14 ms·

IKEA sensors for doors and windows, motion, water leaks

408 points by Terretta 3y ago

thfuran 3y ago
Too bad it's not zwave.
- Kirby64 3y ago
  At the $10 price point? Z-wave stuff always seems to cost more, and my understanding is that is largely due to the requirements for compatibility and testing per Z-wave alliance. I'd be shocked if this same thing could even be made at reasonable margins for $10. The flip side to this, is Zigbee stuff always has a lot of little quirks, problems, or bugs. There's literally an entire module/database for ZHA (Zigbee Home Assistant addon) called ZHA Quirks that's designed to work around all the little issues with various devices.
  - nickthegreek 3y ago
    Agreed. I love zigbee for its HA integrations. Fully off zwave now. Recently just added some IKEA motion senors and bulbs and everything is working so nice.
  - _ea1k 3y ago
    Yeah, I used to be a big fan of Z-Wave, but the effective price minimum is killing it. Zigbee and (eventually) Matter seem like the way forward.
  - meroje 3y ago
    Have an older z-wave heater valve that seems to be on a version of the protocol no one bothers to be backwards compatible with. Never happened with zigbee no matter the amount of quirks needed from zigbee2mqtt.
- asylteltine 3y ago
  I prefer zwave as well. As long as you have repeaters (pretty much any light switch) and a good hub (zwave js ui NOT the default one) you will be fine. I run about 20 nodes right now and upgrading to zwave js ui over the default fixed my node graph so everything had a good signal. I do want to see more thread around
  - Kirby64 3y ago
    Zigbee does just fine with repeaters as well. You just need to be strategic with placing repeater-capable devices around the house, since the range isn't quite as good as Z-wave gear due the frequency.
- alistairSH 3y ago
  Meh, I have som Z-wave switches in the house (some in-wall rockers, some wall-wart smart plugs) and the experience has been mixed. Flaky switches (GE-branded), flaky firmware (SmartThings hub), etc. I'll be happy when/if Thread becomes the norm and I can just run everything through Apple HomeKit. Though for some reason, I still don't see a Thread in-wall dimmer available, which seems crazy to me.
  - function_seven 3y ago
    Same experience here. Every once in a while a switch will go offline and I have to toggle it to get it to rejoin the network. These switches are all GE (Jasco) units. My Inovelli switches are rock solid, as well as my Kwikset deadbolt. I should probably replace the GEs with Inovellis...
    - rootusrootus 3y ago
      All my older Z-wave switches are Jascos, and while they've been solid for a while now on the Z-Wave part, the relays have been failing over time. One day you turn it on, and instead of staying on, it starts to cycle on-off, on-off, on-off, on-off indefinitely.
  - kelnos 3y ago
    I've had really good luck with the Leviton Z-Wave switches & dimmers. Haven't had a single problem with them in about 3 years of use.
    - alistairSH 3y ago
      Ha! All my GE switches have been replaced with Leviton now. So far, so good. I think I've had to hard reset and repair one of them in 3 years, so not too bad. But some days I'm tempted to swap them all for Lutron Caseta. That just gets a bit pricey (both to swap, and then to expand).
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  I don't agree. I was an early adopter and I still have some Z-Wave devices, but I won't miss them when they're gone. Pairing is a hassle, unpairing just as bad or worse, and licensing costs mean the devices themselves are always more expensive. My USB dongle for Home Assistant supports both Z-Wave and Zigbee, and as I add new devices and upgrade old ones over time, I'm not buying any new Z-Wave.
Mountain_Skies 3y ago
It appears these are all battery powered and wireless. Probably also means they're quite easy to jam with a low powered transmitter. Still are likely useful to protect against the impulsive crimes of opportunity. It's also a bit weird that washing machines don't come with water leak sensors but I guess manufacturers don't want to highlight the possibility of their products causing water damage.
- forward1 3y ago
  More bizarre to me still is the fact laundry rooms are built without a drain at the lowest point of the floor. That's in fact a feature I would desire in every room of a custom home.
  - marcinzm 3y ago
    >That's in fact a feature I would desire in every room of a custom home. Some reasons I would not want this is: need to pour water in periodically to keep the trap from drying out and the risk of a sewage backup covering every room in literal shit.
    - oldpersonintx 3y ago
      [dead]
    - mritun 3y ago
      “literal shit”? Check the code in your area. The toilet outlet goes into 4” pipe straight to septic, not the 2” drain pipe.
      - marcinzm 3y ago
        The vast majority of homes in the US use a public sewer versus a septic tank.
  - ziptron 3y ago
    What's even more problematic is that new North American homes are often constructed with a washer/dryer "conveniently" placed near a bedroom, typically on the upper level, and yet, they are still installed without a drain.
spankalee 3y ago
I really wish these were Matter over Thread without a hub. I'm just looking at adding sensors to a home that already has Nest Wifi for the border routers and I don't really want to add any other hubs to the mix.
- _ea1k 3y ago
  I agree, but delays seem to be the norm with Matter.
- ars 3y ago
  The downside is that WiFi devices have far worse battery life, and WiFi doesn't really work well for this use case WiFi just isn't meant to have tens of devices all competing. Also, you wrote matter over thread, but the thread is the same as zigbee. From the rest of your post you mean matter over WiFi.
  - olalonde 3y ago
    Why are you saying that Thread is the same as Zigbee? AFAIK they are competing low-power, wireless mesh standards.
    - bmurphy1976 3y ago
      My understanding is that Thread is basically Zigbee Next. Better in some ways, can run on most of the same hardware (assuming there's firmware available but not at the same time), and unfortunately not backwards compatible. We'll be stuck having to run both Zigbee and Thread (and wifi, zwave, bluetooth, etc.) from here until eternity.
- TrueDuality 3y ago
  Doesn't Matter run over Thread? I thought it was just an application protocol not a physical connectivity protocol.
  - andylynch 3y ago
Eumenes 3y ago
I just want water leak sensors that make a loud alarm noise, I don't need wifi connected crap with hubs. I can use my preexisting camera setup to pick up the alarm noise and alert me. I'm home most of the time and if I'm not for an extended period, I typically turn the water off (not entirely, just in zones). Anyone know of any analog water leak sensors?
- shawabawa3 3y ago
  > The Badring water sensor includes a built-in siren (60dBA at 1m) that can alert you when it senses a leak
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- nickthegreek 3y ago
  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07J9HZ5VN https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07J9HZ5VN These have a loud alarm on them and I don't believe they need to be hooked up to the hub to work (just for push notifications).
- jonahhorowitz 3y ago
  Six dollars - https://www.homedepot.com/p/resideo-Water-Heater-and-Sump-Pump-Single-Use-Water-Leak-Detector-with-Alarm-RWD11/204116887 https://www.homedepot.com/p/resideo-Water-Heater-and-Sump-Pu... There are a bunch of options at Home Depot, Lowes, and your local hardware store.
- chankstein38 3y ago
  Any idea how these leak sensors work? Is it just waiting to potentially be dripped on by a leak? If so, could you just replace the sensor with a gapped circuit that would be bridged by dripping water?
  - rpearl 3y ago
    They are usually just two exposed contacts waiting to be bridged by water, yeah.
nerdjon 3y ago
I am disappointed that these are not matter out the gate, the door/window sensor and the motion sensor would be instant buys for me (likely several). IKEA does do a good job with Homekit support (unless the new hub is different) but really wish I did not need that hub anymore. I am glad that someone is trying to push down the insane home automation tech prices. Side note: I really hate modern SEO. There is not a single link to the actual Hub mentioned in the article, but there are 2 links to the same article about said hub twice.
- Gareth321 3y ago
  I’ve been wanting to jump into home automation for YEARS but the awful mix of incompatible products and standards coupled with the frequent deprecation of products which often require an online presence, and the outrageous prices being asked for these quite frankly beta products, kept me away. Once matter is standard I expect prices to drop and that’s when I think it’s safe to jump in.
  - civilitty 3y ago
    Just use HomeAssistant and find ESPHome compatible hardware. It drastically simplifies everything and there are even vendors like CloudFree [1] that support it out of the box. I've got several outdoor and indoor hydryponics systems set up that way and it's been a joy (except for the RaspberryPi SD card dying on me, which I've since replaced with a more reliable SSD based SBC) [1] https://cloudfree.shop/ https://cloudfree.shop/
    - thesh4d0w 3y ago
      What kind of hydroponic automation are you doing? I've got an indoor living wall that I'm thinking of converting to hydro.
      - civilitty 3y ago
        Mostly just controlling valves and pumps. I have a dutch bucket system with peristaltic pumps pumping nutrients and pH up/down into a reservoir from which water is pumped to the buckets. An additional nutrient film setup runs on its own with the occasional top up. Indoors I just have relays controlling lighting and air pumps for a deep water culture system.
