I too am having a problem with an Ecolink open/close contact sensor. I actually first bought a Schlage branded open/close sensor “with Nexia”, but the comments on Amazon.com made clear that folks were using it just fine with SmartThings, and as far as I can tell it’s identical to the Ecolink branded sensor, even to having both brown and white plastic cases, the cases open/close/connect to the electronics exactly the same, same battery … visually identical. Of course I can’t know if the firmware is the same and I didn’t carefully compare the chips with a magnifying glass, but it seems likely that the same factory is building these.
This paired right away, but showed up as always “closed” regardless of what I did with the magnet. I tried everything I could think of, repaired several times, multiple z-wave repairs, battery reports 100% full.
Repairing it, sometimes (and in fact, most often), it shows up as always “open” instead. When I put the magnet close or pull it away, the light blinks, so I know that it’s responding to that.
The one thing that’s a little “off” perhaps is that I already have some GoControl branded contact sensors installed, along with the replacement RBoys device handler for that. When I installed this unit, it showed up as a GoControl sensor, using the RBoys handler.
So I went into the IDE and sequentially tried every other handler I could think of, to no avail. I tried pairing via the “Add a Thing” link at the bottom of “Things” on the “My Home” screen, and I also tried it explicitly listing it as an Ecolink device under the Marketplace. All to no avail.
Finally I returned to Amazon, and decided to try an actual Ecolink branded unit, thinking perhaps I just had a bad unit.
Got that, with exactly the same results. Hmm, except I think this one never shows up as always “closed” when I pair it, always “open”. Or at least in the fewer tries I’ve made with this unit.
But it now seems clearly that it wasn’t the particular unit, but some combination of things that I’m missing. It seems unlikely that it’s a battery issue given that I tried two different units, and again, I ran z-wave repair a number of times, and have several other contact sensors successfully installed, both zigbee and z-wave.
I guess I can just return this and try some other contact sensor; I want z-wave and not zigbee for this one, as I plan to put it in my mailbox and want the better range (based at least on my current mesh).
But this seems like something that could bite others. Before I give up, any other ideas to try? Thanks in advance!