I have a mix of Zigbee, Zwave and Wyze in my system. I was having issues with sensors reporting correct data and MAC addresses not displaying. I just removed all of my Wyze gear in the last week and replaced them with the Aqara window/door sensors and motion sensors. They are so much more reliable and will continue to use these going forward
2 Likes
Thank you, the only issue I have is in reading the QT-openzwave forum and it seems there is questions on how it will be supported in the future. I really don’t want to change to new sensors that may have a limited life. Currently, I have setup automations that send me reminders to all of my devices when any of my wzye sensor batteries hit 86%. Since I have done this, I have not lost any of them.
If I change to the Aqara window/door sensors and motion sensors, what do you recommend? Did you purchase from Amazon or somewhere cheaper?
Wyze contact sensor only reports battery when it open/close, if a contact sensor that doesn’t have much activities (like those put on windows) it can still die.
I purchased from aliexpress but they are available on amazon. There are links to buy on each of the pages below.
You will need a zigbee receiver to communicate with the devices, I use the conbee II . I haven’t had any problems with the conbee in the 2 years I have been using it. There are other sticks out there but I can’t vouch for them. You will also be able to use IKEA tradfri range among others
https://www.amazon.de/dp/B07PZ7ZHG5
This page is great for a list of zigbee compatible devices.
@hassbrad This battery box is a fantastic idea. Any chance of sharing your 3D print file (whatever the current state it is in)?
Has anyone tried un-bricking any of their contact sensors?
Too much effort, just switch to ZigBee and forget about Wyze.
1 Like
I removed all the contact sensors I had set up with wyze, but kept the motion senors. They’re just so small and work great. Migrated to cheap 433mhz sensors.
I’m new to 433mhz sensors, Can you give more detail about it? Thanks.
sonoff rf bridge flashed with tasmota.
Yeah this is crap they clearly have a defective product and no sign that they will make good on replacing them with v2 and yes the motion sensors just work just have to stay vigilant on battery replacement
Once I found out about the battery issue, I have not lost one in over a year. All the ones I lost last year were replaced by Wyze at no cost to me. I now have automations warning me when the battery level reaches 85%. They are small, cheap and work well with Home Assistant ( for me at least).
Good luck with the battery report it is not consistent and they will die while still reporting that the battery is good they replaced mine too but with the same defective hardware so that’s certainly not a fix and to change batteries out with only 15% of use also is quite annoying
I don’t believe that the are only down 15%. I believe this is another issue with the product. To get down to 15 % it takes 6 months to a year for me. I will be switching to something else just not sure what is the best for Home Assistant?
i’ve read that the motion sensors don’t have the same mac address issues upon empty battery
Source? would love if that’s true as the motion sensors are very responsive and I use several
I haven’t seen one person mention their motion sensor MAC disappear. I think someone mentioned that it doesn’t have the issue in the threads I linked in this post: Wyze sense sensor integrations
I too suffered from the lost MAC address problem. 12 out of my 14 or 15 sensors all died on me during a move. I opened a ticket with Wyze support and since I didn’t have a camera to update the firmware on the gateway, they sent me a new gateway with the updated firmware.
I can confirm the updated firmware on the gateway resolve the lost MAC issue. Now all door contacts that previously had dead batteries are all importing as expected, binary_sensor.wyzesense_macaddy
So did the receiver die and as a result gave you the failed MAC address issue or did all the batteries die on the sensors? There is a big difference, when the batteries die the EPROM or whatever is storing the MAC address causes it to post all zero’s and to my knowledge there is no easy fix other than an extensive hack that requires soldering and re-flashing. Are you stating that there is a firmware update that corrects dead sensors, if so can you confirm the firmware version
@mrbilky The receiver did not die, the lost MAC address was caused because the batteries in the sensor itself died. With the old receiver, and new batteries, I could still import the sensor but it would show up as binary_sensor.wyzesense_ and thats it, no zero’s, nothing after the last underscore. Wyze sent me a new receiver that had a newer firmware on it (couldn’t update my old one because I do not have a Wyze Camera). I replaced the batteries in a couple dead sensors and using the new receiver the contacts imported as if the batteries had never died.
Im not sure what firmware version the bridge I received is on. If you know of a way to find that info I can certainly try looking it up.