Water leak alarm recommendation - txt / WiFi notification

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#2685442 1-Apr-2021 17:33

@michaelmurfy has pointed out the Xiaomi water leak sensor option as well. It uses the Aqara hub and Zigbee. US$65 with three sensor, but will probably take about 3 month to arrive on standard shipping or faster shipping is up to US$50 depending on seller. Anyone know how the range / reliability is with those? It's a fairly decent brand at least, so apps should be maintained. Also being a standard that others use is a good thing, so I don't need heaps of hubs - I already have a hub for my motorised blinds, not sure what standard it uses though.

Mike also has a post about 915MHz being fine for short range transmissions, so the YoLink option is back on the table. It's a standard but they're using it in a way a bit different from anyone else.

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#2685443 1-Apr-2021 17:39

You can actually buy the Xiaomi hub in NZ along with some sensors. Just not the leak sensor: https://www.mi-store.co.nz/product/YTC4044GL-KIT1/Smart-Home-Kit-4-in-1

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timmmay

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#2685453 1-Apr-2021 18:16

michaelmurfy:

You can actually buy the Xiaomi hub in NZ along with some sensors. Just not the leak sensor: https://www.mi-store.co.nz/product/YTC4044GL-KIT1/Smart-Home-Kit-4-in-1

Good point thanks. No water sensors there, found them in NZ at about twice the price of overseas.

Zigbee sounds like a reasonable option, but range not near as good as LoRa. Some mains powered devices seem to be repeaters though, so with some careful positioning and some luck or maybe a repeater it might work ok.

I quite like the Xiaomi as cheap and cheerful, standards based, and likely to be supported compared with the single vendor doing the other one... but the LoRa one does seem more capable.

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#2685585 1-Apr-2021 21:12

Aqara sounds like a nice system, probably durable and well support with a large company, and Zigbee is a standard. However, I've spent a couple of hours this evening trying to work out if the Xiaomi NZ store hub is the same as the Aqara hub and what version it is, looking on Ali Express at the different sellers trying to find one with a shipping method that's actually going to arrive in a reasonable time for a reasonable price. I think about US$40 for the hub and US$40 for a pack of three sensors, so US$80 plus probably US$20 for shipping if I want it soon. The system is probably good but getting them is a real pain in the butt.

Or I buy the one of the highly rated Amazon options... YoLink for $120 with siren, Govee for $50 for the set including sirens. I think I'll just buy the Govee and be done with it.

angski

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#2685622 1-Apr-2021 23:21

timmmay:

@michaelmurfy has pointed out the Xiaomi water leak sensor option as well. It uses the Aqara hub and Zigbee. US$65 with three sensor, but will probably take about 3 month to arrive on standard shipping or faster shipping is up to US$50 depending on seller. Anyone know how the range / reliability is with those? It's a fairly decent brand at least, so apps should be maintained. Also being a standard that others use is a good thing, so I don't need heaps of hubs - I already have a hub for my motorised blinds, not sure what standard it uses though.

Mike also has a post about 915MHz being fine for short range transmissions, so the YoLink option is back on the table. It's a standard but they're using it in a way a bit different from anyone else.

i have the Aqara Hub and I used it to monitor temperature around the house.

Pros
fantastic device

Long battery life for my temperature sensors

cheap to buy, if you are willing to wait from aliexpress

Cons

the Aqara Hub can only be connected to one phone. Maybe I have not found a way to connect to two phones simultaneously.

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#2685623 1-Apr-2021 23:36

angski:

Cons

the Aqara Hub can only be connected to one phone. Maybe I have not found a way to connect to two phones simultaneously.

use openHAB or home assistant. I never even bothered with their app, just used it exclusively via openHAB.

of course for me xiaomi was just 1 of about 3 technology platforms in use (zwave, xiaomi, diy).

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#2685626 2-Apr-2021 00:10

Any Xiaomi device that talks to one of their hubs via Zigbee can normally also be directly paired with any Zigbee controller or hub that is not locked down in its firmware. I have some Xiaomi sensors connected to HomeAssistant via the HA zigbee2mqtt plugin:

https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/integration/home_assistant.html

I am using a simple Zigbee transceiver:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001095299084.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.2eaf4c4dhFBYof

There are two Xiaomi water sensors that are fully supported by zigbee2mqtt that I have my eye on:

https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/devices/SJCGQ11LM.html

https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/devices/SJCGQ12LM.html

They should be able to be used by anything that will work with MQTT, not just HA.