SparkyMcUnicorn 3y ago
I really like the zigbee ecosystem. There's a lot of great resources, cheap devices, months/years battery lifetimes, and reliability has been top notch for me. Being able to pick your own coordinator/"hub" and use devices across all different brands like Ikea, Philips Hue, Aqara, etc. is a really great experience. This is a fantastic community resource example: https://zigbee.blakadder.com/sensors.html https://zigbee.blakadder.com/sensors.html
- Terretta 3y ago
  Curiously, I submitted title revised from Ikea smarthome sensors to Ikea zigbee sensors since this is a hacker community who care about such things, but some time later title was edited to remove the reference to zigbee.
Mister_Snuggles 3y ago
I've got a bunch of Xiaomi Aqara Zigbee water leak sensors and they have alerted me to leaks which could have caused a lot of damage if not caught right away. The siren on this Ikea one is a very obvious improvement and the price seems to be in line with the Xiaomi sensors that I currently use. The motion sensor looks like a decent improvement on the existing one. I have to admit that I don't have the battery life issues that many people seem to have with the current model, but I've only got two of these sensors so maybe I got lucky. The door sensor looks weird though. It seems a lot larger than the equivalent Xiaomi Aqara sensor. Maybe it uses AAA batteries instead of coin cells or something. Generally speaking, I really like the Ikea Zigbee stuff. Everything I've got is well-supported by Zigbee2MQTT, including OTA updates. Most of my Ikea stuff has never even been paired to Ikea's hub.
- twisteriffic 3y ago
  How have you found the battery life to be on your Ikea zigbee devices? Mine have been generally disappointing. In the range of 3 months on the dimmers that are maybe 10 feet from the hub. Just got a couple of their newer dimmers, hoping those will be better. The pairing experience was certainly less painful. Zigbee2mqtt is the bomb. ZHA can't hold a candle to it in terms of reliability, features and device support. The tiny increase in complexity is so worth it.
  - Mister_Snuggles 3y ago
    I find that the battery life seems fine, but I haven't tracked it closely. I have noticed a difference between Duracell coin cells purchased at Costco and Amazon Basics coin cells. The Amazon Basics ones didn't last long at all, the Duracells seem much better. The newer dimmers (STYRBAR) use AAA cells instead of coin cells, so I'd expect them to last a lot longer.
    - twisteriffic 3y ago
      I'll try switching up battery brands. The out of the box cells from Ikea were dead in weeks, the store brand ones at least gave me a few months.
AndrewKemendo 3y ago
So is IKEA turning into an AI company by deploying billions of new control sensors in a giant time series network?
- nerdponx 3y ago
  Maybe not AI, but certainly it's a great way to make a side business as a data company. > detect opening doors and windows, motion indoors and out If these devices are sending that data back to Ikea, they're surely planning to monetize it somehow.
  - exar0815 3y ago
    Except they don't. They are ZigBee-Devices - which means they connect to your Local Hub, no matter what manufacturer. Now, what the Hub does is something else, but NOT controlled by IKEA . Also, the IKEA the Hub does not need any Internet Connection at all to work. Also, it seems like they did their homework. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371121017_Security_Assessment_of_IKEA_Smart_Home_Products https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371121017_Security_... I am all for shitting on BigCo when they do something bad. But when someone does something right, it's just fair to point that out too.
  - Toutouxc 3y ago
    These devices are Zigbee, IKEA has been selling those for years. They can’t send data to IKEA, because they can’t send data anywhere, except the rest of your Zigbee mesh.
  - nickthegreek 3y ago
    Its rare to find a company like IKEA that are only releasing home automation where you DONT have to worry about being spied on.
- JacobThreeThree 3y ago
  No, didn't you read the article? They're 'democratizing' the smart home.
sokoloff 3y ago
> Parasoll is a typical window and door sensor that can be discretely mounted to trigger an automation Discrete sensors are a benefit to IKEA (to help them sell them), but consumers probably care more about them being discreet.
manishsharan 3y ago
Each one of these is definitely cheaper that my Rapberry Pi Pico W project with my son but not nearly as much fun.
martincmartin 3y ago
What's the best Zigbee repeater, to get signal to a different part of the house? I used to use a smart bulb, but people kept turning it off at the switch or moving it.
- pitzips 3y ago
  I find the Ikea outlet switches are great repeaters. Always plugged in, easy to move around.
  - twisteriffic 3y ago
    The old SmartThings zigbee outlets are rock solid as well, and also have current monitoring. I used mine both as a repeater and to detect a jammed auger in my cat feeder.
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    I've also had good luck with the Sonoff outlet switches. I've got several of those around the house doing nothing but being mesh repeaters.
    - Toutouxc 3y ago
      I also have a few of these, mine serve as actual switches though. Sonoff stuff is solid.
- SparkyMcUnicorn 3y ago
  I use the Ikea outlets and Hue bulbs. An important part of my setup is that all the switches in my house still work, and won't actually cut power to the bulbs. There are decent options available to add a Zigbee (or wifi) dimmer/relay/remote behind an existing light switch, which is also great for controlling lights that aren't Zigbee and/or multiple devices simultaneously. This has the added benefit that the stuff it's controlling doesn't have to be on the same circuit, and "rewiring" a light switch is done very quickly in software instead of physically rewiring.
odiroot 3y ago
These (motion sensors) are gonna be great for a cheap DYI alarm for bicycles/motorcycles when parked outside.
renegade-otter 3y ago
I have had smart lights in my apartment for years - Philips Hue uses Zigbee. Every time I am in a hotel or a guest somewhere, I feel like I am visiting the 19th century. Touching light switches seems savage to me now. I walk in a bathroom, and the light needs to come on, and it needs to be very dim after 10pm.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  You're braver than I am. I won't use Hue bulbs because I require that my automation setup fail gracefully back to plain old 'just works the way it used to' functionality. It'd be just my luck that the server, hub, or Internet would fail right when I needed the lights to work and I'd be stuck in the dark.
  - Toutouxc 3y ago
    My lights are all set to turn on after a power cut. That way if Home Assistant dies, I can flip any light switch off, then on, and it will work normally. My area doesn’t have any actual power cuts though.
  - renegade-otter 3y ago
    Not really - these lights are always on, so if the hub croaks, your lights can still be turned on/off the old-fashioned way. I actually got touch guards installed on all the switches so the guests don't press them - you can still poke it with a pencil and toggle. In almost 10 years, I have never had to do it. The only drawback is that if the power goes in and out - all the lights come on. This is where remote functionality is useful, if you are away.
  - extrapickles 3y ago
    Hue bulbs by default emulate a dumb led bulb. This is configurable so you can have them be “dumb” in a way that you prefer, eg: customize color, brightness or do whatever you told them last. I have several that some of the time I use a regular light switch to turn on/off and you wouldn’t know they weren’t standard led bulbs.
  - 3y ago
amluto 3y ago
What’s the practical indoor range like on these? I’ve found the useful range of Z-Wave devices to be embarrassingly poor, and I think it’s largely because, in the US market, some kind of regulatory issue limits transmit power to 0dBm or maybe even less. (Z-wave LR is much higher, but it’s not ready for prime time.). ZigBee apparently allows up to 30dBm, which should more than make up for the less favorable frequency range. Does anyone have any experience with how far it can reach through typical indoor construction?
- nick__m 3y ago
  Each zigbee device extend your reach and small usb powered repeater exists, in practice if you have a few devices, the signal reach is a non-existent problem!
  - ihattendorf 3y ago
    Each zigbee device _that is mains powered_ extends your reach. In theory you could make a battery powered repeater, but there aren't any on the market AFAIK.
- nicholasjarnold 3y ago
  I wasn't aware of the purported regulatory radio limits on power, but I can report anecdotally that I found a huge jump in usability/signal strength/ownership satisfaction when I started replacing my old ZWave 1 stuff with the 500-series or above hardware (ZWave "Plus" is the name for these sometimes). This "LR" stuff you mention is what I think some are calling the Z-Wave 800 series. It more than doubles the radio range of the 500 series stuff and greatly reduces power draw for battery devices. However, I have 500 and 700 series sensors that only need a battery change once every ~2 years or so. I don't find that to be too much, and the signal strength has been no problem for me in an old brick house. I do have a handful of powered zwave devices around though, and these act automatically as repeaters for the other devices in the mesh.
  - amluto 3y ago
