SmartThings MultiPurpose Sensors- Horrible

I bought six MultiPurpose contact sensors and I’ve had nothing but problems with these.
They often do not show open or close correctly and I’ve had two completely stop working and stuck in “open.”

One sensor was perminantly stuck in “open.” I tried everything with ST support. Move it closer to hub, moved router away, tried reconnecting, etc. ST sent me new one, connected after 5-10m of trying.

So I had 2 not on a door yet and I was testing them before connecting new sensor. Both worked before trying to connect new sensor. But now one of those doesn’t work after connecting the new one.

Is there a sensor max or something?
I can’t figure what’s going with these things.

Do you have any zigbee repeaters (such as the SmartThings outlet)? If not, how far are they from the hub? I was having the same symptoms as you with a sensor I have on my garage door. I moved my ST outlet somewhere in the middle and it’s been working perfectly since. Zigbee is a mesh network but none of the battery powered devices work as a repeater. So it only helps if have zigbee devices with constant power doubling as repeaters, otherwise all your contact sensors will be talking directly to the hub.

Another thing highly discussed here is the WiFi channel you are on makes a big difference read this. FAQ: Networking and Reducing Channel interference between WiFi and Zigbee

Thanks for the feedback. I do not have repeaters as the hub is very close (>20ft). I also tried moving my router.

Im thinking of selling all sensors and getting z-wave sensors.

There have been some weird zigbee things going on with ST, so please let support@smartthings.com know that you are having problems.

Since the latest firmware update, it’s gotten better. For any failed device, please go through the Include process again (no need to remove it first). You won’t get the typical “done” message, so after a couple seconds after rejoining, just back out of the include process.

In the Hub’s event log you should see the include process start, finish, and then the device info for the rejoin. In the device’s event log, you will see where it send config info and then any change to any of the device’s states (temp, battery, etc.) will also update.

Hopefully this will be the last time you need to do this. Sometimes, tapping the Refresh tile helps too. It does help to have the hub’s settings for unsecure rejoin disabled.