Window/door contact suggestions please

My OH setup contains z-wave, visonic powermax and rfxcom bindings and devices. What I’m looking for is wireless window and door contacts that are fairly small and fairly cheap as we have a lot of windows.

What are other people using?
Colin

If you want to build something “do it yourself”:
ESP8266 (wireless over wifi), magnetic contact, connection to openhab via mosquitto broker and MQTT binding.
Cost: less than 10 bucks per sensor.

1 Like

I am using the Philio 4in1 Sensors which work really great.
But they do Movement, Temperature, Brightness and Contact.
They work really well - I consider them my best sensors.
Unfortunately with ~50 bucks they are not fairly cheap.
But definitely worth a shot for one window in a room.

I second this approach and have been testing with a few of these to retreive temperature/humidity readings from around the house/garage. Next is to add light levels so I can use actual light level in the house for controlling lights rather than an offset from sunrise/sunset.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NodeMcu-Lua-ESP8266-ESP-12E-CH340G-WIFI-Serial-Development-Board-for-Arduino-/291657458911?hash=item43e823a4df:g:I8AAAOSw5dNWk2cl

And for the MQTT broker I’m using a standalone raspberry pi that will be getting other server duties in the future.

Hey Colin,

I had similar requirements when I was looking for window/door sensors. I decided against adding contact sensors to my z-wave network as they are quite pricey. The price was also my main motivation to go for a “do it yourself” solution in the end. However, I do not have an alarm system for which the sensors might be used.

My solution is based on the MySensors project as these sensors are fairly simple to build, offer a good functionality, and are reasonably well documented.

I also played around with the ESP8266 module but was not convinced (at least not for this purpose). @sihui and @p912s are your ESP8266-sensors battery powered or are you using an external power supply?

The Vision ZD2102 (z-wave) can be found for a good price (I bought a few for 27 USD/pc) and each sensor can handle several windows if you add external reed contacts. I have only tried one external contact but in theory you could daisy-chain several of them. The only caveat is that all the reed contacts (internal and external) are seen as one so you cannot tell which window is open.

My sensors use external power. Currently I’m looking for a project box to enclose so they can hang on an outlet like this. The plug would be cut/glued thru the back and the light/temp sensors would be glued in the front panel.

Battery powered in deep sleep mode.

All I am going to say is stay away from the GE sensors!!! I have 2 of them and both of them chewed through the batteries in 6 months and with button cells they are not cheap to replace.

hi maxmilian, can you post the link to the mysenors project please, ive looked but cant find it :slight_smile:

thanks :slight_smile: