Zigbee Door and Window Sensor 3 Pack, Wireless Mini Contact Sensor, Home Automation, Requires Aqara Hub, Zigbee Connection, Kid Safety, Compatible with Apple HomeKit, Alexa, Works with IFTTT

I have an August lock that is supposed to provide some "door ajar" alerts. It never does, and the sensor does not integrate well with HomeKit. Recently, I put down a door mat that catches on my door and leaves it open, and I've had a few times where I've left the house and left my door wide open because I'm used to it closing behind me. I already have a few Aqara sensors around my house for leak detection, and a door sensor on a deck door that is harder to close and can get left ajar accidentally, so I decided to get another sensor for my front door. This sensor is perfect! It was easy to setup and get connected to my existing Aqara hub, and it works very well with HomeKit. I get notifications every time the door is open or closed, and in addition, priority alerts when the door is left open past my timeout setting (two minutes). Installing it was also a breeze, and one of the sensor parts is small enough that it fits on my recessed doorframe with just enough distance between the sensors for it to be effective detecting opening and closing. My Zigbee hub is close by, so it does not need to communicate over a long distance, which should probably help with battery life - however, the sensor on my other door is on a second floor and it communicates perfectly, and I have only had to replace its battery twice. I continue to be pleased with the Aqara ecosystem!

There's a lot to like about these little sensors, but a few things to note as well. First, I bought one of these to test before committing to putting them on all of my windows and doors. Worked great. I have now purchased several more sensors. I've seen recommendations that you don't pair your devices with the receiver until you have it near where the final install is located. It was explained that zigbee networks kind of self-sort and adjust power, channels, etc. based on the network signal. I have no idea if this is true, just passing it on. The Good: -- I connected these to Home Assistant via a Sonoff Zigbee USB receiver and ZHA integration. Home Assistant picked it up almost immediately upon putting it into pairing mode. -- The open/close signal is picked up within a fraction of a second. Very sensitive. -- There's a basic temperature sensor in the device that is reported back to HA. -- The devices report back LQI for your network. Kind of handy to know. -- However small you think these things are, you're wrong. They're smaller. I wouldn't call them non-descript, but they were significantly smaller than the devices they replaced. A quarter of the size. You can find the dimensions on the product page. The Less Than Ideal: -- Sometimes when I close my windows, the window "bounces" a little. Just enough for the sensor to "close" and then immediately "open" again even though the window is closed and properly seated. It's kind of annoying since the only way to see if this happened is to open the HA app and check the status. Maybe I should just pulse the lights in the room when it's been closed for 5 seconds. Anyways... -- There is only a small fraction of the information I would have preferred transmitted -- RSSI is not reported to HA. Not sure if this is a HA thing, Sonoff thing, ZHA thing, or Aqara thing. -- The temperature isn't very useful. It's the temperature of your door frame basically. I'm not entirely sure about the accuracy, but I have my doubts. The Ugly: -- The batteries that are shipped all show up as about 75% upon installation. Really annoying. But not a dealbreaker I suppose. The Undetermined: -- I've had these installed for 2-3 months. For the first month, several batteries went from "100%" to 77.5%. All have basically stayed at 77.5% for the entirety of the second and third months. Another went from "100%" to 55% in the first month. Another is at 65% after two months. There's no correlation between amount of use and battery life as of yet. My longest-lasting and first installed battery is also the battery with the highest amount of life left. --Update 10-28-2024: I have yet to replace the batteries in a single one of these. I have had three installed since May 2023, another three since July 2023, and couple of singles installed since. All are hovering between 50% and 70% battery remaining and have been flat since roughly November 2023. Bottom Line: I'd recommend them if you're looking for non-wifi, immediate signal, zigbee door/window sensors that are small. They tick just about every box you could need.

I heard about this from a YouTube review of the best door sensors for a smart home. Only $18, why not give it a try? You don’t need an Aqara hub. Any Zigbee coordinator (like Sonoff USB plus, Conbee, etc.) that you have installed in Home Assistant or similar automation system should work fine. I’m using with the Sonoff USB plus as my Zigbee coordinator. The Aqara door sensor pairs instantly and configured in less than a minute. Installed on pantry doors. This was a bit tricky as I installed on the inside of the doors, so they would not be visible from outside. I had to try multiple locations (need to ensure magnet and sensor are close together at the proper height relative to one another) but finally got the location right (used scotch tape to test/identify best location, then I used the included stickers to attach the sensor and magnet directly to the pantry door interior, once I knew the proper positioning). Directly outside the pantry is a ceiling light that is controlled by a smart light switch (also integrated into Home Assistant). I config’d an automation so when the pantry doors are opened (door sensor detects motion), the smart light switch activates the ceiling light. When pantry doors are closed (door sensor detects the magnet has come close to the sensor again), the smart light switch shuts off the ceiling light. This works great to make it easy to see contents of the pantry, and we don’t need to bother with manually turning the light on/off anymore. We used to sometimes leave the light on accidentally/forget to turn off. Not anymore! Thanks Aqara and Home Assistant.