    I have a mix of 700 and 800 series Z-wave gear, and I find it borderline useless — a mesh hop struggles to reach one room over. LR is a rather different thing — slightly different frequency, very different topology, and it requires explicit controller software support. As far as I can tell, most or all 800 series hardware supports LR, 700 might with appropriate firmware, and earlier chips do not. node-zwave-js does not yet support LR, but someone seems to be working on it (slowly).
tokamak-teapot 3y ago
Any chance of a sensor that can detect whether doors are locked (rather than open?)
- estebank 3y ago
  That sounds like it could be a lazer/ir gate in the lock hole to detect it being in the way, but the custom job to jam it into the frame side of the lock might be quite delicate work if it's wood, or even worse if the frame is some prefab unit. Another DYI alternative would be to open the lock and see if you can stick a magnet somewhere in the mechanism where it won't impede movement and that has enough space for the solenoid. Neither of these are what I'd call complex, but also wouldnt call them easy to pull off. I would have to assume that somewhere out there someone is selling this already made.
- notyourwork 3y ago
  I have a few Emtek locks which support locking and opening detection. Premium brand from Yale, which has a Yale Zigbee module. They also have Zwave support.
- nicholasjarnold 3y ago
  Schlage makes some that use ZWave Plus (500 series or better, didn't check the spec sheet). I have an older model that works nicely for this. https://www.schlage.com/en/home/smart-locks/connect-zwave.html https://www.schlage.com/en/home/smart-locks/connect-zwave.ht... This would give you the "is locked or not" capability you seek here, but obviously requires a replacement of your door lock (perhaps not trivial if renting, but is a very easy DIY otherwise).
lopis 3y ago
Would have loved a cheap human presence sensor instead of a motion sensor!
- SparkyMcUnicorn 3y ago
  This might be what you're looking for. It's wifi (I think it's Matter), but works without an internet connection. https://www.aqara.com/us/product/presence-sensor-fp2 https://www.aqara.com/us/product/presence-sensor-fp2
  - vineyardmike 3y ago
    Pretty sure it’s not matter. Source: own it and the website doesn’t say matter. Also an engineer working on matter products.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - owlninja 3y ago
      > With its advanced hardware, the FP2 is able to support much more cutting-edge features such as sleep monitoring, people counting, posture detection (lying down, sitting, standing, walking) and Matter support for enhanced functionality
      - vineyardmike 3y ago
        It’s matter support with a hub. They promise matter support with an OTA. Notably none of their marketing copy or the box says matter support. > Support of the new smart home standard, Matter, is also planned for the FP2, and will be added to the device via a subsequent OTA update https://www.aqara.com/us/aqara-adds-presence-sensor-fp2-to-its-smart-sensor-portfolio/ https://www.aqara.com/us/aqara-adds-presence-sensor-fp2-to-i...
  - lopis 3y ago
    That's not really cheap though.
baz00 3y ago
[flagged]
- recursive 3y ago
  Weird take. I'm not into home automation. Like at all. But how is this ewaste in a way that anything else isn't? Do you comment on headphones and trackpads too?
  - baz00 3y ago
    I've had the same headphones for 20 years and the mouse for 5. I had the mouse before that since 2001. I doubt all this crap is going to be functional 2 years down the line.
bilsbie 3y ago
Offshoot topic but is there such a thing as an outdoor leak sensor? I’d love to have one on my pool equipment but it would need a way to ignore rain.
- 0_____0 3y ago
  Leaks are persistent, weather is not. Either present the raw data and interpret it yourself, or gate any alert on potential precipitation in your area.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  You'd need something with brains. Detecting the water is easy, but you want something that can check local weather and correlate with that. Ideally a rain sensor at the same location. I could do this with my Tempest and Home Assistant, I'm sure. But... I've never had a pool equipment leak that bothered me. All my equipment is outside the house and a leak isn't a top concern. if it were in the garage, I'd be more inclined to put a sensor there, but then rain correlation wouldn't be a problem.
quartz 3y ago
I've got a Moen Flo water sensor I really love. It was something like $25 with no monthly fee, has a surprisingly good app (also measures temp + humidity) and can even be paired with a valve that automatically turns off the water in the case of a detected leak. What I like best about it is it can not only set off a siren and notify me in the app, it'll also send a text message and even call my phone which is huge because if I have a water leak I want to know no matter what.
- jrumbut 3y ago
  Where do you put it?
  - quartz 3y ago
    It lives under my sink where I have a bunch of piping to filters that feed the drinking faucet, fridge, and dishwasher. I live in a co-op building from 1929 so it's really the only point of failure in the unit that would be my liability if there was a leak and it already saved me once when the old tailpiece on my drain cracked.
- matthewaveryusa 3y ago
  The Moen Flo valve does more than that! Every night it will shutoff your water and observe the pressure. If the pressure drops when the valve is off it will alert you of a leak. They're a bit costly at ~400 bucks, but water damage is so expensive it's worth it. I have one and it's great. Insurance companies will give you a small discount if you have one installed as well.
danans 3y ago
At least for the water leak scenario, the best approach is to put a drain pan under any appliances that could leak (laundry machines, dishwashers, water heaters). The drain pan should itself drain to a pipe. Ideally, a water leak sensor should be used help to catch a slowly failing appliance so you can repair/replace it before it does major damage, not preventing it from doing damage in the first place due to a sudden major leak.
- narrowtux 3y ago
  I agree that this is the ideal solution, but you can't exactly retrofit a place you rent with completely new plumbing.
  - 93po 3y ago
    I've lived in rental apartments where the drain pan has a pipe leading to the existing water dump hole that the washer drains into
- ihattendorf 3y ago
  Most places can fit a drain pan of some sort (I use some sort of rubber mat with an edge under sinks inside cabinets for example, and of course water heaters should have one) but some places like behind toilets, next to the dishwasher, underneath the fridge, etc. don't have great options.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  Of all the leaks I've had these past 10 years, only two have been appliances, and one was high pressure (water heater). The other as negligible. Both of those didn't need sensors.... they were obvious, and quickly. The leaks that haunt me though... several under the house in the crawl space. Copper pipe pinholes, caused I don't know how much damage (including several ruined water heater elements, maybe even causing the water heater to fail prematurely). Ruined floors. Until they got bad enough that we had no hot water (which was about the time the floor started warping), there doesn't seem to be anyway that we might have noticed. The water bill wasn't unusually high, or maybe it just frog-boiled its way up where we couldn't. There were several more copper pinholes, but they were noticed as muddy places in the crawlspace while fixing the first, or just spidey-sensed. I am also very nearly too fat to crawl under the house, let alone do emergency plumbing while there. Another incident involved a squirrel. The idiot owners of this house (before us, not the current idiot owners) decided that the easiest place to put new plumbing was in the ceiling (maybe they were too fat too?). Our attic had a new uninvited guest, and apparently PEX piping is very tasty. Or appears that way, the squirrel lost his appetite after biting enough of a hole that there was a leak from above. This leak though, despite the location which should have made it almost instantly obvious, happens almost within 5 minutes of a torrential downpour that lasted better than an hour. That, plus my unwillingness to believe the previous owners had routed plumbing above everyone's heads, meant we didn't get that taken care of quite as quickly as we might have. My lessons from this, I think, are: 1. We might have caught the crawlspace leaks quickly if there were a humidity sensor (is that how the leak sensors work?) down there, and we could have compared to baseline. That is, if spraying water didn't just fry them immediately. 2. The ceiling leak probably couldn't have been detected very early, given the coincidence with the rain and how it would have raised humidity. Possibly if we had a water pressure sensor, that would have picked it up as a drop, despite there being no faucets running. Plumbing sucks. Houses build 50 years ago assumed that it could never fail often enough to make it easily accessible. My next house will take into consideration squirrel mitigation concerns.
hanniabu 3y ago
Is one of these $10 devices all you need? Or do you need some home unit along with it?
- Toutouxc 3y ago
  They’re Zigbee, so they need a coordinator, which you can buy from IKEA or any other brand that does Zigbee stuff, or you can fashion one from a Zigbee USB stick and a Raspberry.
kelnos 3y ago
