Mastodawn

David Sullivan Dec 18, 2024

@WiteWulf I've some of those Aqara sensors and they're falling out of favour, I've had the temperature/humidity value "stick" after a battery replacement/repairing and I've not always been able to fix them after a remove/re-add/remove etc

@sully ah, that's a shame. I'll see what time brings! Thanks for the warning.

These were a little more expensive than some alternatives, but the cheaper ones don't seem to report actual values, only when they go under/over a specified threshold (which you need to be using the Aqara hub and app to use).

@sully has anyone identified an alternative that's more reliable?

David Sullivan Dec 18, 2024

@WiteWulf Oh no, I'm mixing up my Zigbee units, the annoying ones were the Tuya ones

David Sullivan Dec 18, 2024

@WiteWulf I've one Aqara I was testing as a replacement and it's not gone wrong yet since August

Wes George Dec 18, 2024

@WiteWulf I have a number of those and have been pretty happy with them. Battery state reporting is pretty uneven but I can't tell if that's because the actual battery is dodgy due to age, the bad taste coating on same that apparently interferes with conductivity, or the widget being bad at this, but I have sensors that will go from 90+% to 55% rapidly then stay there for months, or show 40% and then disappear like the battery has died, or they're just not very efficient. Keep spares on hand.

@wesgeorge this one reported 83% battery out of the box, then went up to 100% after 15mins. I assume that was due to the cell warming up and kicking out a bit more voltage, but suggested it's somewhat inaccurate, yeah

A reviewer on aliexpress was complaining the batteries didn't last long when he used the sensors *inside* their freezer, at -20degC 😆

Wes George Dec 18, 2024

@WiteWulf I really want a few zigbee CO2 monitors but haven't seen many that are well-regarded.

@wesgeorge from what I've read, you very much get what you pay for, and the good ones aren't cheap. Power draw is also significant for CO2, TVOC (these both involve heaters), and PM sensing, so needs to be mains powered

Wes George Dec 18, 2024

@WiteWulf yeah. Thing is, I'm fine with mains powered and slightly more expensive, but that + zigbee doesn't seem to exist. Not super worried about VOC, and I get PM2.5 data from the 3 Levoit air filters I have, which integrate decently into HA albeit via their app. For CO2 I'd be fine with just buying an Aranet or Switchbot Meter Pro, but tying that to HA requires adding Yet Another Dongle, & bluetooth doesn't have repeaters/can't use my existing zigbee mesh, so range is going to be a problem.