I have not yet worked out a path to get HA to send me TXTs, but getting it to send emails is fairly straightforward. I have four places that could do with a water sensor, which I am planning for when I find the time. The kitchen was flooded badly last year, and the bathroom had a near miss. The hot water cylinder has only recently been replaced and it did not do a flood when it leaked as it is gas and the water went out under the house through the gas ventilation holes in the floor. But even for that it would have been good to know when it happened.

timmmay

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#2685638 2-Apr-2021 07:29

Home automation still seems new and with many standards and products, even for technical people it can take quite a bit of time and effort to understand it and get it going. I'm not really interested in DIY stuff, I prefer nice packaged solutions that just work like the Aqara or the ones on Amazon. With shipping so poor from China right now (waiting on a package for a couple of months) and with us having had two leaks in the past year I'll probably just by the moderate price highly rated water sensors on Amazon that use their own radio system and app, then when home automation matures and I have a single system I can throw that one away.

I am a bit sick of everything having its own app. Panasonic heating, Broadlink for Daikin heating, curtain automation, Kasa timer for heater and ventilation, and then another for water alarm monitoring. Maybe I just buy simple water monitors that make a noise so I don't have an additional app running on my phone all the time. I might do Home Assistant when I have a few months free to get it working.

davidcole

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#2685641 2-Apr-2021 07:50

timmmay:
Home automation still seems new and with many standards and products, even for technical people it can take quite a bit of time and effort to understand it and get it going. I'm not really interested in DIY stuff, I prefer nice packaged solutions that just work like the Aqara or the ones on Amazon. With shipping so poor from China right now (waiting on a package for a couple of months) and with us having had two leaks in the past year I'll probably just by the moderate price highly rated water sensors on Amazon that use their own radio system and app, then when home automation matures and I have a single system I can throw that one away.

I am a bit sick of everything having its own app. Panasonic heating, Broadlink for Daikin heating, curtain automation, Kasa timer for heater and ventilation, and then another for water alarm monitoring. Maybe I just buy simple water monitors that make a noise so I don't have an additional app running on my phone all the time. I might do Home Assistant when I have a few months free to get it working.

To get one monitor going or one integration. It’d be minutes. But it would be an ongoing project and if the goal is to deduct the number of vendor supplied apps then than would Be driver enough for me. There’s a number of folks here (and on a home automation slack full of mostly wellingtonians) that can give pointers.

Less so with openHAb, but there’s a few of us and same theory applies.

timmmay

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#2685645 2-Apr-2021 08:02

davidcole:

To get one monitor going or one integration. It’d be minutes. But it would be an ongoing project and if the goal is to deduct the number of vendor supplied apps then than would Be driver enough for me. There’s a number of folks here (and on a home automation slack full of mostly wellingtonians) that can give pointers.

Less so with openHAb, but there’s a few of us and same theory applies.

Minutes? A quick look at the home automation website suggests you need to get a Raspberry Pi (I have two spare Pi B's), install the OS, then do basic configuration. That's maybe an hour? Then I have to work out how to connect a sensor, is the pairing process usually easy for different brands of Zigbee products? Plus do I need to integrate a Zigbee hub in the mix, then integrate the Zigbee hub with Home Assistant?

It might take minutes for someone who's done it before and knows what they're doing, but for others it might take many many hours or days to work out how it all fits together. Hence the attraction of a product from a single vendor that has a simple pairing process in a system made to work together.

davidcole

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#2685646 2-Apr-2021 08:13

Docker pull homeassistant on an existing Linux machine would be set up and usable in minutes.

Adding physical hardware, and yes a raspberry pi a little longer.

But if you want to get away from all the vendor lock in, this is the only way to do it.

timmmay

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#2685650 2-Apr-2021 08:38

Do you have a good website or tutorial? I might have a play and get the hub set up and try to add some of my existing devices. Curtains, heating, etc.

I don't have a server that is on all the time at home. I do have pi hole running on a raspberry pi, I could reuse that but probably better using a spare raspberry pi. I could put it in aws but I already own the pi and it's sitting in a drawer idle.

If I used zigbee devices like Aqara I guess I still need a ZigBee hub?

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#2685651 2-Apr-2021 08:38

Agree that home automation is challenging - having tried a number of approaches and largely failed I have now gone with Apple HomeKit devices whenever possible and so far this has been a much easier and reliable approach. Even those devices that have their own apps (Phillips Hue, Fibaro & Elgato Eve) all show up and work together in the Home app that appears on all my Apple devices (and my wife's) so control and monitoring is easy.

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#2685652 2-Apr-2021 08:40

Yes. The other advantage of zigbee is that it’s WiFi. So you could use a home assistant vm is your preferred as it doesn’t have physics hardware.

I don’t have any tutorials as I followed my Nose when I installed it on docker. And have moved away from home assistant preferring openHAB. But the hookup on YouTube has a fairly good one that would be relatively current. Probably assumes a dedicated machine(pi) though.

timmmay

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#2685661 2-Apr-2021 09:12

@davidcole I just googled the difference between Home Assistant and openHab and found this which I haven't read fully yet. Looks like different platforms that do similar things, home assistant being simpler and OpenHAB being more powerful - sound right? It sounds like the kind of thing you want to start with the system that suits best rather than change. Is there much difference in device support? That's probably key. How would I work out which platform best supports my existing devices?

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