The question to me is: are they actually good? I've bought into the Z-Wave ecosystem, and by and large all the Z-Wave door/window sensors available on Amazon have bad reviews. They have issues maintaining a connection to the network, they drop events, have terrible battery life, etc. The Zigbee sensors on Amazon seem a bit better, but still. I'd seriously consider getting a Zigbee USB stick if I knew these function well and have good battery life. I just bought several $40 Z-Wave door/window sensors that got decent reviews, but at 4x the $10 IKEA price, I'm not going to be buying many of them.
- Toutouxc 3y ago
  My home automation is 100% Zigbee and 1/2 of it is IKEA stuff (switches, buttons, motion sensors, outlets, lightbulbs, LED drivers, air quality sensor, air purifier). No problems whatsoever. I believe I haven’t touched any of it for a year.
- _fqqr 3y ago
  I've got a single motion sensor, and all light bulbs in the house done with IKEA's TRADFRI bulbs, all bought nearly a year ago. The stack is a zigbee USB stick, Zigbee2MQTT, mosquitto and HA. The lights are decent, I've had 2 fail so far, but both were on the same spot so I suspect something's wrong there. The motion sensor has been pretty reliable, still working with no signs of failure. Delays or "dropped" events (the light not turning on) have been very rare and most likely a result of the ancient server I have than the motion sensor itself.
  - cyberax 3y ago
    > Delays or "dropped" events (the light not turning on) have been very rare and most likely a result of the ancient server I have than the motion sensor itself. Heads up: you can bind two ZigBee devices directly. So a sensor can trigger a light without requiring a hub to even be on. It can even work across the mesh network.
- Jeeves 3y ago
  I have large zwave AND zigbee networks. They're very equivalent. I find that the hub is the important factor for ZWave where as each device is important for Zigbee. Since ZWave is licensed and controlled, I've only had issues where (actual example) a siren supported playing multiple tones but the hub didn't support that particular feature directly. My experience with Zigbee is slightly different. Being an open standard there are lots of cheap choices however it also means that because there is no licensing to use it, not all of the devices branded "zigbee" are fully compatible with each other. My personal experience leans more towards "Pair the device and cross my fingers that it is compatible". If it's not, nothing works. Otherwise; They all use the same basic tech (PIR, Resistance for water sensing, magnets and reed switches for door/window open closed) so it really comes down to implementation.
LeafItAlone 3y ago
I absolutely love the use of IKEA’s smart home products. For me they have been very reliable and work with Apple HomeKit. But nearly all of their electric devices are odd shapes for the USA. For example, their Tradfri outlets take are so bulky that they prevent two from being plugged into a standard two plug outlet.
hinkley 3y ago
They must have some weird research dept there. The first color changing LED strips I found for a reasonable price also came from IKEA. It was several years before anyone matched the price point. For a while I bought CFLs from them and I don’t recall now if that was because of price, color temperature, or dimmer compatibility. You don’t expect them to have tech stuff but they are very low key about the stuff they dohave.
- dougmwne 3y ago
  I remember being surprised that there was wireless phone charging built into so many products so early.
mastax 3y ago
My only smart home devices are old "Philips" Wiz Wi-Fi bulbs. They were cheap and I could set them up to change color temperature and brightness to help me fall asleep and wake up on time - it really seems to help. But they were hard to pair and every few months they'll disconnect from WiFi and need re-pairing. The proprietary app is somewhat annoying and they released a new V2 app which is more annoying and (from what I can tell) doesn't have any widgets or siri shortcuts so I need to launch the app every time I want to turn the lights on or off. I'm sure some newer WiFi bulbs work better but by nature they have to use the cheapest possible WiFi hardware and I'm wary of them clogging up my airwaves, forcing low PHY rates, and being incompatible with newer WiFi technologies like U-APSD. My new LG TV has a built-in Matter Thread hub, so Thread sounded perfect. No proprietary apps needed, compatible with everything. Just point your phone at the QR code to pair. Fully local, low-latency mesh networking. But it's new so the devices are more expensive and there's a really limited selection. The early-adopters of Thread experienced some reliability issues but those have been fixed (?) I can't find much info about LG's Thread hub implementation but it seems like I'd need to add new devices through LG's app and I'm wary about how LG's integrations tend to be unreliable and how they try to turn open standards into de-facto lock-in experiences. Zigbee and Z-Wave felt like old news to me. The last vestiges of the semi-open proprietary home automation market for people who are already locked in and willing to pay $60 for a light switch. I really don't want to have to buy a hub. I also had some bad experiences with some very expensive ZigBee wireless relay modules I used in a product at work. I think this thread is causing me to rethink ZigBee. Cheap, open, compatible. I wanted to get a low-power always-on server to host the Grafana/MQTT for my Open Airgradient air sensor anyway, so I may as well plug a Zigbee dongle in and run Home Assistant. Might get a Home Assistant Green or Yellow.
- XorNot 3y ago
  Personally I've just gone all in on ESP-based wi-fi stuff, and it's working great so far. Wi-fi is ubiquitous, and for plugged in devices it means all my stuff just has a regular IP address and DHCP identity on my network (on a secondary SSID without internet access, thanks to Unifi).
- KANahas 3y ago
  FYI, there is a Home Assistant integration for the WiZ bulbs that I find works really well… I almost exclusively control my 6 or so via HomeKit and they have been rock solid.
wdb 3y ago
All the window sensors I ever saw were going inside the window frames. Times change I guess
petepete 3y ago
I'm all in on IKEA smart home stuff. I don't do anything too advanced, but having my lamps on timers and being able to turn everything off with one button press is amazing. It integrates perfectly with Sonos too, so I wake to the news on Radio 4. Really happy with it so far. Will definitely be getting a couple of leak sensors when they become available.
sandos 3y ago
This is awesome! These are good candidates for building your own stuff, I would say. I do really need a garage door sensor for example.
gruturo 3y ago
Very happy with the news! I have about 40-45 zigbee devices in the home - 20ish bulbs and switches connected to the Hue gateway (soon to be abandoned thanks to Philips' new account requirements.... screw them, but that's another story), the rest mostly sensors connected to my zigbee2mqtt/Homeassistant setup. I am very happy with the Aqara devices but they're relatively expensive. The sonoff stuff is garbage (sometimes needs re-association with the controller for no clear reason, and always when I replace the batteries.. which is often), the IKEA stuff (switches and motion sensors mostly) has by far the best price/performance ratio and is quite reliable, but the battery life is quite disappointing on all of them. The new motion sensor having 3 AAA batteries (rather than 2xCR2032) should ensure a rather less disappointing battery life!
djhworld 3y ago
IKEA have really nailed the smart home thing, the products are affordable and unassuming and crucially, all zigbee. You don't even need to use their hub you can use your own. I've got a bunch of IKEA smart lights, motion sensors, plugs etc around the house and they've worked flawlessly for years, all integrated into home assistant.
OyinDerry 3y ago
Jumping into the smart home conversation: IKEA's stepping up their game with these Zigbee sensors. Affordable, sleek, and you don't even need their hub – a win for DIY smart home enthusiasts! It's like IKEA meets high-tech without breaking the bank. Comparing with Xiaomi's offerings, IKEA's got some neat features, but hey, there's that size difference. Maybe IKEA's going for durability over discretion? And, amidst the tech showdown, let's not forget about privacy – a big shoutout to those mindful of what's phoning home. In the world of smart sensors, it's all about finding that sweet spot between functionality, price, and trust.
- bmicraft 3y ago
  I really like that you can increasingly use many of their things with rechargable aaa batteries instead of having to keep buying CR2032 coin cells. Also they last much longer
dmacvicar 3y ago
Zigbee is reliable and quite open. Just go for the Homeassistant and zigbee2mqtt route. You will be able to interact with almost anything from Homeassistant. I just finished moving all my Hue lights from the official hub to zigbee2mqtt + USB dongle, in preparation for the upcoming enshitification (Hue app will require online account).
LTL_FTC 3y ago
Those who have installed smart motion sensors to turn lights on and off, why not install light switches with sensors built in? Like the kind one finds in office and school environments? I have one in a room and it works well. Never have to worry about batteries or privacy or security implications with the rest of my network.
- bmicraft 3y ago
  Because those usually cost about an arm and a leg more than buying separately, and also don't allow for the kind of things you can automate (read "script") in homeassistant
lobocinza 3y ago
I use cheap & generic Zigbee sensors in the Tuya ecosystem. On Ali there are many brands like Aubess and MOES but the devices are often identical between brands.

