Frustrated with sensors

Is anyone continuing to see issues with sensors? I had a sensor which completely stopped showing up as online, had a chat with Wyze CS and they promptly shipped me a new one which works fine. Now a bunch of other sensors have gone bad, I have 2 contact sensors and a motion sensor that just went offline and no amount of resetting wyze camera works. Peeling off the contact sensors and manually resetting them as a debug step is a major pain since I have attached them in places that are not the easiest to reach. No more Wzye products for me!

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I just posted a similar issue. I really want a base station for sensors. They are my most troublesome Wyze products. Frustrating.

More sales, more money… Invest in a better server package so we don’t have to experience these un-announced outages

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I had the same frustration. Now instead of using new adhesive tape…

I attach the sensors using velcro pads.

Easy to pull away, and then put back in place.

Chas

A base station for sensors is already doable.

Just install the (free) Home Assistant package as a VM or on a RasPi and install the great Wyzesense-ha HACS integration by Kevin Vincent. Once configured, all of your Wyze motion and door/window sensors will report to HA, instead of the insecure Wyze cloud. You just plug the single USB device into your Pi or VM machine, and the sensors will report directly to it instead of the cloud and app.

More private and secure, since your data never leaves your LAN, and without that horribly invasive Wyze app. Plus you can use the open / close / motion alerts to trigger events, so it is much more powerful than the old Wyze ecosystem. I use the sensors to turn on lights in closets, to turn on certain house lights (if it is between certain hours), and to have Alexa announce certain events (mail delivery, certain doors and windows opening, basement freezer door being left open longer than one minute, etc). It is easy to get carried away and automate things that just plain don’t need it, when sensors only cost $5-$6.

I haven’t had any trouble with them becoming unpaired from the system, but some of the sensors have become unreliable and had to be replaced. And since automation has gone from being a fun way to pass time during quarantine to something my family relies on, I am replacing the Wyze sensors with more reliable Zigbee sensors by attrition.

Wyze sensors are fine for the money, if you use them without that awful app that Hoovers up personal data, but if you are serious about home automation, you will likely want to graduate to more reliable devices. They aren’t much more expensive to buy (~$15 or half if you DIY).

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This is great! I will work on doing this this week.

I don’t have the same complaints and worries for Wyze like you do, but sensor delays and miscues are a top complaint for me. If this works as expected, I’ll be able to make some improvements. Thanks again.

Oh and how do you get Alexa to announce things?

Home Assistant has an Alexa media player integration and there is a Home Assistant Alexa skill. Both can be used to bring Alexa into the HA environment. Which you use depends upon your comfort writing animations, but using the HA Alexa skill is as easy as using the Alexa app menu to create any other routine. You install the skill and tell Alexa to discover new devices, and it finds all of the Wyze gadgets that you have set up in the Wyze integration, and anything else that you might have set up in HA. You can also purchase cheap (non-Wyze) WiFi enabled smart plugs, switches, bulbs etc and flash them with an open source firmware like Tasmota or ESPHome, and integrate those directly into HA. This allows you to have any sort of smart devices in your home that do not talk to any cloud, not Tuya, Wyze or any other. These also integrate into Alexa along with the Wyze sensors.

The overall increased reliability, security and privacy are great. If you haven’t already, Google the Home Assistant support forum. Any HA specific questions are easy to answer there, they are a fantastic, helpful and huge community.

I am not a big fan of the obvious privacy liabilities associated with Alexa either, but Amazon have a history of being pretty solid, and Wyze don’t. But if you ever become concerned about this too, there are alternative voice assistants like Alexa that remain entirely local. This is a bit off topic, but I thought it worth mentioning.

Have fun and good luck!

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