Outdoor door / gate sensor ?

[ryanbuckner]

This topic has come up a lot over the years without too much success. I'm looking for an Indigo connected solution for a typical back yard wooden gate sensor. The gate is about 20 feet from the house. I have a basic use case like most others. I need to know if the kids or maintenance workers left the gate open so I don't let the dog out.

I prefer it to be waterproof and battery / solar powered. What's the current best solution to this?

[norcoscia]

I have two gates, one has an Insteon open close and one has a z-wave switch, I just put them in a cheap plastic enclosures. Every few years I replace the battery and it has always worked fine. They are behind a board that is held on by a wood screw. If you want me to take the board off and snap a photo let me know…

[berkinet]

if you have an alarm system, then you can put a magnetic latch door open detector on your gate. That will typically get you longer range and better battery life than most z-wave devices.

[norcoscia]

This is the front gate…

[ferriteman]

Zooz makes a window/door sensor (ZSE41) that has a waterproof case. Might do the trick.

[ryanbuckner]

I decided to go with a YoLink outdoor gate sensor. The hub + 2 gates were only about $60 and setup was fast. The YoLink hub creates a proprietary long range network.

I'll let you know how it goes.

[norcoscia]

Thanks for posting - I have never seen this system before - wondering if it integrates with Home Assistant. I might get something just to do testing....

If you have not looked into Home Assistant - I have a green box and use Flying Divers plug-in. It is amazing how many things become available to Indigo with this setup.

[ryanbuckner]

It looks like it does integrate with HA. https://github.com/YoSmart-Inc/yolink-api

[norcoscia]

Yes, I looked it up after my post - I have one on order. I’ll post once I get things set up, thanks again…

[killerdan56]

But Yolink has no LOCAL control, probably would have been better to get some new LongRangeZwave sensor paired with home assistant

[DaveL17]

I honestly don't know if it's a possible solution here, but I was just reading an article about ratgdo. I don't know enough about it to recommend it (or not) but the local control aspect of it makes me want to buy one just to support the project.

[norcoscia]

But Yolink has no LOCAL control, probably would have been better to get some new LongRangeZwave sensor paired with home assistant

I already have Home Assistant (HA) Green connected with Indigo so, (for me) anything that shows up HA will be reflected in Indigo. So, things like open close, leak, etc. will work great since I can status those in Indigo and do any heavy lifting within Indigo.

My Z-Wave network is within Indigo and I would not want to move it to HA or try to run a second Z-Wave network via HA (if this is even do-able).

[killerdan56]

was for Ryan

[norcoscia]

Oh, sorry - now I see what you were saying... I have Z-Wave working in my back gate but it would be nice to have something with really long range support.

I'm not convinced the newer "longer range" Z-Wave devices really work at much longer distances - maybe when Jay and Matt get support into Indigo for Z-Wave (LR) it will be possible to link at longer distances....

[ryanbuckner]

I wrote a script that hits the YoLink API to get the status of the gates every 5 minutes and updates a few variables. Then I use a virtual device so it shows up in my device list. It also integrates with Alexa so my wife can check the gate status before letting out the dog.

Easier than writing a full plugin