I’ve been using HA for many years and have a wide range of sensors of various types setup in my system, ranging from DIY, to reflashed devices. I also have various zigbee and 433 motion sensors, which are generally pretty reliable, so never 100% they are also acting as a basic alarm for the house.
So I noticed a few videos from Level One Tech on Youtube, namely this one https://youtu.be/DGTxhyfzuiY which got me thinking about installing wired sensors and using them for both motion triggers automation and the alarm.
Benefits clearly seem to be tried and trusted technology which is open enough to integrate into HA.
Wired sensors don’t need batteries and wired are generally more reliable than wireless
So my questions are:
Do many people use wired sensors to trigger automation?
Are they any more reliable than the various wireless types?
Using something like a Konnected board presumably could offer similar functionality? (although I’ve read here on the forums they seem to be unreliable, but I assume that’s because they rely on an eps8266 wifi chip rather than a wired connection
I haven’t much here on the forums about wired senors
Any thoughts from people with experience of this would be much appreciated.
Yes. A combination of wired sensors feeding board which translate to MQTT, and alarm sensors on a proper alarm system (Vista20P) ready by AlarmDecoder.
When we bought our house it had a wired alarm system on all the downstairs doors and windows. We changed some door and windows over time, but made sure the alarm sensors were re-wired, and still worked.
I did add a couple wireless RF sensors that integrate with my Honeywell alarm system.
If I had to add in wired sensors now, not sure if I would though. It would be expensive to have it done, or a lot of work to DIY, depending on how many doors/windows you’re looking at. For the most part, you can’t see any of my sensors. Except for one on my front door that I had to replace because the old one was flaky and setting off false alarms.
Its hard to run all the wires to a central point, a hybrid approach might be easier. Have some ESPs around the house, and wire your sensors to them. I know its still wireless comm to the pi or whatever is running HA, but I find MQTT to be pretty reliable. I would not run the ESPs on battery, locate them close to an outlet so they can be powered.
Just my random thoughts on the subject, good luck.
In most cases that depends on the frequency and the quality of the devices and the transceiver, so that will range from yes (wireless 345MHz) to no (assume the higher the hz the less reliable)
Wireless devices can also be fried by nearby lightning, and wired alarm systems are usually immune to that, and usually have very specific grounding requirements
For entry door and glass break security, go wired unless it is impossible to run a wire to that location. For non-security/non-essential monitoring wired may be cheaper if running a wire is easy
I’m trying to choose between wired and wireless motion sensors. I have a similar topic opened here. But the responses I got so far make me think the wired options are rather complex and a lot of DIY involved.
Has anyone tried USB powered (with battery) sensors? They’re still wireless but at least have a stable power source