
  - platform: mqtt
    topic: zigbee2mqtt/your_device_topic/availability
1 Like
13

do you guys have a sensor which is working with the rain intensity? like no rain, heavy rain etc?

14

How to add this rainsensor to HA using ZHA with the quirk? Could someone give some steps on how to do that? Thanks.

Update:
I found some info. Created a custom_quirck folder in config and added a file rainsensor.py and added this content:

Added the folder to configurations.yaml and the sensor was updated :slight_smile: But I only have a moisture sensor. Which is working fine.

But I miss the lux sensor.

15

This is the one I use, you may need to adjust the values to suit

{% if states('sensor.rain_sensor_rain_intensity') != "unavailable" %}
  {% set intensity = states('sensor.rain_sensor_rain_intensity') | int(0) %}
  {% if intensity < 10 %}
    No Rain
  {% elif intensity <= 2000 %}
    Light Rain
  {% elif intensity <= 2600 %}
    Moderate Rain
  {% else %}
    Heavy Rain
  {% endif %}
{% else %}
  Unavailable
{% endif %}
16

Looks cool. Where do I have to place this tekst?

17

Add it to a template sensor, make sure to change the sensor entity name to match your device

image
image813×1600 57.8 KB

18

Were those experimentally determined values? I have a PR to add this quirk to ZHA and was guessing at what value I should use for rain present. Looks like ten is a good value.

19

No, I found it on here, seems to work for me

https://smarthomescene.com/reviews/tuya-zigbee-solar-rain-sensor-rb-srain01-review/

20

It does need link quality < 100 to work without issues. Mine was often disconnecting. So few adjustments and it is fine. Also people said it need to connect directly to the bridge without jumping nodes in between.

The light intensity numbers are not real, originally it reports mV so someone need to do proper calibration formula to make it more realistic, now it mostly produce almost the same graphs even for cloudy vs full sunny days even if the reported numbers are Lux

On mine the battery level is stuck on 93%