Window door contact zigbee

Hardware
1

hi there, so there is no recently updated thread about what hardware you guys use and/or recommend.

im looking for some reliable, small, easy to power, window/door contact switches in zigbee, if they can provider for two or more channels, cool, i dont need to put several units on each window to cover for tilt/open and shutters open/closed.

power: gladly off usb, since recently ive got power in every shutter box, so grid tied is preferred, but battery if AAA, is welcome too, I dont like the button batteries…

any recommendations?

would prefer them to be cheap of course. and klaut free configuration

(German: Klaut is pronounced like cloud and means stealing, exactly what happens with my data in a Chinese cloud…)

thank you kindly
manne

2

For a tilt sensor you can look into one of these:

For general window and door sensors I currently use

You can look into getting battery eliminator cables at the lengths you need to make clean runs where it makes sense to use them so you would just make a slight notch into the casing of the device to allow the cable through.

https://batteryeliminatorstore.com/ - just one store out there but its where I got my cables from currently even with the extra cost to get them out here in Australia since we have little to no options locally.

The other option is to go the DIY route to male your own tilt and reed switch based sensors using ESP32 and go from there.

iirc this setup had a DIY tilt sensor setup for his crank motor automation in this video so one example here if needed:

3

Those tilt sensors look interesting, I had considered using 2 contact sensors to detect my tilt/turn windows, but might consider these.

FWIW I also use the Aqara T1 sensors and they work well, batteries are button but they seem to last a while. I also tried one of the Sonoff contact sensors and works mostly, but I have had some door openings it has not detected reliably.

4

The Sonoff sensors are known to be … not awesome.

For Aqara’s sensors I usually get a few years out of the batteries, less for the temperature/humidity sensors, but even those I get a year to 18 months typically.

5

Battery levels will depend on how much usage each device gets activated and is out of “sleep” mode.

I use this blueprint to have my instance run a weekly check of the battery levels of devices I have yet or a need to run a battery eliminator cable due to where they are setup etc:

It’s set to notify me once a battery gets down to 10% and puts it into the todo list with the battery type it uses, I am also taking advantage of the label feature in HA to make it even easier to filter them heh

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6

I’m replacing most of my stuff with thirdreality. I have a mix of sonoff and aquara etc but I’m getting all thirdreality for motion, door, leak and outlet. They use triple a batteries, so theoretically life is a lot longer, and like you I hate needing 10 different button batteries. Down side is they appear a bit bigger than typical devices, but I’m ok with that. The TubeZB guy recommends some of those as well Recommended Zigbee and Other Products – TubesZB so I’m going to try them. I’d LOVE to not have to replace batteries every 3 months.

7

long time no see, I highly apreciate all your feedback. again my post covid knocked me over once more with weeks and weeks in the hospital, sorry for the long time with no reaction.

so recently i spent some time in ali and temu and found some zigbee switches, AAA powered and dirt cheap, for 20pc i paid 36,80€ including shipping.

ali link with no tracking garbage:
https://aliexpress.com/item/1005007972154939.html

but they dont offer the 20pc price any more. probably a new to ali special offer… but i was not new, no clue realy how i got it or if it was a special thing.

they claim they need the eWeLink app, but thats BS. My HA wieht the Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus was able to find and pair the switch eazy peazy in no time at all.

so i can report, they work, so far reliably and instantanious, though I have to report they take 1,2V AAA batteries and rate newly charged at 20%, so now im shopping for 1,5v li-ion batteries :slight_smile: they are not as cheap, but im sick and tired of devices reporting 1,2V cells as empty, those zigbee thingies are in good company. also got myself a decent charger for all those AA, AAA and 18650 stuff.

best thing i found for that is the XTAR VX4

and here is the almost best price in Europe i have found. (by 10 cent, but no need to punch in my address and payment details, is quite worht paying 10 cen t more to the XTAR amazon shop than to theire webshop.)

again, tracking and referal garbage free amazon link:
https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0D8PY21FN

have fun