Ok guys im getting sick of having the odd sensor setup for the bits i need. It’s time to get all my windows and doors on open/close sensors.
Here’s the thing… i can’t decide between a Sonoff RF bridge and cheaper RF sensors or the Xiaomi Window/Door sensors.
Xiaomi has battery reporting im assuming RF doesn’t?
RF seem bigger but I guess that to do with the bigger (better?) battery
Presumably Zigbee is more secure than RF but do I really care for sensors?
What’s going to give me the better range?
If anyone has experience of using either I would appreciate some input to help be make a decision.
I started with zwave sensors at 50GBP a piece! Had 6 and they gradually broke within a period of 6 months. This forum has no shortage of zwave frustration.
I then moved to sonoff rf flashed first with OpenMqttGateway and then with Tasmotta. I have now been using sonoff rf bridge for about 1 year. The short answer is IT JUST WORKS!
No complex network adding, deleting, healing and all of the other zwave “pleasantries”
You can get on/off contact (window/door) sensors. Also motion, smoke, flood and possibly more.
A decent sensor is 5 to 8 dollars a piece, but they havent broken like my GBP50 phillio sensors.
I recommend this solution.
I like Xiaomi, they have some good products, but can’t justify even their economical version of zigbee
Thanks @juan11perez. I have Xiaomi already mainly for the wireless switches because they can double up as a blanking plate for a standard UK light switch meaning my colour changing yeelight’s can never be accidently turned off.
Any chance you could tell me which sensors you are using? or a link because i know some only provide a signal when they are open or closed and not both.
433Mhz devices are indeed cheap, but I used to replace batteries twice a year. Furthermore I would not get battery reports, and lets just say they are clumsy (don’t get passed WAF)
I’ve replaced almost all of my sensors with Xiaomi Aqara zigbee sensors who have been running >1 year. They are very small, I get battery reports and I don’t use Xiaomi cloud (I’m using zigbee2mqtt).
Can’t comment on xiaomi. As I said I like their products.
How bout range, how much area does a gateway cover and I appreciate there’s lots of caveats but I general.
Also how about the pesky occasional configuration problems that come up with zwave? Is it better in Xiaomi?
I was looking at zigbee2mqtt but my concern was I read somewhere it will only support around 20 devices how many are you running @dgomes.
Currently running 12 Xiaomi devices at the moment and was planning a couple more temperature sensors. put all my windows/doors on would take it up to a total of 28 and thats without any future expansion of things i’ve not thought about yet.
Well zigbee is not zwave, much simpler protocol less issues with “management stuff”
Range is about the same as zwave nonetheless (less then 433Mhz)
A single zigbee coordinator (using the recommended CC2531 in zigbee2mqtt) will give you 15 devices, but if you add a router (simple 20€ plug) you can multiply that number and increase your range. I’m currently running fewer then those 15, but I’m already using 2 plugs to extend coverage in a 3 stories house.
@dgomes I didn’t realise adding routers would extend the number of devices supported. So does that mean each router supports 15 devices? so in your case (1 controller and 2 routers) gives you a total support of 45 devices?
This may be overkill but I guess the best solution would be a router in every room, which will extend battery life on end devices and allow enough crossover so if a router failed the mesh would still work.
@lonebaggie useful to know but the gateway is going at some point. The chinese voice has woke my son up a few times whilst i’ve been playing around with it and them chinese servers are incredibly slow at times.
You can turn the volume off. I also stop the gateway from calling “home” via my router . all responses are local. The gateway has been stunningly reliable, better than my Pi which has crashed twice
with feedback from folks and tests/experiments.