408 points by Terretta 3y ago

thfuran 3y ago

Too bad it's not zwave.

Kirby64 3y ago
At the $10 price point? Z-wave stuff always seems to cost more, and my understanding is that is largely due to the requirements for compatibility and testing per Z-wave alliance. I'd be shocked if this same thing could even be made at reasonable margins for $10. The flip side to this, is Zigbee stuff always has a lot of little quirks, problems, or bugs. There's literally an entire module/database for ZHA (Zigbee Home Assistant addon) called ZHA Quirks that's designed to work around all the little issues with various devices.
- nickthegreek 3y ago
  Agreed. I love zigbee for its HA integrations. Fully off zwave now. Recently just added some IKEA motion senors and bulbs and everything is working so nice.
- _ea1k 3y ago
  Yeah, I used to be a big fan of Z-Wave, but the effective price minimum is killing it. Zigbee and (eventually) Matter seem like the way forward.
- meroje 3y ago
  Have an older z-wave heater valve that seems to be on a version of the protocol no one bothers to be backwards compatible with. Never happened with zigbee no matter the amount of quirks needed from zigbee2mqtt.
asylteltine 3y ago
I prefer zwave as well. As long as you have repeaters (pretty much any light switch) and a good hub (zwave js ui NOT the default one) you will be fine. I run about 20 nodes right now and upgrading to zwave js ui over the default fixed my node graph so everything had a good signal. I do want to see more thread around
- Kirby64 3y ago
  Zigbee does just fine with repeaters as well. You just need to be strategic with placing repeater-capable devices around the house, since the range isn't quite as good as Z-wave gear due the frequency.
alistairSH 3y ago
Meh, I have som Z-wave switches in the house (some in-wall rockers, some wall-wart smart plugs) and the experience has been mixed. Flaky switches (GE-branded), flaky firmware (SmartThings hub), etc. I'll be happy when/if Thread becomes the norm and I can just run everything through Apple HomeKit. Though for some reason, I still don't see a Thread in-wall dimmer available, which seems crazy to me.
- function_seven 3y ago
  Same experience here. Every once in a while a switch will go offline and I have to toggle it to get it to rejoin the network. These switches are all GE (Jasco) units. My Inovelli switches are rock solid, as well as my Kwikset deadbolt. I should probably replace the GEs with Inovellis...
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    All my older Z-wave switches are Jascos, and while they've been solid for a while now on the Z-Wave part, the relays have been failing over time. One day you turn it on, and instead of staying on, it starts to cycle on-off, on-off, on-off, on-off indefinitely.
- kelnos 3y ago
  I've had really good luck with the Leviton Z-Wave switches & dimmers. Haven't had a single problem with them in about 3 years of use.
  - alistairSH 3y ago
    Ha! All my GE switches have been replaced with Leviton now. So far, so good. I think I've had to hard reset and repair one of them in 3 years, so not too bad. But some days I'm tempted to swap them all for Lutron Caseta. That just gets a bit pricey (both to swap, and then to expand).
rootusrootus 3y ago
I don't agree. I was an early adopter and I still have some Z-Wave devices, but I won't miss them when they're gone. Pairing is a hassle, unpairing just as bad or worse, and licensing costs mean the devices themselves are always more expensive. My USB dongle for Home Assistant supports both Z-Wave and Zigbee, and as I add new devices and upgrade old ones over time, I'm not buying any new Z-Wave.

Mountain_Skies 3y ago

It appears these are all battery powered and wireless. Probably also means they're quite easy to jam with a low powered transmitter. Still are likely useful to protect against the impulsive crimes of opportunity. It's also a bit weird that washing machines don't come with water leak sensors but I guess manufacturers don't want to highlight the possibility of their products causing water damage.

forward1 3y ago
More bizarre to me still is the fact laundry rooms are built without a drain at the lowest point of the floor. That's in fact a feature I would desire in every room of a custom home.
- marcinzm 3y ago
  >That's in fact a feature I would desire in every room of a custom home. Some reasons I would not want this is: need to pour water in periodically to keep the trap from drying out and the risk of a sewage backup covering every room in literal shit.
  - oldpersonintx 3y ago
    [dead]
  - mritun 3y ago
    “literal shit”? Check the code in your area. The toilet outlet goes into 4” pipe straight to septic, not the 2” drain pipe.
    - marcinzm 3y ago
      The vast majority of homes in the US use a public sewer versus a septic tank.
- ziptron 3y ago
  What's even more problematic is that new North American homes are often constructed with a washer/dryer "conveniently" placed near a bedroom, typically on the upper level, and yet, they are still installed without a drain.

spankalee 3y ago

I really wish these were Matter over Thread without a hub. I'm just looking at adding sensors to a home that already has Nest Wifi for the border routers and I don't really want to add any other hubs to the mix.

_ea1k 3y ago
I agree, but delays seem to be the norm with Matter.
ars 3y ago
The downside is that WiFi devices have far worse battery life, and WiFi doesn't really work well for this use case WiFi just isn't meant to have tens of devices all competing. Also, you wrote matter over thread, but the thread is the same as zigbee. From the rest of your post you mean matter over WiFi.
- olalonde 3y ago
  Why are you saying that Thread is the same as Zigbee? AFAIK they are competing low-power, wireless mesh standards.
  - bmurphy1976 3y ago
    My understanding is that Thread is basically Zigbee Next. Better in some ways, can run on most of the same hardware (assuming there's firmware available but not at the same time), and unfortunately not backwards compatible. We'll be stuck having to run both Zigbee and Thread (and wifi, zwave, bluetooth, etc.) from here until eternity.
TrueDuality 3y ago
Doesn't Matter run over Thread? I thought it was just an application protocol not a physical connectivity protocol.
- andylynch 3y ago

Eumenes 3y ago

I just want water leak sensors that make a loud alarm noise, I don't need wifi connected crap with hubs. I can use my preexisting camera setup to pick up the alarm noise and alert me. I'm home most of the time and if I'm not for an extended period, I typically turn the water off (not entirely, just in zones). Anyone know of any analog water leak sensors?

shawabawa3 3y ago
> The Badring water sensor includes a built-in siren (60dBA at 1m) that can alert you when it senses a leak
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nickthegreek 3y ago
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07J9HZ5VN https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07J9HZ5VN These have a loud alarm on them and I don't believe they need to be hooked up to the hub to work (just for push notifications).
jonahhorowitz 3y ago
Six dollars - https://www.homedepot.com/p/resideo-Water-Heater-and-Sump-Pump-Single-Use-Water-Leak-Detector-with-Alarm-RWD11/204116887 https://www.homedepot.com/p/resideo-Water-Heater-and-Sump-Pu... There are a bunch of options at Home Depot, Lowes, and your local hardware store.
chankstein38 3y ago
Any idea how these leak sensors work? Is it just waiting to potentially be dripped on by a leak? If so, could you just replace the sensor with a gapped circuit that would be bridged by dripping water?
- rpearl 3y ago
  They are usually just two exposed contacts waiting to be bridged by water, yeah.

nerdjon 3y ago

I am disappointed that these are not matter out the gate, the door/window sensor and the motion sensor would be instant buys for me (likely several). IKEA does do a good job with Homekit support (unless the new hub is different) but really wish I did not need that hub anymore. I am glad that someone is trying to push down the insane home automation tech prices. Side note: I really hate modern SEO. There is not a single link to the actual Hub mentioned in the article, but there are 2 links to the same article about said hub twice.

Gareth321 3y ago
I’ve been wanting to jump into home automation for YEARS but the awful mix of incompatible products and standards coupled with the frequent deprecation of products which often require an online presence, and the outrageous prices being asked for these quite frankly beta products, kept me away. Once matter is standard I expect prices to drop and that’s when I think it’s safe to jump in.
- civilitty 3y ago
  Just use HomeAssistant and find ESPHome compatible hardware. It drastically simplifies everything and there are even vendors like CloudFree [1] that support it out of the box. I've got several outdoor and indoor hydryponics systems set up that way and it's been a joy (except for the RaspberryPi SD card dying on me, which I've since replaced with a more reliable SSD based SBC) [1] https://cloudfree.shop/ https://cloudfree.shop/
  - thesh4d0w 3y ago
    What kind of hydroponic automation are you doing? I've got an indoor living wall that I'm thinking of converting to hydro.
    - civilitty 3y ago
      Mostly just controlling valves and pumps. I have a dutch bucket system with peristaltic pumps pumping nutrients and pH up/down into a reservoir from which water is pumped to the buckets. An additional nutrient film setup runs on its own with the occasional top up. Indoors I just have relays controlling lighting and air pumps for a deep water culture system.

