So I decided to pull the plug on my zigbee motion sensors and replace them with zwave. I have had great experience with Aeon Labs Gen 5 multi and Fibaro but I am thinking to give Zooz sensors a try. What is your experience?
And a poll…
What zwave multi sensor do you like best?
0 voters
@Robert_Vandervoort , our Zwave Master, which one do you recommend?
Delete one vote for Zooz, I was try to highlight the text to copy paste and it inadvertently voted…
You can change your vote by clicking a different sensor. I have no control over the results…
Zwave master? Hahaha! Too much credit…
So, I’ve got the Aeon gen 5, the Aeon Multisensor 6, zooZ 4 in 1, and zooZ ZSE09.
I think honestly it depends on what you’re after and what you want to spend.
If I’m doing lighting control, the zooZ ZSE09 is superb. It has a very quick response time and ALL it does is motion and light sensing. The size is great too, very unobtrusive. The only downside is it uses cr123a batteries which are picey. I would say find some good rechargeable ones as they can drain pretty fast in high traffic areas. Some of that can be programmed out by increasing reset time… That said I still need to get around to writing the specialized device type for the sample they sent me, but it will join just fine as a multisensor (switch the type). The Aeon Multisensor 6 is similar in size to the zse09, but obviously does lots more, and for lots more $$$. I have found two of it’s features, the vibration detection and UV sensing, pretty worthless. If you have it mounted above a door frame or near an area that receives shocks, it isn’t bad. I am able to remove it from its mount and open the battery cover without tripping the vibration sensor so its use as a tamper detector kind of sucks. you could probably hack it open and replace the vibration sensor with a looser one (they are less than a buck on adafruit…) but I digress.
Fibaro and Aeon gen 5 I understand are nearly identical and I don’t have the Fibaro so I can’t speak to it, but the Aeon gen 5 is solid as well. I am actually able to use it in a covered outdoor setup and it will work with sensitivity set low. Many motions false trigger all the time. It does on occasion but rarely. Battery life is pretty darn good and the Aeon line has provisions for external power which is a great thing IMHO. Also they use AAA batteries which are commodity and easily sourced and there are great rechargeable options. Aeon also reports battery life in much smaller increments so you can stay on top of the recharge regime before your batteries require a jump start from a spare battery on the charger.
The zooZ 4 in 1 is a smaller profile and can be more easily “hidden” than the Fibaro or Aeon gen 5. Unless you use their mounting brackets which, are, somewhat bulky… Honestly I have no need to use their brackets yet, I just scre to door frame and it sees the whole room… It’s low profile so it blends in, almost looks like part of the door frame. The Aeon MultiSensor 6 also has an optional “recessor” mount which is great for “architectural” installations (curring drywall). If I did that, I would also run power to it of course. That can be interesting, because well, USB… 5 volt… leads to a build your own power supply type scenario.
So yeah there you have it. Hope this helps.