Hi folks - has anyone tried to connect and make work the United Securities z-wave pressure mat?
I would like to use this to send me a txt when someone is standing at my front door and to turn on the light when we walk downstairs. Our stairs are in the middle of our house so a motion sensor won’t work without creating a bunch of false alarms.
Ken
this is just the mat with a normally open out contact, doesn’t contain any radios…
I just bought one to try out. I am going to pair it with an Ecolink door sensor.
I got it all set-up last night and works great. Just connect the leads from the mat to the screw terminals inside the door sensor and you have a connected pressure sensitive mat!
For my use case, I put the mat under my existing front door mat. This is one of those rare smart home things that my wife actually asked for! I am going to change the cover out for the brown (sensor comes with both white and brown) to make it blend in a little more.
It pairs as a door sensor and open is the default state, when some stands on it closes. I may customize the device type to make it device specific but the standard device type works just fine (notifications, triggers, etc…)
Nice work! 
The “open” status thing is exactly how a pressure mat works, btw. Inside the mat is a contact sensor, which is open. When weight is applied to the mat, the contact sensor is physically forced closed.
This has all kinds of (wireless) Halloween applications… A Smart Door mat…
It’s also exactly how pressure mats are used in accessible homes for people in wheelchairs. Rolling over a thin mat at the base of a wheelchair ramp might trigger a light to come on at the top of the ramp and the automatic door to open. 
Much more practical than motion sensors because you get very few false alarms. They can also be highly targeted.
Oh, I agree that you explain an extremely useful and practical use for the mat. Although, for that, I’d probably try to use z-wave association to perform the action (instead of relying on a hub.)
(Kind of off-topic question: does zigbee have anything like z-wave associations?)
Thanks - this is really awesome. It is exactly the functionality I am seeking for my front door and my staircase to downstairs. I have a motion sensor on the second step right now which works most of the time, but I still get lots of false triggers when I walk by the staircase without descending. I’m placing my order ASAP. Many thanks again.
Pressure mats are also used as doorbells for houseboats.
The mat itself has the contact pad, but doesn’t have a zwave or zigbee radio, so you have to buy that separately. @trotsky40 is using a door sensor as the zwave part.
I think this is the one, right?
Exactly right. These are great little devices because of the “undocumented” connections inside them (the Schlage and EcoLink are identical).
I am using them in a couple of applications to connect things:
Blake - I ordered the EcoLink and will just open it up to connect the terminals I assume. My shipment should arrive this week so I will let you know how it goes. In the meantime I just finished a simple pantry project where the light turns on / off when the door opens / closes. These little things are making my home feel super cool. The mat will be the next cool thing.
On a different subject, I have a NX-148E NetworX home alarm system that has a bunch of wireless window break sensors that I am guessing are z-wave, but there is no documentation on whether the alarm can be connected or not.
Hey folks - thought I would give you all an update. My pressure mat and my Ecolink door sensor both arrived. I dove right in and opened up the sensor cover, and to my delight there was a very obvious post with two posts where you can connect a wire pair prominently located on the sensor board. The pressure mat is no frills but it does just what it is designed to do, which is close the circuit when someone stands on it. I connected the two wires from the mat to the posts on the inside of the sensor. Then I paired the sensor with my hub, which was easy enough once I realized that you can’t do pairing without the cover on. Once paired I tested it and it worked flawlessly first time. The mat is now under my welcome mat outside my front door, and it sends my wife and I a push notification whenever someone is standing at the front door. The next step is to connect this into my sound system which will come once I order and install my Sonos system. Thanks to Blake (trotsky40) for blazing this trail. This led to exactly what I wanted. I would encourage anyone thinking about doing this to go for it. The whole project too less than 30 minutes once the parts arrived.
BTW, while looking for a solution for a different topic (someone who wants to know when the Roomba is away from the docking station), I decided to check the cost of some high sensitivity pressure mats. These are ones that will trigger with just 5 pounds of pressure instead of the typical 25 pounds.
LondonMat makes a nice variety, including some that trigger at 5 pounds of pressure for around $50. That’s just the mat, you still need to connect to a sensor exactly as with the United Security mat.
The downside is that the LondonMat switching mat will trigger from cats and dogs. But for something like a Roomba docking station, could be nice. So just one more option for a slightly different use case.
http://www.londonmat.com/mats/cvp.html
I use this as well for inside my sofas, etc. I had it under the matresses for a while, but it was unreliable for a variety of reasons. It works OK for cribs. For bedding I am waiting for the Luna Sleep solution.
I’ve noticed that sometimes the mats get “stuck” in one state or another. I had to write a SmartApp and device to reap the states when that would happen – which was super annoying.
You had the United security one with the 25 pound threshold? Or the London Mat with the 5 pound threshold?
This one:
How did you attach the wires to the sensor. Mine have a problem of staying connected. Did you solder them, tape them? Photos would be great!
The open/close sensor I used has two metal posts that have screws on top so all I did was insert them and then tightened the screws. I would take a picture but it is outside and installed already. Maybe I’ll get to it tomorrow, but trust me if you have the same sensor you will quickly see the posts and know what to do. If you don’t have this then a soldering iron should do the trick.
Brilliant, I had no idea those were screws! Thanks for you help 