These devices where quite easy to set up, and work flawlessly in my Smartthings environment. I'm very comfortable setting up custom devices handlers and the one for this are well written. I absolutely love the size. I'm using these for window sensors and you barely even notice them - all other sensors I've seen or tried are enormous compared to these. The magnet is quite strong and I have not had a single false reading since using. Now the potential problem. The mfg quite clearly states you must use their hub and they are not compatible with any other hubs - this is a hint you need to consider before purchasing. Xioami / Aqara devices use a partial implementation of the Zigbee protocol and as long as you have no other Zigbee devices, capable of acting as a repeater in your network, things will work fine. I don't so these work brilliantly. The decision to make is whether or not you will be able to limit Zigbee devices in you smart home to battery only devices (battery only can not be a repeater). I have implemented Z-wave and Wi-Fi devices so this isn't a problem for me. I don't use any smart light bulbs, kr other Zigbee devices (I replaced all my switches instead), but with how technology changes it hard to say if this will be true long term. If you currently have Zigbee devices or plan to, skip these. If you don't have, and don't plan to, these things are cheap, powerful and arguably the best looking window sensors on the market and definitely worth considering.

I have a full smart home with a variety of products that I use SmartThings with. I purchased this with only some research. After receiving it and trying it out, I have some things to point out: DISCLAIMER: This is NOT a plug and play device and requires knowledge of device handlers or the desire to learn about them. PAIRING: I had issues with this at first. When it says to hold the small button down for 5 seconds, it means 5 seconds, no more, no less. This fixed the issue. SMARTTHINGS APP: Use the "Scan for nearby devices" option. Follow the 5 second rule stated above. The item comes up as "thing." That is fine, there are more steps, don't fret about all that. SMARTTHINGS IDE: First, if you don't know how to add a Device Handler, there are plenty of references online. For the code required for this device, simply Google: Xiaomi Original & Aqara Device Handlers. It is available on Github. Change the device type to your new self published device handler. Again, there are a bunch of references online for this. CONNECTION LOSS: I have not experienced any from a firmware stand point. If you are having this happen, buy some Zigbee plugs to extend your network. I have tested for network loss for a week and did not experience any. In the phone app, it may say report a network loss but my experience is that it was not reporting correctly. If you want to test this, add notifications for this device. For me, it alerted me every time. MODIFICAITONS: I am using a recessed contact that I soldered to the magnet. It works great and allows me to hide the actual door contact and have the device sit on top of the trim. You can search for this device by name followed by the word "Teardown" RECOMENDATION: I am not paid or compensated in any way to write this review. I just did not care for everyone's claim that this product is not worth it. It is not expensive and works fine. WILL I BE RE-PURCHASING? Well, they just raised their prices by $3 USD, to $17.99, and if they lower back down I will buy more. There are other similar devices out there that work with a similar work around.

If you are a DIYer and have a Zigbee dongle, these pair up easy with Home Assistant. Small and discreet.

I bought these 6 months ago. They worked OK but would drop off the zigbee network every few weeks. I would pair them again and and they were OK for a while. About 6 or 8 weeks ago they started dropping every few days. Today they would not pair unless I took them to within a few feet of the hub. Then they could be taken to the normal location and worked through the zigbee mesh but less than an hour later they stopped detecting the door closing. The batteries were fine but I replaced them anyway and it didn't help. I have an Aqara button on the same Home Assistant ZHA, Sonoff coordinator system and it has been flawless for well over a year. I couldn't get through to support. I'll try again Monday. Update: I moved two of them to doors that were much closer to the hub. They worked and stayed connected. After a month one stop sensing the door opening and closing. It just always says closed. The temp and battery level still worked. I swapped it with the 3rd one. It worked for a while but today it just shows closed all the time. Very disappointing. No more Aqara devices for my smart home.

I saw some other comments about it not working with SmartThings, and while that is true out of the box, it doesn't take much effort to get it working. There is a SmartThings community page that provides instructions along with a link to the driver. The device is small, allows for a decent gap to accommodate installations that don't let you put the magnet directly next to the sensor, and it's fast. I will be buying more of these if the battery life is decent. To install the driver it is as simple as: 1. Once you find the community page, click the link to the drivers 2. Accept the terms of service 3. Enroll your hub into the channel 4. Click the Install button for the Zigbee Sensors Edge Driver Once the driver is installed: 1. Add a device 2. Choose Partner Devices 3. Select Aqara 4. Select Add without QR code 5. Select Open/Closed sensor 6. Choose the T1 sensor 7. Choose the hub you installed the driver to 8. It will search for the device and might take a min or more 9. Eventually it should find it and ask you to press the reset button 10. Name the device and you're done Without the community driver installed, SmartThings will find the device and use the ZigBee switch driver. That will work if you don't mind seeing the device status as on/off instead of open/close. The community driver also provides battery and signal strength information which can be helpful when troubleshooting an issue.