Monoprice Motion and Garage Door

In an attempt to reduce some cost I am trying some lower price sensors to compliment some other nicer ones I already have.

I have the monoprice motion/temperature sensor. Binding is:

Contact OfficeMotion “office motion [MAP(motion.map):%s]” { zwave=“13:command=BASIC” }
Number OfficeMotionBattery “office motion battery [%d %%]” { zwave=“13:command=BATTERY” }
Contact OfficeMotionTamper “office motion tamper [MAP(tamper.map):%s]” { zwave=“13:command=ALARM” }
Number OfficeMotionTemp “office temp [%.1f °F]”

The motion part seems to work OK, but the temperature is only sometimes reported. A full day can go by with no report from it. Any way I can improve this?

The monoprice garage door that I have isn’t doing very well. The binding I have for it is:
Contact BGarageDoor “BGarage door sensor [MAP(en.map):%s]” { zwave=“14:command=sensor_binary” }
Number BGarageDoorBattery “BGarage door sensor battery level [%d %%]”

It has reported once or twice, but almost never when you move the device to trigger it.

I guess I am trying to determine if my settings are wrong or could be improved, or if these devices are just not very good. I know you get what you pay for, but these have good ratings on monoprice so I assume they work for most.

Perhaps mine are duds or I need to adjust something?
Any thoughts might help me,
Thanks

Any takers?

Drew,

As far as the Monoprice garage door sensor goes, I had some (much) trouble getting this to work, here are a few things I had to do.

My setup:
Aeon Labs Z-Stick Gen5, openHAB 1.8.1, Monoprice z-wave garage door sensor (11987), some other GE/Jasco switches around the house.

To get this working:
–Items config:
Contact GarageDoor “Garage Door is [MAP(en.map):%s]” {zwave=“6:command=SENSOR_BINARY,respond_to_basic=true”}
Number GarageDoorBattery “Garage Door Battery [%d %%]” { zwave=“6:command=BATTERY” }

–Updated zwave binding configuration to include: zwave:masterController = true
–Installed habmin (this guide was helpful) - http://www.homeautomationforgeeks.com/openhab_zwave.shtml#habmin
–In habmin, go to configuration -> bindings -> zwave bundle, then on the right, devices -> pick the node for the sensor, open up “Association Groups” and then I changed my controller node and one other node closest to the sensor to “Member” from non-member. I don’t have a full understanding of Association Groups, the sensor instructions made vague mention of it - this is what ultimately got it working for me.

This post was helpful: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/openhab/Di4CW0Z9nlc

After all of this, it seems to be working fine, my only complaint with the sensor is that it has a connection for an external reed switch, which I cannot seem to make work. The tilt sensor however seems to be working fine now.

I’ll confirm same as DLightman. I have a Monoprice door sensor as well, and it did seem difficult at first to get initialized with Zwave, but has been ok since then. And I have the same item setup. Here is both my battery and contact info for it

Number sGarageDoorBattery  			"Garage Door Battery Level [%d %%]"        (Garage, gDashboard)                { zwave="5:command=battery" } 
Contact sGarageDoorStatus    		"Garage Door Status [MAP(en.map):%s]"   <garagedoor>  (Garage, gDashboard) { zwave="5:command=sensor_binary,respond_to_basic=true" }

I appreciate you both sharing. After trying for a few weeks I ended up returning the garage door sensor, it never seemed to send an update when it should. I suspect the one I had was just bad. It seemed to be connected to zwave and could update when it decided to.

Perhaps on my next order from monoprice I will give a different unit another try, using what you have shared gives me a better shot.
Thanks again.

I just want to add to this for anyone else struggling with the Monoprice Garage Door sensor, that it does have one correct mounting orientation. I messed with zwave/openhab settings for longer than I care to admit before realizing i had it mounted upside down…

There is a small arrow on the side of the unit indicating the “up” direction. The set-screw holding the sensor to the mounting plate should be on the bottom.

I wound up mounting two of these side by side, and figured out that the PIRs only report when their temperature has risen or dropped by 1C. When you combine a little bit of inaccuracy, figure it’s really 1.5C, so at best it’s a fairly coarse device. I use them for rough estimates of temperature (good enough to know if a room is way out of whack temperature wise) but they’re no substitute for a real temperature probe.