'Fibaro Z-Wave FGK-101 Temperature & Door/Window Sensor' Full Support Handler

Out of the 11 FGK-101 I bought, 2 had to be returned because they were draining their battery.
Apparently, those 2 were NEVER going to sleep, whatever the handler commanded them.
If you have a multimeter, you can check the current out of the battery : when you awake the FGK-101 (opening/closing with the magnet for instance), the consumption goes up to 4mA for a few seconds; but it should go down to 0.x mA if you don’t wake up again the FGK-101, letting it go to sleep.
A faulty FGK-101 will NEVER go to sleep, and drain the battery in a month or so.

Great News (for me anyway!) I had already tried resetting the sensor, but based on reading other posts on this thread I tried resetting again. That with a fresh battery has me back in business. Its been running for the past 24 hours, updating at least every 4 hours as well as reporting temp on open/close.
Thanks for your help!

Has anyone found an alternative way to use a remote temperature probe? I have had lots of trouble getting a FGK-101 working correctly. I bought some from ebay but couldn’t ever get them to report the temperature. I bought from Amazon, but they sent to Window Door Sensor 2 instead of the FGK-101. Looking for an alternative.

This happened to me too but I complained and Amazon (The Smartest House) corrected the error.

If you need a battery-operated device and you insist on utilizing the contact sensor functionality, I don’t think there anything other than Fibaro.

For my application (temperature-only sensor), I ended up using a Qibino. They run on 110V or 24V and work perfectly.

Note that for Qubino, you’ll either need their probe with 1.5mm connector ($15) or solder the connector yourself.

Well, after all that and now it looks like my sensor is toast. First thought it was the battery so I replaced it (twice) but no response. Tried to do a factory reset and again no response. It looks like the sensor is completely dead. Just peachy. With winter coming on I really need a temp monitor for my hot tub. I cant find any mor FGK-101 sensors but they are selling the FGK-104 which appears to support the DS18B20 sensor. Will your DH work this model?

https://www.aartech.ca/fibaro-fgk-104.html

The only difference between the FGK-101, FGK-102, … FGK-107 is the COLOR of the case.
My custom Device Handler will run fine.
Note that this canadian seller seems to sell the “pre-ZW5” version of the FGK-10x, which will work fine with both the pre-ZW5 v0.9.5.2 and the ZW5 v0.9.7.3 version of the handler.

It is the first time I hear about a FGK-10x which “dies” : most defective FGK-10x are usually dead on arrival or have a defective sleep mode and suck up batteries way too fast.
How long is your wire going to the remote DS18B20 ? Did you have any thunderstorms near your place ?
Note that I had several defective DS18B20 (usually dead on arrival), so you have better test with a new DS18B20 before you replace your FGK-10x. But I suppose if the open/close function does not work either, your FGK-10x is truly dead.

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I removed the replaced the battery which made no difference. Then, on a hunch, I left the battery out for 30+ minutes and re-installed it. At that point I gave up because it still appeared dead (no LED). Several hours later, I get an temperature update. ITS ALIVE!!! I now press the tmp button and the LED lights up. My hunch??? Did the sensor get damp?? No idea but it is working again

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Got this to work!

How can I change the report interval? I have a hot tub and don’t want it to report every half degree change… more like once every 2 degrees would be better for battery life.

Thank you!

Changing the report interval and changing the temperature sensitivity report threshold are 2 different things.
If you rename your hot tub sensor to " *xxxxxx " (first character must be " * "), the sensitivity will be 1°C instead of 0.3°C. If you want to change the threshold value to anything different from those 2 values, you will have to modify the handler (2 lines, search for “tempQuantum”).
Beware that the set-up of pre-ZW5 FGK-10x and ZW5 are different : respectively in 1/16 °C or 1/10°C units.
How to modify the temperature sensitivity for pre-ZW5 has been explained in previous posts.
Have fun !

That worked, I renamed the sensor to have an asterisk at the beginning, and now it does temperature updates infrequently. Perfect!
Mine is a pre-ZW5, it appears. I bought a pair of them from the Canadian distributor.
Thanks again, this is a great, simple solution to monitoring the tub.

4 years later (!) I discovered a very bizarre bug when the battery level of a pre-ZW5 FGK-10x becomes too low (<<50%) : it does not wake up anymore as expected every hour…
…BUT the asynchronous temperature reports (sensorMultilevelReports) continue to arrive, for some time, thus making the Device look (partially) “alive”.
Unfortunately, the updating of the battery level is performed by the Handler every 24h during one of the periodic wake ups…
…which obviously stops happening when the Device does not wake up anymore; the displayed battery level thus becomes stuck at the latest reported (and completely obsolete) value, possibly for weeks/months.
Also, the temperature reports supposed to be sent every 4h at the minimum, even when no temperature change occurred, are skipped.

I have thus modified the Handler so that the displayed Battery level is now forced down to 1% when this case occurs.
You can download those latest updates from github : pre-ZW5 v0.9.5.3 version and ZW5 v0.9.7.4 version.

