Hi, all the Z-Wave door/window sensors don’t seem to work on Homey, have not tested the Neo yet as it has no tamper alarm, but now considering the Xiaomi’s and switching to Zigbee.
But…, I see Xiaomi has two different kind of door/window sensors. Is it true that both of them cannot be screwed and need to be taped? I have terrible experiences with gluing anything. Had a fibaro smoke sensor glued to a smooth ceiling with doube sided tape that should be able to hold 5kg, fell into pieces about a month later. I don’t want my sensor or the magnet to fall off that easy, especially with small kids smashing the doors.
Do they also, like the Neo, don’t have the tamper alert? For door/window sensors that seems to be something we would want.
I used round about 20 Z-Wave door/window sensors on homey. Fibaro/Devolo/Philio/Sensative
And everything is fine. Which issues did you have with the sensors?
I have some Zwave Aeotec Recessed Door sensors and have no problems with them (other than the battery consumption) No tamper alarm needed as these are inside the door and only accessible when the door is open.
The Aeotec Sensor 7 missed a lot of open/close events to Homey even when it was very close to it, after a day it stopped sending events at all. Changed the battery for a new one, did not change anything.
The sabotage alert also never went away. Wrote Athom support about it and Homey can’t use the S2 protocol that this Aeotec is using, that could perhaps explain.
Wanted to try the Fibaro, but it looked about identical to the Aeotec, but also had a magnet that could only be glued, so I tried the Vision Security sensor instead. Could bind it to Homey, but the device had an exclamation mark afterwards and only indicated “Invalid_CommandClass_Command_Class_Sensor_Binary”, so returned those as well.
The Neo’s seem to be fine in stability and connection, but miss the tamper alert. The sensitive strip perhaps also works, but irreplaceable battery and also no tamper alert.
How long do those batteries last? Our front door will probably open/close about 10 times a day minimum. Cause it will probably be a bit more work to replace them as well?
I’m thinking about giving the Neo’s a try and forget about the tamper alert. The door/window sensors are a nice “first alert” and help you remind to close everything, but they also don’t detect anyone breaking the window so we got motion detectors as a second line of defense
Believe me, aqara tapes hold like a hell. You will have problem to take it off. Unlike fibaro door sensor 2 that fall off after few days with original tape.
On average about half a year, winter a bit shorter summer a bit longer (when used on an outside door). Replacing the battery is loosing 2 screws and opening the sensor, takes 5 minutes.
Tnx. Nice to know that good clue also seems to exist. I’m now trying some of those NEO’s, but why don’t those manufacturers come up with a standard on where they put the holes? Needed to drill new again so perhaps reconsidering tape is not a bad idea. The Neo’s are working great so far with immediate response to Homey every time. I’m going to try some of those recessed door sensors as well.
Hi. I’ve been reading with attention to this thread and I’m curious how in the end your alarm system looks like in sensors matters.
I’m going through the same path as you
I would like to know which motion sensor, in the end, looked a better fit and if you had any siren coupled to your system?
Did you try Domoticz connected with Homey?
Hi, it’s working reasonably well, but still far from optimal. I ended up using the Neo CoolCam door sensors. They lack a sabotage alarm, but work quite some time on a single battery and are sem-reliable. I still have too many times that Heimdall is noticing me that a door or window is not closed when arming while it is. It seems like sometimes the opening or closing command does not reach Homey, even when it is 2 meter next to it. Because it does not query the state more often, it will only be fixed when opening/closing the door or window again.
For motion detection I’m using the Aeotec 6 in 1. I have those installed with two batteries, but they drain them very quickly, have to replace them every 4-5 months. I’m also not that happy with the motion detection range, they start detecting you wen you are within about 3 meters. No false alarms though.
I never found any replacement for the glass breaking module or a way to detect jamming. I did use the siren from Vision Security. Not sure about that one. It works every time I start / stop it from Homey itself, but it seems to fail when being triggered from the alarm flow.
I also have an issue with Google TTS. On a alarm I use that to keep notifying me about any movement accross sensors, so it tells what is triggered over all of the Google devices, but it crashes pretty quickly so that is also not optimal yet.
But it is great to easily arm/disarm and get push notifications. Heimdal is great, could not use Homey as an alarm without it.