SparkyMcUnicorn 3y ago

I really like the zigbee ecosystem. There's a lot of great resources, cheap devices, months/years battery lifetimes, and reliability has been top notch for me. Being able to pick your own coordinator/"hub" and use devices across all different brands like Ikea, Philips Hue, Aqara, etc. is a really great experience. This is a fantastic community resource example: https://zigbee.blakadder.com/sensors.html https://zigbee.blakadder.com/sensors.html

Terretta 3y ago
Curiously, I submitted title revised from Ikea smarthome sensors to Ikea zigbee sensors since this is a hacker community who care about such things, but some time later title was edited to remove the reference to zigbee.

Mister_Snuggles 3y ago

I've got a bunch of Xiaomi Aqara Zigbee water leak sensors and they have alerted me to leaks which could have caused a lot of damage if not caught right away. The siren on this Ikea one is a very obvious improvement and the price seems to be in line with the Xiaomi sensors that I currently use. The motion sensor looks like a decent improvement on the existing one. I have to admit that I don't have the battery life issues that many people seem to have with the current model, but I've only got two of these sensors so maybe I got lucky. The door sensor looks weird though. It seems a lot larger than the equivalent Xiaomi Aqara sensor. Maybe it uses AAA batteries instead of coin cells or something. Generally speaking, I really like the Ikea Zigbee stuff. Everything I've got is well-supported by Zigbee2MQTT, including OTA updates. Most of my Ikea stuff has never even been paired to Ikea's hub.

twisteriffic 3y ago
How have you found the battery life to be on your Ikea zigbee devices? Mine have been generally disappointing. In the range of 3 months on the dimmers that are maybe 10 feet from the hub. Just got a couple of their newer dimmers, hoping those will be better. The pairing experience was certainly less painful. Zigbee2mqtt is the bomb. ZHA can't hold a candle to it in terms of reliability, features and device support. The tiny increase in complexity is so worth it.
- Mister_Snuggles 3y ago
  I find that the battery life seems fine, but I haven't tracked it closely. I have noticed a difference between Duracell coin cells purchased at Costco and Amazon Basics coin cells. The Amazon Basics ones didn't last long at all, the Duracells seem much better. The newer dimmers (STYRBAR) use AAA cells instead of coin cells, so I'd expect them to last a lot longer.
  - twisteriffic 3y ago
    I'll try switching up battery brands. The out of the box cells from Ikea were dead in weeks, the store brand ones at least gave me a few months.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

So is IKEA turning into an AI company by deploying billions of new control sensors in a giant time series network?

nerdponx 3y ago
Maybe not AI, but certainly it's a great way to make a side business as a data company. > detect opening doors and windows, motion indoors and out If these devices are sending that data back to Ikea, they're surely planning to monetize it somehow.
- exar0815 3y ago
  Except they don't. They are ZigBee-Devices - which means they connect to your Local Hub, no matter what manufacturer. Now, what the Hub does is something else, but NOT controlled by IKEA . Also, the IKEA the Hub does not need any Internet Connection at all to work. Also, it seems like they did their homework. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371121017_Security_Assessment_of_IKEA_Smart_Home_Products https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371121017_Security_... I am all for shitting on BigCo when they do something bad. But when someone does something right, it's just fair to point that out too.
- Toutouxc 3y ago
  These devices are Zigbee, IKEA has been selling those for years. They can’t send data to IKEA, because they can’t send data anywhere, except the rest of your Zigbee mesh.
- nickthegreek 3y ago
  Its rare to find a company like IKEA that are only releasing home automation where you DONT have to worry about being spied on.
JacobThreeThree 3y ago
No, didn't you read the article? They're 'democratizing' the smart home.

sokoloff 3y ago

> Parasoll is a typical window and door sensor that can be discretely mounted to trigger an automation Discrete sensors are a benefit to IKEA (to help them sell them), but consumers probably care more about them being discreet.

manishsharan 3y ago

Each one of these is definitely cheaper that my Rapberry Pi Pico W project with my son but not nearly as much fun.

martincmartin 3y ago

What's the best Zigbee repeater, to get signal to a different part of the house? I used to use a smart bulb, but people kept turning it off at the switch or moving it.

pitzips 3y ago
I find the Ikea outlet switches are great repeaters. Always plugged in, easy to move around.
- twisteriffic 3y ago
  The old SmartThings zigbee outlets are rock solid as well, and also have current monitoring. I used mine both as a repeater and to detect a jammed auger in my cat feeder.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  I've also had good luck with the Sonoff outlet switches. I've got several of those around the house doing nothing but being mesh repeaters.
  - Toutouxc 3y ago
    I also have a few of these, mine serve as actual switches though. Sonoff stuff is solid.
SparkyMcUnicorn 3y ago
I use the Ikea outlets and Hue bulbs. An important part of my setup is that all the switches in my house still work, and won't actually cut power to the bulbs. There are decent options available to add a Zigbee (or wifi) dimmer/relay/remote behind an existing light switch, which is also great for controlling lights that aren't Zigbee and/or multiple devices simultaneously. This has the added benefit that the stuff it's controlling doesn't have to be on the same circuit, and "rewiring" a light switch is done very quickly in software instead of physically rewiring.

odiroot 3y ago

These (motion sensors) are gonna be great for a cheap DYI alarm for bicycles/motorcycles when parked outside.

renegade-otter 3y ago

I have had smart lights in my apartment for years - Philips Hue uses Zigbee. Every time I am in a hotel or a guest somewhere, I feel like I am visiting the 19th century. Touching light switches seems savage to me now. I walk in a bathroom, and the light needs to come on, and it needs to be very dim after 10pm.

rootusrootus 3y ago
You're braver than I am. I won't use Hue bulbs because I require that my automation setup fail gracefully back to plain old 'just works the way it used to' functionality. It'd be just my luck that the server, hub, or Internet would fail right when I needed the lights to work and I'd be stuck in the dark.
- Toutouxc 3y ago
  My lights are all set to turn on after a power cut. That way if Home Assistant dies, I can flip any light switch off, then on, and it will work normally. My area doesn’t have any actual power cuts though.
- renegade-otter 3y ago
  Not really - these lights are always on, so if the hub croaks, your lights can still be turned on/off the old-fashioned way. I actually got touch guards installed on all the switches so the guests don't press them - you can still poke it with a pencil and toggle. In almost 10 years, I have never had to do it. The only drawback is that if the power goes in and out - all the lights come on. This is where remote functionality is useful, if you are away.
- extrapickles 3y ago
  Hue bulbs by default emulate a dumb led bulb. This is configurable so you can have them be “dumb” in a way that you prefer, eg: customize color, brightness or do whatever you told them last. I have several that some of the time I use a regular light switch to turn on/off and you wouldn’t know they weren’t standard led bulbs.
- 3y ago

amluto 3y ago

What’s the practical indoor range like on these? I’ve found the useful range of Z-Wave devices to be embarrassingly poor, and I think it’s largely because, in the US market, some kind of regulatory issue limits transmit power to 0dBm or maybe even less. (Z-wave LR is much higher, but it’s not ready for prime time.). ZigBee apparently allows up to 30dBm, which should more than make up for the less favorable frequency range. Does anyone have any experience with how far it can reach through typical indoor construction?

nick__m 3y ago
Each zigbee device extend your reach and small usb powered repeater exists, in practice if you have a few devices, the signal reach is a non-existent problem!
- ihattendorf 3y ago
  Each zigbee device _that is mains powered_ extends your reach. In theory you could make a battery powered repeater, but there aren't any on the market AFAIK.
nicholasjarnold 3y ago
I wasn't aware of the purported regulatory radio limits on power, but I can report anecdotally that I found a huge jump in usability/signal strength/ownership satisfaction when I started replacing my old ZWave 1 stuff with the 500-series or above hardware (ZWave "Plus" is the name for these sometimes). This "LR" stuff you mention is what I think some are calling the Z-Wave 800 series. It more than doubles the radio range of the 500 series stuff and greatly reduces power draw for battery devices. However, I have 500 and 700 series sensors that only need a battery change once every ~2 years or so. I don't find that to be too much, and the signal strength has been no problem for me in an old brick house. I do have a handful of powered zwave devices around though, and these act automatically as repeaters for the other devices in the mesh.
- amluto 3y ago
  I have a mix of 700 and 800 series Z-wave gear, and I find it borderline useless — a mesh hop struggles to reach one room over. LR is a rather different thing — slightly different frequency, very different topology, and it requires explicit controller software support. As far as I can tell, most or all 800 series hardware supports LR, 700 might with appropriate firmware, and earlier chips do not. node-zwave-js does not yet support LR, but someone seems to be working on it (slowly).