BTW, I apologize to several users of my custom Handler which suffered from erratic behaviors when their batteries became too low : some of those problems were possibly related to that same bug, since those users believed as true the displayed Battery Level, when it may actually have been completely obsolete, and much lower in reality.
Remember that any battery level <50% is likely to generate some FGK-10x reports erratic behavior.

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What battery (brand) is everyone using.

This summer I purchased a 4 pack from Amazon and they worked well during the warm weather. Now, with winter here, no so much. My sensor will work a few hours/days and then become totally unresponsive. I take it in the house and remove the battery. After several hours I replace it and every thing work fine (for now). Yesterday, I noticed that even an unused battery read 18% remaining. When I looked at the reviews of this battery it was one of the complains. That is, 18% power left from a brand new battery. Time to buy an alternative

The “no name” blue batteries you bought fom Amazon are likely made in China with the cheapest components. A long time ago I bought some similar no name batteries from ebay, with very disappointing results too.

I usually buy SAFT LS14250 on ebay.com, with prices varying from $4 to $10 depending on quantity.
They sell from Canada and United States.
Make sure you do not buy “replacement batteries for SAFT LS14250” from China…

Since I am paranoid and had some defective Fibaro FGK-10x in the past, I also check when changing the battery that after blinking blue with the new battery, the Device actually goes to sleep after 2-4 seconds. To do that you just need a multimeter with a 10mA range, inserted serially with the battery; the mA measure should go down to zero when sleep is reached.
But this is “just in case”, and all the defective FGK-10x I had with this “loss of sleep” problem exhibited it only after a few months of usage, not years.

Hi, I tried this a good few months ago and failed miserably after picking up a probe and 2nd hand fibaro off ebay.

Could someone please offer some up to date advice regarding which specific product/model I would need to buy, along with the probe (and which DTH) in order to monitor the temp of a fish tank please? Also, interested in powering said sensor via mains DC, if this makes it possible to have more frequent updates than I currently do using the standard smartthings multi (which can take up to maybe 15 mins to adjust if moved from say, a 15 degree celcius location to a 25 degree one.

Sorry is this sounds like a lazy question, but last time around I pretty much wasted the time and cost of buying the separate parts and just couldn’t for the life of me get it to work ! Thanks! =)

anyone …?

I’m guessing this is dead and burried. I’m not a stranger to having to put in a bit of effort with stuff like this, but I’m not going to risk chucking 40 quid+ away on a fresh fibaro unless someone can give some solid advice.

Or perhaps someone knows an alternative? I’ve been wanting to sort this out an and off for maybe 2 years now, it would be nice to get it boxed off

= )

@djh_wolf : nobody on this forum will answer such an “open question”, and nobody will guarantee you a perfect result. Although I do not use myself a remote temperature sensor, all the information you need is present in this thread, you “just” have to compile 406 posts, starting with the last ones :grinning:.

Some information may be incomplete or obsolete, but if you do not accept that, you should probably drop your project. Learning about something new, somewhat “state of the art”, and too often unreliable involves a risk, both in time and money : as usual, no pain, no gain… :smirk:

Happy New Year’s Eve !

Nobody on this forum will answer such an “open question” ? I assure you, if I had this working now, and someone asked the same question, I’d be the first to pipe in with a response. That response WOULD NOT be "well, unless you’re willing to trawl through the entire forum and waste a few quid on various items until you finally find the right combination, you don’t deserve to find the answer pal!"

Here’s the thing - I’ve already blown god knows how many hours on this a year or two ago. I did all of the reading back then, and there’s not one post that says “hey, I finally got this working. For reference, I’m using THIS sensor with THIS firmware, and no matter what I did this only worked with THIS version of the device handler. Good luck!

This isn’t me asking for a bit of info that can easily be determined by using a simple forum search or the old “RTFM” responses.

Thanks so much for letting me know that although you yourself DON’T use this, NOR know how to to make it work, I MIGHT find the answer above somewhere.

thumbs up

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I migrated off of ST to Hubitat so i can not provide you a exact setup for ST. But i can tell you that i had 4 different FGK-101s with external sensors working on ST, and now working on Hubitat. The ST setup was based on this handler. I use them to monitor the supply and return temperatures of a underground loop that supplies water to some outdoor automatic waterers for some horses, and i need to know if the temp dips too low. All reported the temperature readings updated as expected, sent low temp alarms as expected through Pushover etc. I bought the FGK-101s and DS18B20 sensors at several different times and from several different vendors on Ebay and amazon. the only trick was to figure out the color code of the wires when hooking them up.
For reference my most recent purchases:


https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01D9GVGZO
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00P2QAR8C

One hint. you must have the external probw connected before you do the z-wave include.

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That’s brilliant, thanks so much for the reply.

Can I ask how responsive it was? I. E. If the temp of the water increased suddenly, how long would it be before the sensor knew about it?

Thanks!