App to Turn switch on and off when the thermostat turns the heat on and off?

I can but there isn’t that much to see. Was here something specific you’re trying to figure out?

This definitely looks like the solution I’ve been in search of. Did you connect at your furnace Control Board, or at the Thermostat? It appears that the “Aeon Labs Aeotec Z‑Wave Dry Contact Sensor, Gen5 ZW097” is difficult to find since it’s discontinued. Any suggestion for an alternative?

So you connect it to the wires coming from your thermostat. Assuming you are looking to control window ACs like me, then your wire for the air conditioner should be unused. If you don’t have a spare wire then you might want to consider replacing it with one that has more conductors. As noted above, the thermostat wires (the yellow one or the Y (compressor) terminal and the blue common C wire) just plug into the two terminals of the Aeon sensor. The only trick is that you will probably need to split the C wire because, well, it’s the common and likely used elsewhere, especially if you have a WiFi thermostat. I have a junction box for the thermostat wire that the thermostat, boiler (which has the 24 VAC supply), and the wire for the AC sensor all go into.

As far as finding the Aeon switch, wish I had better news. I got a refurbished one off of eBay from @TheSmartestHouse and they also used to have some of them listed on their own internet site but other than the guy gouging people on Amazon, I didn’t see one, at least at the moment. I had asked Aeotec about the product and they didn’t have any explanation for why it was discontinued nor any suggestions for a replacement. The tricky thing is that this is for low voltage and uses a battery to operate itself so that rules out a lot of products that work on 110 VAC only.

The other idea I had was to use something like the MIMOlite from FortrezZ but it’s mainly used for DC signals so not sure if it would work here at all. There are other dry contact sensors out there (such as the one by Monnit) but I don’t think they speak the Zwave protocol.

A potential option might be to use the Aeon Water Sensor 6 but I haven’t tested it. The Water Sensor 6 has a docking station which allows for external water probes to be connected to which you could make these connections instead of the probe. It isn’t cheap (close to $80 all told) but there are other water sensors out there. Having said that, really all you are looking for is a contact sensor so you might be able to repurpose some of the door/window or other contact sensors by modifying them. I haven’t looked into it but something that works on z-wave a doorbell since doorbells are low-voltage AC also.

The Ecolink Door Window sensor and their Tilt sensor both have dry contact terminals and will work the same way the Aeotec sensor does, detecting and reporting dry contact input to the hub.

I’ve noticed that the Aeotec Dry Contact sensor seems to burn through batteries much quicker than any other device I have…something like 30-45 days max.

Perhaps that’s one reason it’s no longer available but in lieu of getting a battery eliminator for it, I am wondering about the battery life of these Ecolink devices. Their website, hard as it may be to find, says 5-8 year lifespan on a single battery for the tilt sensor.

However, I don’t see any mention of any obvious terminals on these device cases and I haven’t see an inside picture. So I am wondering if this would be a solder hack or how it would work exactly.

You should get at least a couple of years out of the Ecolink sensors depending on the traffic. We haven’t received any complaints about battery life for these so you can go by manufacturer’s claims when it comes to standard use.

This review has an image of how the terminals look inside of the sensor: https://deviant.engineer/2016/11/zwave-ecolink_tilt/

You’ll be able to insert the wires to the terminals in the top left corner but we’re not sure how easy it will be to close the cover with the wires in, you may need to break part of the plastic cover to bring them out.

Feel free to reach out to our support with more detailed questions about the installation.

Thanks, that makes all the difference seeing the PCB.