tokamak-teapot 3y ago

Any chance of a sensor that can detect whether doors are locked (rather than open?)

estebank 3y ago
That sounds like it could be a lazer/ir gate in the lock hole to detect it being in the way, but the custom job to jam it into the frame side of the lock might be quite delicate work if it's wood, or even worse if the frame is some prefab unit. Another DYI alternative would be to open the lock and see if you can stick a magnet somewhere in the mechanism where it won't impede movement and that has enough space for the solenoid. Neither of these are what I'd call complex, but also wouldnt call them easy to pull off. I would have to assume that somewhere out there someone is selling this already made.
notyourwork 3y ago
I have a few Emtek locks which support locking and opening detection. Premium brand from Yale, which has a Yale Zigbee module. They also have Zwave support.
nicholasjarnold 3y ago
Schlage makes some that use ZWave Plus (500 series or better, didn't check the spec sheet). I have an older model that works nicely for this. https://www.schlage.com/en/home/smart-locks/connect-zwave.html https://www.schlage.com/en/home/smart-locks/connect-zwave.ht... This would give you the "is locked or not" capability you seek here, but obviously requires a replacement of your door lock (perhaps not trivial if renting, but is a very easy DIY otherwise).

lopis 3y ago

Would have loved a cheap human presence sensor instead of a motion sensor!

SparkyMcUnicorn 3y ago
This might be what you're looking for. It's wifi (I think it's Matter), but works without an internet connection. https://www.aqara.com/us/product/presence-sensor-fp2 https://www.aqara.com/us/product/presence-sensor-fp2
- vineyardmike 3y ago
  Pretty sure it’s not matter. Source: own it and the website doesn’t say matter. Also an engineer working on matter products.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - owlninja 3y ago
    > With its advanced hardware, the FP2 is able to support much more cutting-edge features such as sleep monitoring, people counting, posture detection (lying down, sitting, standing, walking) and Matter support for enhanced functionality
    - vineyardmike 3y ago
      It’s matter support with a hub. They promise matter support with an OTA. Notably none of their marketing copy or the box says matter support. > Support of the new smart home standard, Matter, is also planned for the FP2, and will be added to the device via a subsequent OTA update https://www.aqara.com/us/aqara-adds-presence-sensor-fp2-to-its-smart-sensor-portfolio/ https://www.aqara.com/us/aqara-adds-presence-sensor-fp2-to-i...
- lopis 3y ago
  That's not really cheap though.

baz00 3y ago

[flagged]

recursive 3y ago
Weird take. I'm not into home automation. Like at all. But how is this ewaste in a way that anything else isn't? Do you comment on headphones and trackpads too?
- baz00 3y ago
  I've had the same headphones for 20 years and the mouse for 5. I had the mouse before that since 2001. I doubt all this crap is going to be functional 2 years down the line.

bilsbie 3y ago

Offshoot topic but is there such a thing as an outdoor leak sensor? I’d love to have one on my pool equipment but it would need a way to ignore rain.

0_____0 3y ago
Leaks are persistent, weather is not. Either present the raw data and interpret it yourself, or gate any alert on potential precipitation in your area.
rootusrootus 3y ago
You'd need something with brains. Detecting the water is easy, but you want something that can check local weather and correlate with that. Ideally a rain sensor at the same location. I could do this with my Tempest and Home Assistant, I'm sure. But... I've never had a pool equipment leak that bothered me. All my equipment is outside the house and a leak isn't a top concern. if it were in the garage, I'd be more inclined to put a sensor there, but then rain correlation wouldn't be a problem.

quartz 3y ago

I've got a Moen Flo water sensor I really love. It was something like $25 with no monthly fee, has a surprisingly good app (also measures temp + humidity) and can even be paired with a valve that automatically turns off the water in the case of a detected leak. What I like best about it is it can not only set off a siren and notify me in the app, it'll also send a text message and even call my phone which is huge because if I have a water leak I want to know no matter what.

jrumbut 3y ago
Where do you put it?
- quartz 3y ago
  It lives under my sink where I have a bunch of piping to filters that feed the drinking faucet, fridge, and dishwasher. I live in a co-op building from 1929 so it's really the only point of failure in the unit that would be my liability if there was a leak and it already saved me once when the old tailpiece on my drain cracked.
matthewaveryusa 3y ago
The Moen Flo valve does more than that! Every night it will shutoff your water and observe the pressure. If the pressure drops when the valve is off it will alert you of a leak. They're a bit costly at ~400 bucks, but water damage is so expensive it's worth it. I have one and it's great. Insurance companies will give you a small discount if you have one installed as well.

danans 3y ago

At least for the water leak scenario, the best approach is to put a drain pan under any appliances that could leak (laundry machines, dishwashers, water heaters). The drain pan should itself drain to a pipe. Ideally, a water leak sensor should be used help to catch a slowly failing appliance so you can repair/replace it before it does major damage, not preventing it from doing damage in the first place due to a sudden major leak.

narrowtux 3y ago
I agree that this is the ideal solution, but you can't exactly retrofit a place you rent with completely new plumbing.
- 93po 3y ago
  I've lived in rental apartments where the drain pan has a pipe leading to the existing water dump hole that the washer drains into
ihattendorf 3y ago
Most places can fit a drain pan of some sort (I use some sort of rubber mat with an edge under sinks inside cabinets for example, and of course water heaters should have one) but some places like behind toilets, next to the dishwasher, underneath the fridge, etc. don't have great options.
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
Of all the leaks I've had these past 10 years, only two have been appliances, and one was high pressure (water heater). The other as negligible. Both of those didn't need sensors.... they were obvious, and quickly. The leaks that haunt me though... several under the house in the crawl space. Copper pipe pinholes, caused I don't know how much damage (including several ruined water heater elements, maybe even causing the water heater to fail prematurely). Ruined floors. Until they got bad enough that we had no hot water (which was about the time the floor started warping), there doesn't seem to be anyway that we might have noticed. The water bill wasn't unusually high, or maybe it just frog-boiled its way up where we couldn't. There were several more copper pinholes, but they were noticed as muddy places in the crawlspace while fixing the first, or just spidey-sensed. I am also very nearly too fat to crawl under the house, let alone do emergency plumbing while there. Another incident involved a squirrel. The idiot owners of this house (before us, not the current idiot owners) decided that the easiest place to put new plumbing was in the ceiling (maybe they were too fat too?). Our attic had a new uninvited guest, and apparently PEX piping is very tasty. Or appears that way, the squirrel lost his appetite after biting enough of a hole that there was a leak from above. This leak though, despite the location which should have made it almost instantly obvious, happens almost within 5 minutes of a torrential downpour that lasted better than an hour. That, plus my unwillingness to believe the previous owners had routed plumbing above everyone's heads, meant we didn't get that taken care of quite as quickly as we might have. My lessons from this, I think, are: 1. We might have caught the crawlspace leaks quickly if there were a humidity sensor (is that how the leak sensors work?) down there, and we could have compared to baseline. That is, if spraying water didn't just fry them immediately. 2. The ceiling leak probably couldn't have been detected very early, given the coincidence with the rain and how it would have raised humidity. Possibly if we had a water pressure sensor, that would have picked it up as a drop, despite there being no faucets running. Plumbing sucks. Houses build 50 years ago assumed that it could never fail often enough to make it easily accessible. My next house will take into consideration squirrel mitigation concerns.

hanniabu 3y ago

Is one of these $10 devices all you need? Or do you need some home unit along with it?

