I just bought several Multipurpose sensors and a hub, and I’m hitting some problems with their operation. Quick browse in the messages here shows those problems are an ongoing issue for quite some time… years…
I have two sensors installed on two garage doors.
Battery 100%, vertical, line on right. Checked it at installation time, all working. The next day, one of the sensors does not change state to open. I thought it might be a defective unit, took the battery out, wait a minute, put it back. Looks ok. Next day, the other sensor stopped working. Also not changing to open.
Anything to be done with that ? or just send the whole bundle back ?
ok the more I look here in the posts, the more this looks like a hopeless battle, not sure why they keep selling those, just gives a bad experience with the whole automation business.
I see there are several alternatives, both for temp and door sensing.
I do not have repeaters, just two multipurpose sensors in the garage (that’s the whole smarthings network for now). The garage is in house, and the hub is in a room that right above the garage.
I did find that I placed the hub pretty close to my router, so I’m going to try to move it first. if that doesn’t work I’ll try to put some repeater in the garage maybe.
I had one in the garage for awhile (using tilt sensor functionality), and it did fine in telling me whether the door was open or closed. But then again, I had an indoor smart plug (zigbee repeater) within 10 feet of it.
I’ve also deployed it as a contact sensor, and it did that fine too. I have another telling me consistently well when the dryer is finished, using vibration sensing. And they are both good at temperatures…
The only issue I have with them is the XYZ axis function on a skylight. The skylight moves too slowly to trigger the thing.
I have you tried looking for channel conflict between your wifi and zigbee channels? If you’re in the US, grab an Iris outlet from Lowe’s and put it in the garage to see if that helps. These damn mesh issues are tricky.
I would recommend returning the multi purpose sensors (or using them for something else) and picking up a couple EcoLink Tilt Sensor. I have the older non-plus z-wave version but the Z-Wave Plus is the same price, about $25 on amazon Its been rock solid on my garage door for over a year and a half now and the battery is still reporting 100% (they claim 3 - 5 years on a battery).
I bought a Samsung smart plug to use as a relay in the garage.
It didn’t resolve the problem, the Multipurpose sensors do not give a reliable read !!
I turned the hub off, batteries out for about 10 min, hoping that the sensors will connect to the plug as a repeater.
Is there a way to see if my hope actually realized ? without buying more devices please…
I can’t tell if it’s connected to the hub or the plug, can I ?
@vseven
I agree with this. If you want to monitor garage doors and/or mailbox use these, ecolink tilt zwave, I also have the older ones. Batteries seem to last a while and last through the winter in Un-heated garage and un-heated mailbox.
My garage is connected to the house, so the issue with zigbee is not just distance.
I even get different results depending on whether one or 2 cars are in the garage with zigbee.
Again in the house zigbee and SmartThings multi-sensors work great. But in the garage, due to whatever, zigbee is not 100% reliable.
There is something also with the batteries. The larger older designed device, like an ecolink, can physically hold larger batteries so they last larger.
For in the house, where due to appearance one might want the smallest physical size, since they are smaller, use smaller coin cell batteries which might not last as long.
[UPDATE]
I installed the EcoLink sensors, so far they work ok.
Only problem I had, is I wanted to install them with a certain tilt, like I saw in some post here, do get the “open” state sooner, but as the door came down one time, it didn’t move to close. So I mounted them flat on the door, and they seem to work ok.
I am now using the multisensors in the house. We’ll see about that… need to gain back my trust in those things.
So conclusions so far:
The lack of tools to see or even manually track the network mesh is really making things hard to debug. One has no idea where the problem is, is the sensor connected to a repeater ? is the sensor unreliable? is the connection unreliable ? Adding a repeater just like that might not solve the problem since the device may still connect to his former “parent” unless ??? unless something that is unknown, or at least uncertain…
This whole scheme of having a battery operated tilt sensor on a garage door is questionable in my opinion. If the tilt level was actually measured and displayed as the door moves maybe that would make sense, but it is used as an open/close indicator.
Makes more sense maybe to have a contact/magnet open/close sensor installed on the door. Might be a little harder to find the location for it, but I saw several suggestions here. Would probably be even better if the magnet piece is on the door and the sensor is on the side, even powered by wire. There are already wires going to the door beam sensors anyway, so it’s not the only wires running there. This way the whole setup doesn’t depend on battery power.
[update] the Samsung sensors now installed in the house are not even giving an accurate temp reading, I was seeing times where it was 10 deg F off !! And sometimes it’s near, so you can’t really offset that with a constant value.
The only thing they reliably do is report open/close when used with magnet (not tilt) quite disappointing.
I love my smartthings multipurpose sensors. They work flawlessly and have much better range than zwave (ecolink). I even have a multipurpose sensor outdoors, suffering 50 degrees celcius humid summers (but in the shade), and working like a champ !
Mine are still reporting the battery at 100% also it freaking cold at the front door.
But the sensor says 64f when it should be 34F is a fix coming soon?
