Door sensors that get confused

My ecolink door sensors all get confused every now and then reporting open when closed, and closed when open. There’s no way to reset them except to physically open/close the door again. Are there any sensors that are more reliable? Or any sensors that allow manually changing state?

Are They really reporting incorrectly, or are they just stuck on a previous state?

If they’re stuck on a previous state, you may have a repeater on your system which is going bad, causing the new messages to get lost. I would try running a Z wave repair to see if you get any information from that.

https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/articles/200981864-How-do-I-make-sure-my-Z-Wave-devices-are-routing-optimally-

There are some other things that might affect an individual sensor, but if multiple sensors are being affected it’s either a cloud problem (in which case you would need to talk to support), A hub problem (in which case you should be seeing eeprom error messages in the logs and again you would need to talk to support ) or, as I mentioned, an altogether different device which is acting as a repeater that is becoming unavailable to the sensors.

Here’s the FAQ on problems with an individual sensor but I don’t know that it will be of any help.

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Thanks JD. These are sometimes stuck on a previous state. I have 8 door sensors and to be honest I think every one has had an incorrect state at least once in the past year. Not all at the same time. I just wonder if it’s the nature of door sensors - they only get one chance to send their message. My batteries look good. Do you know if there are any differences in door sensors from other brands? Or are they all pretty much the same?

I started with SmartThings Multi-Sensors on my three entry doors and they were rock solid for a year but didn’t look very good. So I replaced them with Monoprice Z-Wave Plus Recessed door/window sensors and started having the same issue you are, they just weren’t reliable. I tried new batteries, Z-wave repair, nothing seemed to help. Gave up and switched over to Konnected (removed my alarm system) and brought the physical door contact into SmartThings. If I didn’t do that I would have switched back to the SmartThings sensors.

Ecolink are a budget brand and not particularly well engineered. So I would expect premium brands (Aeotec, Fibaro, and Sensative) to do better, but there’s always a lot of individual variation. The first thing you could do is just try switching to stronger magnets. Among the places where Ecolink link cuts corners is in the strength of the magnet used. In a typical door sensor, the smaller piece is just a magnet in a fancy case. You can swap out any magnet you like, stronger or weaker, that best fits your use case. A stronger magnet will take a little longer to register as open since you have to move the magnet farther away before the Reed in the bigger piece will move, but it may be more effective in registering closed.

I don’t know what particular model you have, but any Z wave plus sensor will have longer range and better power management then the older Z wave classic generation. So there’s an efficiency improvement there. :sunglasses:

Cool, thanks - I’ll try the stronger magnet since I do have some downright dangerous magnets laying around. I cant imagine the delay will be THAT much longer though if I’m swinging a door open. Maybe a few ms.

I do have two monoprice recessed sensors, which from what I’ve read look suspiciously similar to the “premium” aeotec recessed sensors, so I’m not ready to pay a premium without some research first. :wink:

“Looking like” doesn’t really mean anything as the same cases get used for many different devices. They could be devices of different protocols or they could be devices with different internal engineering.

Monoprice is hard to evaluate because they are a “white label” brand. Some of it is cheap stuff (their locks in particular), and some is indeed better quality just without the brand label. I’d look around the forums and see what experiences other people have reported. :sunglasses:

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