I wanted to put a vibration detector on my boilers oil burner to keep track of run time. My thermostat tells me when there is demand for heat but doesn’t tell me if the burner is running and they are two different things.
I use zigbee2mqtt so I cannot speak to any other integration.
First sensor I tried was the Aqara DJT11LM. It integrated seamlessly but unless you are trying to determine if your smart car had a head on collision with a trailer truck it’s pretty much useless picking up vibration. Even at the most sensitive setting it only occasionally picked it up and an oil burner vibrates pretty hard. Also it is basically an on off switch. When it does detect it times out at the interval you select and switches back on when it detects vibration again so it doesn’t accurately determine run time. I actually watched as it detected vibration, a bit late, then timed out but failed to trigger again even though the burner was still running. Don’t waste your time on this one.
Second sensor is a bit harder to find but works well, Tuya TS0210. It is larger and runs on 2 AAA batteries but claims a 2 year battery life. Once triggered it stays triggered as long as there is vibration and resets at an interval you can set. I have it on medium sensitivity and a reset time of 5 seconds and it is right on the money. I watched it cycle multiple times.
I ran both detectors together for over a week and it was obvious how bad the Aqara sensor was and how well the Tuya worked just checking the history against them and the demand on the thermostat. I also located the sensor so the circulating pump did not trigger the sensor, the pump runs when there is demand and can run for a some time before the boiler water needs to be reheated and the burner starts.
One note on the Tuya, it did not want to integrate until I upgraded my zigbee2mqtt to version 1.29.1 and then it was no problem.
So if you need a reliable vibration sensor this has been my experience. I found mine on eBay search for "Tuya Zigbee Security Protection Alarm Sensor ".
“Even at the most sensitive setting it only occasionally picked it up and an oil burner vibrates pretty hard.”
Setting the sensitivity is very easy in zigbee2mqtt as well it can be changed in both HA or on the zigbee2mqtt device web page. I’m glad you find it useful for your use case however for me the way it reports did not deliver what I wanted and I found it very unreliable in detecting anything but harsh vibration. I have seen many other complaints about sensitivity on this device so I think you probably got lucky.
As an FYI …
I use many Aqara / Xiaomi devices and really like them this is the only one I have an issue with.
If it’s this device I has to write the value of attribute current_zone_sensitivity_level down to 1 to get it to pick up the vibration on my hob exhaust fan: Tuya Vibration Sensor TS0210 Zigbee compatibility
I tried the Aqara sensor on my washing machine, to detect the end of the spin cycle. Unfortunately, the sensitivity level setting only gave me the choice between false positives and false negatives, at its best. More normally, the sensitivity seemed to change randomly overnight without any intervention, or the sensor flat out refused to work at all, making this sensor essentially useless to me.
I’ve been using the Tuya for about a year now and it’s been great. I use zigbee2mqtt which opens up settings to tweak it. Excellent battery life too. I’ve been able to track my oil burners actual runtime and compare it to the thermostat demand time to set the high and low temp settings on the boiler for best efficiency.
Hi, if I may zombify this thread (instead of opening a new one just for a stupid question),
I’ve bought a TS0210, it pairs with z2m and the timestamp updates instantly when I press the button. But vibration seems undetectable, on 0 and on 50 sensitivity.
Am I correct to assume that I should see vibration events in the logbook of the MQTT integration page of the sensor? I also don’t see any events in MQTT explorer.
I presume a faulty sensor, but I wanted to make sure with swarm intelligence that I’m looking in the right place.