I’ve built an XBee based sensor network for my home, each sensor node was a lot more than $5 and it’s a non-trivial effort. You say that Zigbee, Zwave, and WiFi sensors are “not expensive” but at a minimum of 4X to a max of 10X the cost of a Wyze sensor, they are significantly more expensive.
The point is that from a hardware perspective, there’s nothing wrong with the Wyze contact and motion sensors, and the bridge. It’s Wyze working out the bugs in their firmware that’s the issue, and I hope they get it right. I’ve got a set of 6 that are working fine right now, and hopefully, will eventually survive a battery change.
What’s unfortunate (but probably is why they’re only $5) is that Wyze didn’t implement a variation of TI’s contact sensor reference design, which used twin Hall-effect sensors. That reference design has a 10-year battery life with a C2032 battery.
Nah, I don’t know what you are doing, but an 8266 is about $4 and lots of PIR options for less than that ( HC-SR501 are like $2). Add USB power and print a shell.
If you are lazy, buy Zigbee Aqara motion sensors for $15.
If you don’t already have a Zigbee controller, grab a Sonoff Zigbee WiFi bridge for $15 and serial flash it with Tasmota.
Done.
I consider the Wyzesense products to be disposable retail prototypes, and if I like what they do, they are cheap enough to replace with better gear. There are some grossly overpriced options available, but it is just silly to suggest that Wyze have a monopoly on cheap sensors.
Regarding sensor fail, I find that 99% of the time the bridge has gone offline… Solution: unplug bridge from camera and camera from power then do the reverse… Works 90% of the time
Sensors die, believe me. Rebooting the bridge is a first step, but doesn’t bring a bad sensor back. I have yet to see a way to recover a bricked sensor.
I have done everything suggested. Including unplugging everything, powering things off, turning them back on, reset my network connection, I have done different combinations of every single thing I can think of and nothing works. I have seen posts from other customers that have all done the same, to no avail. So… yeah, it’s a bunk product, that is falsely advertised and it shouldn’t be legal for them to continue to sell these things when they fail so many people on so many levels. Get your sh*t together, Wyze.
Those are the community sentiments. Echoed by those who care. We don’t want you to fail we want you to succeed but most of all we want what you promised to deliver to us
I have been critical of the sensors (bridge, really), but seem to have sorted my system. I had to move the bridge to another cam, though, which caused me to be out of range for one sensor. That opened the door to trying another vendor’s sensor.
Not saying that I am dumping my remaining Wyze sensors anytime soon, but not inclined to invest in more. It was a good experiment, but in the end, it doesn’t matter what something costs if it doesn’t do what you want.
Also not suggesting that the grass is completely greener anywhere else. Take a look at the Smartthings community forum and see how much gnashing of teeth is going on there.