Lots of dry contact monitoring with ZWave/SmartThings?

Devices & Integrations
21

Hahaha. That is exactly what I was trying not to do. I know it will work, but the SO will kill me if I fill a wall with those. :grin:

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22

I hear you. Good thing my panel was in a little-used closet :slight_smile:

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23

I would definitely suggest ganging some of your sensors by room
 for example, wire all of your “Living Room Window” sensors together in series. Basically, ask yourself if you really need individual status of all 40 sensors.

Once you’ve done that, the Arduino/Pi solution is probably still the best. Lots of poeple have this problem
 but there are no great off-the-shelf solutions (short of a wall full of contact sensors).

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24

Hey, a wall full of contact sensors is an impressive sight to behold :grin:

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25

I gave their web site a quick read through and it is hard to say if the onboard micro controller will have the power to drive a ZigBee HA profile based solution. If it can someone should take the time to write the code it would be awesome to have this device on the SmartThings supported list! I would want to test the board first! Also you may want to keep in mind that some security systems have three states to their contact sensors. My system’s smoke detectors have a resistor across the contacts so when they are open they read a resistance. This way the security CPU can determine if the wire has been cut (truly open).

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26

If you don’t need status for individual doors/windows, you could wire a whole room in parallel to one z-wave contact sensor that has terminals. Or i don’t tend to use my windows for automations, so maybe all of the windows to one or two and the doors to their own, which is what you would do anyway.

Edit: i see this is the same as @elf posted. Honestly i’d rather have the ecolink sensors hidden away in a project box or something than out on my door. They are big and ugly.

27

I didn’t like the way the zones were originally configured in the panel – only four zones for the whole house, with each zone comprised of all the doors and windows for each point of the compass :disappointed: Anyway, I definitely wanted each outside door on its own sensor.

They’re not THAT big :laughing: I’m guessing the reason for the larger size is mainly due to the larger battery — seems to last forever, so I don’t have to be frequently replacing the batteries (like the coin batteries, I hate those things). Besides, as I mentioned above, they’re all hidden in a small closet ---- which is only 6 ft. away from the ST hub.

Maybe one day I’ll revisit an alternate solution 
 maybe :wink:

Also, a little off topic here but I never could fully understand about these sensors (or any sensor) being big and ugly, especially if it’s mounted directly on the door — heck, the door knob is bigger; some doors have huge hinges sticking out the edges; some folks tape/tack/nail even uglier items to their doors 
 that’s just me, though LOL

28

Every door needs a hinge:

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29

I seen those in Lowes the other day. They don’t carry the larger size(s) that I need — you know, the big and ugly ones. LOL

30

Amazon is your friend. I needed the 4 inch ones myself.

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31

I was going to take the plunge on this too. It looks about right and the price is definitely right. They also have an Ethernet version, which I would opt for instead. What I don’t know is how the event console looks.

32

If you’re going to use Ethernet anyway, why not just buy an Arduino MEGA 2560 (over 50 Digitial I/O pins) and an Ethernet Shield? Total cost would be about $25 if you buy clones. There are examples of direct Ethernet integration with ST out there already.

BTW, no matter what solution you choose, you’re still going to face the issue of the many-to-one device capability issue once you get the data into a ST Device Type Handler. Each Device Type Handler only supports one of each native SmartThings “capability”. So you’ll need a SmartApp and virtual devices to make the solution work. Just want to make sure you’re aware of this added effort on the ST cloud side before you can use all of these “contact sensor” devices with normal SmartApps.

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33

I think you’re probably right – that is the way to go.

What I was going to do was have a Connector app just setup a bunch of virtual devices. Ideally the bridge would just flip virtual tiles for me by hitting a webhook. I do this with cameras already.

34

Nothing like managing 32 batteries on random security sensors


35

Yup :grinning:, but for me, at least they’re all in one location (closet) and they all use the same battery size (CR123, which seem to last forever).

36

Yea, that would work too. If you want to see how I addressed the many-to-one-to-many issue, take a look at my Multiplexer SmartApps in my github repository.

While the ThingShield may be discontinued, I am hoping to keep ST_Anything alive by using Ethernet instead. Time will tell


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37

Pretty sweet. Not quite as sweet as a $200 gizmo that just does it for me
 but I will dig into this :slight_smile:

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