Hi,
I know this is an old post, but i’m really interested in your findings , after such a long time, on the alarm system you set up. I’m also planning to update my old alarm system (30 years old) and want to use solely zwave devices. I want to keep my old sensors and alarm sirens. Meanwhile (after 5 years) a lot has changed and in my opinion it has become so much easier doing something like at.
Anyway, as mentioned before , i’m very interested in your experiences of the passed 5 years on the alarm system.
Thanks !
I think Heimdal is still the best option at the moment. Things that could be better:
The battery indicators are terrible. I had flows sending me messages if any of the sensors got below 30% of battery so I know I should replace them. But somehow the indication is going to 50% and then to 0, other devices go from 50 to 20, but it is not reliable.
I got the older Aeotec multisensors, they burn batteries fast, need to replace two of them every three months, where my older “real” alarm worked for over a year on a battery.
Could not find any glass braking sensors, so gave up on that.
Jam prevention still does not exist, so that’s sad, but I don’t know how many high-tech jam device using burglars there will be.
Less reliable, I’ve had some sensors being battery drained and no longer working while the alarm would still activate without any issue or warning. Also, my motion detectors are old, so perhaps it is better now, but the detection is not very good, you need to be real close before it will notice you. The detectors I got with my previous actual alarm system were way more sensitive.
The Fibaro smoke detectors are terrible. After a year they started raising false alarms and waking everyone multiple times each night. Tossed them out and replaced them for “normal” smoke detector units.
What is great:
The flexibility in optimizing everything, I also have Eufy camera’s installed so as soon as any alarm pops up I can check the videos.
Even more flexibility now that we have the advanced flows.
It’s cheaper and easy to extend, I bought some additional alarms for the garden and attic to scare of anyone when the alarms goes off, and they also ring when someone is at the door.
Placed Homey, my switch and router on a cheap UPC. Works great, even if the power is out it keeps working as all the sensors are battery powered as well. My WIFI is dead as the repeaters stop functioning without power, but most of the Z-Wave network is still working (the Z-Wave repeaters need to be wall powered, so units further away don’t work when the power is out).
I don’t mis my “real” alarm and love the options this home-made alarm is giving me. Good luck with your alarm!
Hi Cuflee,
thanks for the prompt reply. Good to hear you are satisfied with your system. To overcome the “battery” issue i’m trying to make it all wired except from the keypads, which will be battery powered (frient keypad). Currently i have a flow for all my battery powered devices. If the battery goes below 20% , i get a message. That works fine for me.
Jam prevention has also been one of my worries, but as you mention i don’t think jamming devices will be part of the standard burglar equipment. Anyway, i will have a look into this, but only after my system is up and running.
The battery is also one of the possible issues. My current old system has some large lead batteries, but that won’t be possible with the new one. I hope to solve this issue with a (future) battery for my solar system … that will power the whole house in case of power dropout.
For now, i will have to buy some stuff and do some testing. As soon as my system is up and running, i’ll post it here.
Would love to see the outcome! Hope to learn and improve from what you are doing. Personally I don’t have a keypad anymore. Arming the alarm is voice activated “Hey Google, start guarding” or “Hey Google, start full guard” (for partial and full alarm set). I didn’t want it to be deactivatable by voice commands, so that is done within the Homey app. Also the alarm automatically disables at 7:00 when set on partial alarm (that is usually when we are at home).
Meanwhile my “alarm system” is up and running . As mentioned , i had an old alarm system, which i (partially) removed. I kept the motion sensors and the wiring.
The system is fully working on 12V DC.
Hardware:
Shelly Wave i4 DC : 3 inputs connected to the sensors / 1 input connected to wired keypad
Shelly Wave 1 : connected to 2 sirens
Frient keypad (Zigbee)
Aliexpress keypad Software:
Heimdall + extra flows
The nice thing is that the Frient keypad is fully integrated with Heimdall. Unfortunately i’m not in favor of the keys on the keypad, so i bought a second (wired) keypad on Aliexpress . The Aliexpress keypad is working unbelievably good…with tags and even fingerprints. It needs some extra programming though. Let’s see how this keypad behaves in the future…maybe i’ll replace the Frient keypad with another Ali keypad, so i don’t have to worry about the battery anymore.
As my alarm is now integrated in Homey it allows to fully use all Homey functionaly, like eg integrating my smoke sensors.
I know there are still some issues like “tampering” and “power outage” but I can live with it .
. As mentioned , i had an old alarm system, which i (partially) removed. I kept the motion sensors and the wiring.
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