Thinking of zigbee water sensors for z2m, to put under sinks/washing machines to detect leaks.
I saw a few options around under 10usd either individual or in bulk
I wonder what the differences are? With the probes on bottom, I also wonder how effective against slow leaks under sink would be. An initial leak would just drip and dry, not pool to cross the whole button.
And how do I know which one are z2m supported?
Knowing what’s supported is easy, just look it up.
Personally I’d recommend either the Xiaomi Aqara leak sensors, or if you’re in North America the Linkind ones (they’re hard to get elsewhere).
No leak sensor will detect very small leaks, they all require enough water to bridge the sensor probes. This does mean you need to put them somewhere that’s likely to get wet when there’s a leak.
You can’t really use a list on tuya, as ali is mostly unbranded stuff. Things that look the same may or may not be the same model. I have stuff in z2m that look nothing like its icon.
Aqara are about the only thing with a brand name I guess. But they’re usually 50% more than the tuya white label stuff. So same question, what makes one different to a cheaper ver?
I’m just worried about Xiaomi as I only have a tuya zigbee hub. So any failure to add to z2m then I can’t use it at all.
tuya I have a fallback hub.
No, but you can use the model number… and hope
Given that there’s multiple different Tuya devices with the same model number Tuya is always a roll of the device.
Tuya is a third party that supplies firmware and cloud services to other manufacturers. You get widely varying quality in the devices, some will work well, and others are a disaster. Xiamo Aqara is a cohesive brand with consistent quality (and some quirks).
I’d not worry about Z2M failing. As long as you don’t have a junk coordinator (eg, buy something CC2652 based, and don’t use WiFi) then it’ll be rock solid in my experience.
I have only had a few issues in the years of running it. The first set of issues were caused by the CC2531 coordinator (it’s junk). The others were linked to a particular firmware version of the CC2652 coordinator that partially broke pairing, fixed in the next firmware release. Z2M itself has been rock solid.
Are Aqara all made by xiaomi, or do they have their makers too? I see for other products there’s xiaomi (main brand) and “by xiaomi” seems like a subbrand. Eg soap dispensers.
I am also in need of water sensors, and was thinking of just taping alarm wire to the floor (hooked up to its own zone in my DSC alarm panel, which in turn is visible to HA via envisalink). I can’t see any reason this would be less sensitive than a commercial solution. And it has none of the expense of trying to keep batteries and wifi radios from getting wet. Am I wrong?
I’ve got Tuya, Aqara, Linkind and Third Reality. All seem to work well.
I settled on Linkind as my standard. Price in a 4 pack was $10 US from Amazon and I like having an audible alarm. The standard AAA batteries are nice too.
How do you have the Linkind ones connected? I was hoping to get them connected to the Zigbee hub I’ve already got, but I don’t think it’ll work. Once I got them and found that out, I started looking for the Linkind hub, and they seem pretty hard to find.
ZIgbee2MQTT, but have tested under ZHA as well.
Any idea on where to get the Linkind ones now? I haven’t been able to find them online anywhere recently.
Unfortunately not. My source was Amazon, and they aren’t there anymore.
I bought the ones on Aliexpress and they are useless. Both stopped working after a few days.
I looked up the Aqara/Xiaomi sensors on Amazon and it mentions that they will only work with a Xiaomi hub. Is that true or will they integrate directly with the Xiaomi Integration ?
If they are Zigbee, they will work with Zigbee2MQTT, and probably with ZHA too. No need for their hub.