Been having lots of connectivity issues with the original SmartThings water sensors that I have many of in my house (one of my main uses of Smarthings). For example right now I have one that has the battery removed and yet it shows up as “connected” and several others that all of the sudden don’t report moisture to my system.
Wondering if anyone is seeing something similar?
Any thoughts on what to do? I have removed one sensor and now can’t add it back in after a reset.
Any moisture sensors on the market that don’t require an additional Hub/HW?
Considering a move from SmartThings to Hubitat, but figured I would see if others have good solutions or even Pros/Cons of the two systems.
Lots of people see similar things from time to time, it’s been an issue with the platform since it was first introduced. For example, from earlier this week:
As far as leak sensors that don’t require a hub, that would pretty much limit you to Wi-Fi, and that’s likely to mean not battery powered because Wi-Fi uses up a lot of battery life. So there aren’t going to be many candidates.
However, SwitchBot does have a new one that does have a linked services integration with SmartThings. Reviews are good, it looks good, I like SwitchBot devices, I just don’t know what the battery life is going to be because it’s so new. Typically lists for just under $20, or you can save a couple of bucks if you don’t need the sensing cable.
But I’d suggest instead first making sure you have a strong Zigbee mesh, because that can really improve reliability in a SmartThings system. (Or any Zigbee system actually.)
So what’s your Zigbee backbone look like? How many main powered Zigbee repeaters do you have and where are they located relative to the water sensors?
If you’ve never thought about that question before, start with post 11 in the following thread, read that, then go up to the top of the topic and read down. I’ll link directly to post 11.
If you feel confident that you have a good mesh, but you still have problems and you’re not happy with the battery life on the switchbot sensor, You may need to consider either mains powered sensors (in which case we need to know what country you are in) or looking at ones that have a more reliable hub. Obviously hubitat is one possibility. But you can also get sensors that connect to their own hub and then are brought into SmartThings via either a bridge or linked services.
My personal experience, for example, is that aqara contact sensors are way more reliable when used in this way than when connected directly to a SmartThings hub. Unfortunately, while leak sensors are in the 1.2 version of matter, I don’t think they’ve been implemented yet. So you’d have to create your own proxy system, either using Alexa routines as an intermediary or something visible to matter, which can then act as proxy in both platforms. It’s doable, but it is more work. But you should get good battery life from these, and I would expect matter over bridge eventually, so then you could drop the proxy.
So here are my suggestions:
start by evaluating your Zigbee mesh, just in case that’s the problem.
if the mesh looks good, but SmartThings is still giving you issues, you can either go to battery power sensors connected to a different hub, mains powered sensors, or take a look at the SwitchBot Wi-Fi device.
A while ago I started experiencing similar issues with zigbee and zwave devices and all got fixed when I moved the ST hub away from other hubs and the WiFi router.
And when you do that, turn off the ST hub for about 15 mins to rebuild the zigbee network. Sometimes you may have to re-add the devices manually to re-sync them. Apply for both radios (Zwave and zigbee)
Not sure if that is your case but I would encourage separate all the hubs like 4 feet away from each other and I can almost guarantee it will fix all the issue with zigbee and Zwave devices.
Also keep in mind depending of your house size, it may be recommended to add zigbee repeaters and get some Zwave plus devices that usually acts a repeater of Zwave signal.
I have the old and new water leak sensor from Smarrthings for years now and neither of those have such issues you reported, so it may be zigbee weak signal or faulty device.
Assuming there are no underlying issues with your Zigbee network the following works great in Smartthings.
I am using the Aqara Water Leak Sensor registered directly into Smartthings. That approach allows me to trigger automations on the Wet Dry state of the sensor and alert through Smartthings.
Currently using the Zigbee Water Leak/Smoke Sensor1.7 driver from Veon’s channel