Toutouxc 3y ago
They’re Zigbee, so they need a coordinator, which you can buy from IKEA or any other brand that does Zigbee stuff, or you can fashion one from a Zigbee USB stick and a Raspberry.

kelnos 3y ago

The question to me is: are they actually good? I've bought into the Z-Wave ecosystem, and by and large all the Z-Wave door/window sensors available on Amazon have bad reviews. They have issues maintaining a connection to the network, they drop events, have terrible battery life, etc. The Zigbee sensors on Amazon seem a bit better, but still. I'd seriously consider getting a Zigbee USB stick if I knew these function well and have good battery life. I just bought several $40 Z-Wave door/window sensors that got decent reviews, but at 4x the $10 IKEA price, I'm not going to be buying many of them.

Toutouxc 3y ago
My home automation is 100% Zigbee and 1/2 of it is IKEA stuff (switches, buttons, motion sensors, outlets, lightbulbs, LED drivers, air quality sensor, air purifier). No problems whatsoever. I believe I haven’t touched any of it for a year.
_fqqr 3y ago
I've got a single motion sensor, and all light bulbs in the house done with IKEA's TRADFRI bulbs, all bought nearly a year ago. The stack is a zigbee USB stick, Zigbee2MQTT, mosquitto and HA. The lights are decent, I've had 2 fail so far, but both were on the same spot so I suspect something's wrong there. The motion sensor has been pretty reliable, still working with no signs of failure. Delays or "dropped" events (the light not turning on) have been very rare and most likely a result of the ancient server I have than the motion sensor itself.
- cyberax 3y ago
  > Delays or "dropped" events (the light not turning on) have been very rare and most likely a result of the ancient server I have than the motion sensor itself. Heads up: you can bind two ZigBee devices directly. So a sensor can trigger a light without requiring a hub to even be on. It can even work across the mesh network.
Jeeves 3y ago
I have large zwave AND zigbee networks. They're very equivalent. I find that the hub is the important factor for ZWave where as each device is important for Zigbee. Since ZWave is licensed and controlled, I've only had issues where (actual example) a siren supported playing multiple tones but the hub didn't support that particular feature directly. My experience with Zigbee is slightly different. Being an open standard there are lots of cheap choices however it also means that because there is no licensing to use it, not all of the devices branded "zigbee" are fully compatible with each other. My personal experience leans more towards "Pair the device and cross my fingers that it is compatible". If it's not, nothing works. Otherwise; They all use the same basic tech (PIR, Resistance for water sensing, magnets and reed switches for door/window open closed) so it really comes down to implementation.

LeafItAlone 3y ago

I absolutely love the use of IKEA’s smart home products. For me they have been very reliable and work with Apple HomeKit. But nearly all of their electric devices are odd shapes for the USA. For example, their Tradfri outlets take are so bulky that they prevent two from being plugged into a standard two plug outlet.

hinkley 3y ago

They must have some weird research dept there. The first color changing LED strips I found for a reasonable price also came from IKEA. It was several years before anyone matched the price point. For a while I bought CFLs from them and I don’t recall now if that was because of price, color temperature, or dimmer compatibility. You don’t expect them to have tech stuff but they are very low key about the stuff they dohave.

dougmwne 3y ago
I remember being surprised that there was wireless phone charging built into so many products so early.

mastax 3y ago

My only smart home devices are old "Philips" Wiz Wi-Fi bulbs. They were cheap and I could set them up to change color temperature and brightness to help me fall asleep and wake up on time - it really seems to help. But they were hard to pair and every few months they'll disconnect from WiFi and need re-pairing. The proprietary app is somewhat annoying and they released a new V2 app which is more annoying and (from what I can tell) doesn't have any widgets or siri shortcuts so I need to launch the app every time I want to turn the lights on or off. I'm sure some newer WiFi bulbs work better but by nature they have to use the cheapest possible WiFi hardware and I'm wary of them clogging up my airwaves, forcing low PHY rates, and being incompatible with newer WiFi technologies like U-APSD. My new LG TV has a built-in Matter Thread hub, so Thread sounded perfect. No proprietary apps needed, compatible with everything. Just point your phone at the QR code to pair. Fully local, low-latency mesh networking. But it's new so the devices are more expensive and there's a really limited selection. The early-adopters of Thread experienced some reliability issues but those have been fixed (?) I can't find much info about LG's Thread hub implementation but it seems like I'd need to add new devices through LG's app and I'm wary about how LG's integrations tend to be unreliable and how they try to turn open standards into de-facto lock-in experiences. Zigbee and Z-Wave felt like old news to me. The last vestiges of the semi-open proprietary home automation market for people who are already locked in and willing to pay $60 for a light switch. I really don't want to have to buy a hub. I also had some bad experiences with some very expensive ZigBee wireless relay modules I used in a product at work. I think this thread is causing me to rethink ZigBee. Cheap, open, compatible. I wanted to get a low-power always-on server to host the Grafana/MQTT for my Open Airgradient air sensor anyway, so I may as well plug a Zigbee dongle in and run Home Assistant. Might get a Home Assistant Green or Yellow.

XorNot 3y ago
Personally I've just gone all in on ESP-based wi-fi stuff, and it's working great so far. Wi-fi is ubiquitous, and for plugged in devices it means all my stuff just has a regular IP address and DHCP identity on my network (on a secondary SSID without internet access, thanks to Unifi).
KANahas 3y ago
FYI, there is a Home Assistant integration for the WiZ bulbs that I find works really well… I almost exclusively control my 6 or so via HomeKit and they have been rock solid.

wdb 3y ago

All the window sensors I ever saw were going inside the window frames. Times change I guess

petepete 3y ago

I'm all in on IKEA smart home stuff. I don't do anything too advanced, but having my lamps on timers and being able to turn everything off with one button press is amazing. It integrates perfectly with Sonos too, so I wake to the news on Radio 4. Really happy with it so far. Will definitely be getting a couple of leak sensors when they become available.

sandos 3y ago

This is awesome! These are good candidates for building your own stuff, I would say. I do really need a garage door sensor for example.

gruturo 3y ago

Very happy with the news! I have about 40-45 zigbee devices in the home - 20ish bulbs and switches connected to the Hue gateway (soon to be abandoned thanks to Philips' new account requirements.... screw them, but that's another story), the rest mostly sensors connected to my zigbee2mqtt/Homeassistant setup. I am very happy with the Aqara devices but they're relatively expensive. The sonoff stuff is garbage (sometimes needs re-association with the controller for no clear reason, and always when I replace the batteries.. which is often), the IKEA stuff (switches and motion sensors mostly) has by far the best price/performance ratio and is quite reliable, but the battery life is quite disappointing on all of them. The new motion sensor having 3 AAA batteries (rather than 2xCR2032) should ensure a rather less disappointing battery life!

djhworld 3y ago

IKEA have really nailed the smart home thing, the products are affordable and unassuming and crucially, all zigbee. You don't even need to use their hub you can use your own. I've got a bunch of IKEA smart lights, motion sensors, plugs etc around the house and they've worked flawlessly for years, all integrated into home assistant.

OyinDerry 3y ago

Jumping into the smart home conversation: IKEA's stepping up their game with these Zigbee sensors. Affordable, sleek, and you don't even need their hub – a win for DIY smart home enthusiasts! It's like IKEA meets high-tech without breaking the bank. Comparing with Xiaomi's offerings, IKEA's got some neat features, but hey, there's that size difference. Maybe IKEA's going for durability over discretion? And, amidst the tech showdown, let's not forget about privacy – a big shoutout to those mindful of what's phoning home. In the world of smart sensors, it's all about finding that sweet spot between functionality, price, and trust.

bmicraft 3y ago
I really like that you can increasingly use many of their things with rechargable aaa batteries instead of having to keep buying CR2032 coin cells. Also they last much longer

dmacvicar 3y ago

Zigbee is reliable and quite open. Just go for the Homeassistant and zigbee2mqtt route. You will be able to interact with almost anything from Homeassistant. I just finished moving all my Hue lights from the official hub to zigbee2mqtt + USB dongle, in preparation for the upcoming enshitification (Hue app will require online account).

LTL_FTC 3y ago

Those who have installed smart motion sensors to turn lights on and off, why not install light switches with sensors built in? Like the kind one finds in office and school environments? I have one in a room and it works well. Never have to worry about batteries or privacy or security implications with the rest of my network.

bmicraft 3y ago
Because those usually cost about an arm and a leg more than buying separately, and also don't allow for the kind of things you can automate (read "script") in homeassistant

lobocinza 3y ago

I use cheap & generic Zigbee sensors in the Tuya ecosystem. On Ali there are many brands like Aubess and MOES but the devices are often identical between brands.