Recently my doorsense for my Yale assure lock 2 stopped working and so my lock no longer auto locks when I close the door like I want. Instead of messing around with Yale support and stuff I figured I could easily get around this by getting a door contact sensor and creating a SmartThings routine. I was looking at the eve door and window matter sensor because I would prefer matter over thread rather than zinger or zwave. I also was looking at aqara door and window sensor p2 matter over thread because it’s about $10 cheaper than the eve sensor. Anyone have experience with either or have an alternate suggestion?
The aqara P2 is working fine for me. In Google Home there was the occasional disconnection but hasn’t happened in SmartThings yet.
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How’s the battery life on it? I have never owned anything aqara but I always see their products are very reasonably priced
I have a number of aqara Zigbee products and like them very much, but I use them with their own hub and then bring them in to SmartThings through matter. (We’ve used them with HomeKit for a couple of years.) I’ve found them to be good quality for the price. But I haven’t tried any of the thread models yet. Those are very new, so I don’t know if there’s much field experience on battery life, but Shane Whatley has reported that the battery life on the thread sensors is somewhat shorter than on the Zigbee models, but that may be because they have to do more communicating for matter, particularly if you have them connected to multiple platforms, which makes sense.
Thanks JD. Have you ever used any aeotec sensors? I know they aren’t matter but I’m interested in one of the multi sensors that detect motion and humid so I can make my bathroom like motion activated but have it stay on if it detects rising humidity and I saw a bundle with the multi sensor and door contact sensor so I was curious if it’s worth it to buy the bundle even though the contact sensor is zigbee and I don’t have really any zigbee infrastructure set up or should I stick with a matter sensor and buy the aeotec multi sensor for my bathroom separately
Aeotec makes both Z wave and Zigbee sensors now, but in either case, you need to have a strong backbone, so you need to have some mains powered devices that match the protocol used by the sensor, unless they’re very close to the hub. See the following community faq:
A Guide to Wireless Range & Repeaters - #11 by JDRoberts
But these days for most bathroom use cases I would use an MM wave sensor instead of a PIR motion sensor. The MM wave sensors can detect what are called “very fine” movements like a person breathing, don’t get thrown off by humidity, and can detect through clear glass shower doors. So they pretty much eliminate all of the “light turns off too early“ issues.
We use the aqara FP2 Wi-Fi MM wave sensor and really like it, but integration with SmartThings is limited right now to what you can do with Alexa routines as an intermediary. Both companies have promised there will be better integration in the future, but we aren’t there yet.
Best mmWave Sensor to Use with ST? (human presence sensor/occupancy sensor)
I know they cost more than PIR motion sensors, but the functionality is just so much better I think it’s definitely worth it. Choice is good.
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I have the Eve sensor and it’s been stable and very responsive for about 6 weeks. If the price gets better I’ll pick up a couple more to replace some old failing door sensors.
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I’ve read that the mm wave sensors are way better and I would prefer one but the reason I was thinking the multi sensor and mentioned humidity is because we have a shower curtain rather than a glass door so it would block the sensor regardless so I was thinking the humidity sensor could be a way around that while showering and I figured getting one sensor with both would be better than a mm wave and a separate humidity sensor but now thinking about it I’m not sure two sensors would be that bad
mmWave can also detect through most shower curtains, baskets, and thin walls. Just don’t use a metallicized shower curtain. 
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In the Aqara P2 it’s unknown, there’s no battery reporting (edit: this is actually a bug in SmartThings drivers, the device does report battery and voltage) and it released almost a year ago. Mine is still working with the included battery and bought it on release, although it doesn’t have much activity.
Now I remember why I didn’t buy the Eve, it uses a weird battery hard to find while the P2 uses CR123 which is available even in my local supermarket.
Edit: After almost a year it’s still working fine, and discovered that the missing battery information in SmartThings is a bug in the drivers
Oh wow I didn’t know that. Well then it’s settled. I’ll probably have to go with zigbee or wifi right? I havent really seen any zwave ones let alone any matter ones. I just need to figure out how to power it since I only have one outlet in the bathroom and it’s already pretty crowded around it
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Yes, at the time of this posting the choices are either Zigbee or Wi-Fi, although, eventually, there may be some that are thread. However, again, at the time of this posting all of the popular MM wave sensors have to be mains powered because of the amount of data that they process.
There not being battery reporting kinda sucks because I’d like to be able to see battery life so I can change them before they die since I plain to use it to auto lock my front door I don’t want the battery to die and me not notice my door didn’t lock.
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