Ecolink tilt sensor sticking (phsyically, nothing "smart")

Devices & Integrations
1

I have an Ecolink tilt sensor on my garage door that has been working fantastically for around 4 years now. It was even still on the original battery. Lately, however, it has been sticking a bit. This usually happens when I close the garage door, the sensor will still show as ‘Open’. If I walk back outside and lightly pound on the garage door right by the sensor, it will unstick and show as ‘Closed’ properly. This leads me to believe it is the physical tilt sensor itself sticking, and not anything with the hub/cloud/etc.

Has anyone come across this before? It really doesn’t seem to be any issues with my z-wave mesh, and I replaced the battery just to eliminate that as well. This has been happening frequently for the past couple of months, so I can’t imagine this is tied to any kind of SmartThings outage.

2

Common issue. Most people replace the tilt ball with a mercury switch.

Look up mercury switch Ecolink and you’ll see previous examples.

1 Like
3

Thanks, I’ve ordered some mercury switches to swap out for the tilt ball.

4

Which switches did you order?

5

This is what I ordered, the 5mm variant. It’ll be a few weeks before they show up, so I don’t know yet how well they’ll work.

https://m.aliexpress.com/item/33040347015.html

6

Is there a minimum temperature that the Mercury tilt sensors will work? My Ecolink has been working fantastically ever since I replaced the ball with the Mercury sensor. Until today, which has been one of the coldest days so far this winter at around 17F. Could it be the temperature or do I need to troubleshoot something else now?

7

I would look at the CR123A battery. Lithium batteries are generally “good” down to 0F but performance and voltage drops off esp for older batteries.