Best z-wave contact sensor?

Devices & Integrations
1

What z-wave contact sensor is the most popular and/or best?
I currently have the SmartThings Multipurpose Sensors and they suck. The constantly need to be reset or batteries replaced. I have mostly z-wave switches in my house so I am hoping they reach the sensors better than the ST zigbees.

2

I have a few ecolink sensors purchased and installed in October 2015. No issues, run local, cheap.

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3

There are lots of popular ones, but the way the SmartThings architecture works, the fact that a sensor is zwave rather than Zigbee won’t help you as far as triggering the Z wave switches.

You could use Z wave direct association between them, and that should be faster, but then you won’t get status updates on the switches right away.

4

Perhaps it isn’t the device that’s bad, but where it’s located in your home compared to where the hub is and other interference?

As @JDRoberts said, you could use direct association but I don’t think that’s what you meant. A zigbee device that acts as a repeater, like a wall plug, may be the only thing you need to see improvement. I have a ton of both zigbee and zwave sensors like the ones mentioned in this discussion, and they all work great - especially - especially - after I added a few zigbee repeaters for my ST and Iris devices.

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5

Aeon Labs also has several different door and windows sensors that use Z-Wave Plus, which is suppose to have better range and security than the older Z-Wave standard. More Z-Wave plus devices seem to be in the pipeline, and they are backward compatible with standard Z-Wave.

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6

What zigbee repeaters do you recommend?

7

Hi @dseg,

I have 9 of the Lowes Iris plugs, one in each room. In some case they just sit there plugged in being a repeater, but many cases I have stuff plugged in like TV’s, a projector, and audio equipment.

They can act as both zigbee and zwave (which I’ve seen posts on having some zwave issues), but out of the box zigbee is the default and that’s all I set them up for. These little guys are awesome. SmartThings also has their version of it that works just as well and they’re only zigbee.

8

There is a new discussion on these

9

Doesn’t look like the Iris are easily recognized by SmartThings?
Was look at these:
http://www.lowes.com/pd/Iris-120-Volt-White-Smart-Plug/999925330

10

I don’t have any Iris plugs but I do have a few contact and motions sensors. All paired on the first try and haven’t had any issues with functionality

11

Yup, that’s what I have. The inclusion process requires it to be done twice for some reason if you use ST’s default DH (SmartPower Outlet). There’s also a Community developed DH, but I use ST’s.

The first inclusion works, but watts won’t auto update unless you tap on Refresh. Starting up “Connect New Device” again and then following the reset process gets it included again and then watts reporting functions as expected.

12

I have one. Works fine.

I use the following DH

There is another DH that will work and runs local but I like this one better.

Here is the link to the DH authors thread. He also discusses the other version which runs locally.

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