I’m planning on intalling some window/door sensors but I’m hesitating which one to get because of the door frames in my house. In my case, the door itself sits on top of the frame (about 2cm extra depth), I have included a picture.
What would you recommend in an old house with thick brick walls, z-wave or WiFi? Our WiFi Indoor is excellent but we have no z-wave devices yet. The distance between each z-wave door sensor would be quite large and several walls in between. For that reason I was thinking of purchasing the Shelly because it runs on WiFi.
Distance between those sensors doesn’t matter, they won’t form a mesh because they’re battery-powered.
They will all connect directly to Homey.
You would need to install other Z-wave devices (mains-powered) to create a mesh.
I drilled a small hole in my doors, took the magnet out its casing, inserted it in the hole and placed the doorsensor immediately on top. Works like a charm, much nicer to see
That looks like a clean solution indeed, what sensor are you using? Unfortunately, I have PVC doors so I prefer not to drill holes in the door.
I was thinking of setting up a Z-Wave Plus mesh, should work if I position the repeaters strategically. Then I could install a Sensative Strip (https://sensative.com/sensors/strips-zwave/guard/) on the side of the door, have a friend 3D Print a small plastic block and then stick the small magnet of the Sensative Strip on the block and the block on the door frame. Only the small 3D printed block would then be visible.
I did read some negative reviews about battery time + not working well on PVC doors with aluminium inside. So I’ll have to investigate that further.
What should the 3D printed block be for?
Here are some photos of my Sensitive Strips:
However, I do have problems with the batteries. I installed the strips about 1.5 years ago. The strip at the front door shows 75%, the one at the window only 25%.
Sensative now gives an additional battery warranty.
I ordered some more strips on Monday and will take the warranty. I will also contact Sensative and let them know about the miserable battery life. Let’s wait and see what they say.
If you are not currently using power-operated Z-Wave devices, I would actually advise against using the Sensitive Strips.
It is possible that the use of several repeaters will be enough. However, no one can give you a guarantee, because this depends on many factors.
Please do not compare this with a Wifi mesh. The transmission distance of Z-Wave within a building is considerably less.
Some users have already tried to get Z-Wave smoke detectors (there seems to be no Zigbee smoke detector) working with a few repeaters and/or WallPlugs. Most are frustrated.
The reason why I considered the Sensative (besides the design ofc) is because I read some reviews about the Shelly WiFi door sensors either being very slow in notifying or batteries that go empty really quickly.
Z-Wave looks to be better in signalling and battery-life but connectivity can be a problem. I was planning on adding Fibaro Z-Wave repeaters (plugs) in order to improve the mesh though … Also, because I’d like to use the Fibaro motion sensors.
So many choices and each with its own issues … sigh.
I’m very satisfied with Z-Wave, but I also have 25 repeaters (including switches, adapters, heating, blind control) on about 100 m². The Z-Wave protocol is very resistant to interference due to the frequency and is designed for low battery consumption. But for this a good mesh must be available. If this is not the case, you will only get annoyed. If the mesh is not good it could be possible that the battery of a MotionSensor is empty after 3 months.
If you mainly use Zigbee, the suggestion from @TedTolboom would be a very good alternative. But it is not supported by the app at the moment, not even by the beta version I guess.
Trust me… before the status “to be expected” turns into “on stock” support is added to the app. The app update is already tested and ready for app store release.
Right now, some IKEA Zigbee plugs and lights and some WiFi plugs. My “smart home” is very limited for now, the most “advanced” is the control of my Somfy roller shutters by Homey
WiFi is the most stable connection in my case but I’ve read that WiFi smart devices consume a lot more battery and are often slower in reporting (for instance door sensors) making them kind of useless.
IKEA devices with or without bridge?
If without bridge, I would definitely wait until the Zigbee Strips are available.
How the strips would behave if you ran the IKEA devices over the IKEA bridge, so you have no repeater, I do not know. Zigbee also needs a mesh, on the other side it transmits over 2.4 GHz. I have no experience with ZigBee, sorry.
Unfortunately I also cannot say anything about Wifi devices.
