How reliable are your smartThings Motion Sensors?

Hi all,

I have been finding that the 2015 motion sensors seem to have a high failure rate. I had one that wouldn’t respond anymore and smartThings support sent me another out under warranty. They sent me another and I set it up. It worked perfectly and then I noticed it no longer was sensing motion. So I attempted to reset it and found this one will not reset now. What I mean by that is the light that shows you it’s in pairing mode never lights up and the hub never finds the device. I’ve tried completely removing the device and still no blinking light. I have also tried another battery.

This isn’t the only smartThings motion sensor I have had problems with. I have another 2015 sensor with the same results as above, but after 4 or 5 attempts to repair, I finally got the light to flash and the HUB to find it.

Has anyone else had these problems? Any idea why these devices may be having problems with getting power?

I had 2. One went completely dead after 12 months and with a new battery stays completely dead. Tried full reset but nothing, not the slightest sign of life. The other is still alive but reporting hundreds of false positives for motion.
I have several Fibaro z-wave sensors (the eyeball type), all have been prefect for over 12 months.
I guess you can tell which brand I will buy to replace the broken ones.

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I have a few of those also. I’ve been running them for over a year and no problems. I also have one of the Hue motion sensors running which seems to be working flawlessly. @ $39.99 a sensor, I may invest more into those.

I have one old and one new style. Zero issues with either, think I’m over a year by now. Not even batteries yet.

I am going on 9 months I believe. I have 4 of them and only had to take the battery out and put back in just recently due to the new firmware. But now back to working flawlessly.

Not a great experience with the Samsung Sensors - many false detections in my garage
swapped out for a Fibaro gen 5 eyeball and only had 1 false in months

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Well… This is bad. I had 3 SmartThings 2015 or 2016 motion Sensors and all of them no longer power up. It looks like they all stopped responding on the same day according to the logs. Was there a firmware update to the devices? Seems suspicions that they all failed at the same time.

My 2015 model in the garage started acting up a month ago. I used it to turn on the garage light. The light would always stay on so I’m thinking there was something in the garage causing the issue. I never got around to finding out, however, because two weeks ago it just stopped working completely. I tried changing batteries and restarting but it never worked again. I’m wondering if the lower temperature in the garage may have caused a problem.

I was going to replace it but the 2016 model is getting bad reviews. Looks like I may try Fibaro or Hue. Very disappointing.

On Monday, I had two ST Motion Sensors go bad at about the same time. Tried everything, including new batteries, and they are still dead. Very frustrating.

I own several SmartThings Motion Sensors and have had two die shortly after one year, unfortunately. Besides the usual need to reset by removing the battery these two are completely dead.
Would look elsewhere…

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Aside from needing to pull batteries and reset 2 of our six 2015 ST motion sensors (every 1-2 weeks), one of them simply stopped reporting motion yesterday despite resets, battery removal, hub reboots etc.

The Hue sensors are $39 CAD, and work well with the Hue hub. I tried connecting two of them directly to Smartthings …and one worked fine while the 2nd did not. I tried both the stock and custom device handlers. Conversely, they both work perfectly with the Hue hub and are super quick connected that way. Connected to Hue you have motion sensitivity, ambient light management (lights held off if LUX is adequate), and night light behavior …all config’d via the Hue app.

Over the last year we’ve had zero issues with the Hue hub and Hue Lights. As several others have mentioned here, Hue seems to be consistently more reliable. I just wish the Ecosmart LED bulbs worked with Hue!

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Further to my previous post, I picked up a third Hue motion sensor and attached it to the ST v2 hub. It was detected as a “Hue Motion Sensor” using the published device handler. After setting a Luminance offset in the advanced config for this device (Just used the number 1), the motion sensor does have a usable LUX value (raw) that will prove very handy to keep lights off when ambiance is good.

I really like that these sensors use two AAA batteries (so I can use rechargeables!) and use a variable angle magnetic mount.

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I have 3 ST motion sensors, and they all appear offline now. Having a hard time bringing them back online…
Looking at the Event list for each, I see a message related to firmware update:
Type = ENTITY_UPDATE
Name = DeviceUpdated
Changed = false

I decided to desactivate Zigbee OTA updates, to see if it can prevent this in the future. But I still have to figure out how to connect them back.

Is there any official support regarding this issue ? Thanks

I have not been able to link my hue motion sensors to ST. I have the hue hub and all the lights avail be, just not the motion sensors. Looking for some quick help.

Did you connect it to the hue hub initially? If so you’ll need to remove it from there first and then pair it to SmartThings. Also make sure to have the custom Device Handler installed.

Um…i know this is crazy old, but did anyone ever figure this out?
One of mine that was in place but in a room that wasn’t used much for a long time is no longer working. I put a new battery in it and it just gives one short burst of light and goes dark. Nothing more.

The only advice I have for you is to make sure you are using the Panasonic batteries. Other than that, you may need to contact support.