Screen Door Contact Sensor

I have a contact sensor on a screen door that fails to register a “closed” state at least once per week. As I travel for work, this is driving me absolutely batty.

Proximity - this is the closest of any of my sensors (3 contact, 1 motion), but the only one having routine issues.

Typical countermeasures - I have swapped the bridge between cameras, and also deleted/re-paired (most recently during the outage).

It happened again today when my dog walker showed up to take the pup out. Here I sit in an airport with yet another notification that the door has been open for 3+ minutes. Only once was it legit (when the magnet fell to the ground and became a cat toy).

I am curious if the nature of the screen door closer/damper is confusing the sensor. I adjusted the rate such that the door basically slams shut, but obviously to no avail. Has anyone else seen this and successfully remedied?

If the screen door and/or frame is made of metal it can interfere with the sensor. The thicker foam adhesive backing on the sensor is supposed to help with that by providing some clearance between the sensor and metal, but it’s not always successful. I have a metal door with a word frame, so I mounted the sensor on the wood frame and put the magnet on the cylinder so it meets the sensor. That way I don’t have the two parts of the sensor slamming together every time the door shuts and the metal door isn’t a problem.

If it’s not a metal door/frame then it’s possible that sensor is defective. You can easily remove the sensor part from the back cover and swap it with another sensor to see if the issue follows the sensor or stays in that location. That might tell you for sure if you need to contact support or just rework the placement on that door.

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Both the door and frame are metal - aluminum, I believe, since I do not recall any attraction when placing the magnet.

Like many others, I have another sensor positioned on my garage door (hinge method illustrated in several forum threads). Being in the middle of a steel panel seems like a much worse case, yet it has experienced no issues.

98% of the time, the screen door sensor operates exactly as expected. The indicator light flashes as the door opens about an inch, so the range of sensing appears to be normal.

My brain is still stuck on the idea that the closing motion with pneumatic damper can allow the sensor to briefly dwell near the sensing transition range. I get the feeling that this dithering between open/closed yields either a missed or extra signal.

It’s certainly possible. One of my window sensors got stuck in the opposite state where it reported closed when it was open and open when it was closed. I got it to flip back by quickly opening and closing the window a tiny bit until it missed one close event and got back in sync.

If you can’t adjust the closing motion perfectly you could also try using a more powerful neodymium magnet to expand the magnetic field and perhaps eliminate that transition zone.

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It is good to know that someone else has seen the sensor confuse states. I appreciate your response. Swapping the magnet is the easiest next step, as I happen to have a small collection from other projects.

If that doesn’t quite do the trick, I will try moving the sensor closer to the hinge such that it reduces the total amount of travel. This would be a last resort, as it changes the nature of the sensing - from (“closed” / “at least somewhat open”) to (“not fully open” / “fully open”).

I briefly tried the stronger magnet. That is when I noticed double blinks when the door closed. I tweaked the latch mechanism to minimize the bounce as the door closed. No luck.

I was about to try changing the location of the sensor and magnet when all sensors suddenly showed offline yet again. Yes, I remove/replace the bridge weekly, which is an annoying chore.

I am one step away from the dude that posted the “I’m done” rant. This is not making my life easier or better. The sensors seem half-baked, at best.

The cams are only slightly better than the old Foscam they replaced. I am not sure that I look forward to trying the plugs. I am going off on some tangents, but frustrated.

Metal is a senor’s enemy, and a screen cage is how we used to block all signals in our radio engineering lab.

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I finally tuned the door close rate, such that I have not seen the screen door fail to register over the past 2 weeks. Last night, I get a notification that the garage door is left open, but my wife tells me it is fake news. Taking a closer look, the sensors went offline. The bridge is not even recognized by the camera via the app.

Last try, will be to try the higher capacity USB charger/supply. Sensors that require texting my wife to confirm are negative value.

Off-line again, while I am in the middle of a work trip. I have no plan on wasting a smart outlet on resetting the cam and bridge. Before I start a ticket for support, any other ideas.

If the bridge isn’t recognized by the cam, then I’d try a restart of the camera that has the bridge installed in it (you can do that from the individual camera’s settings). Regardless of that result, you should probably open a ticket. I don’t see where you say what camera you have, but a V2 should just work as far as the bridge being seen by the camera goes. I’ve heard some people say a Pan needs more current to run the bridge & the Pan motor, though.

I started with the bridge on a V2, but moved it to a Pan Cam to be in a more central location. Neither worked particularly well. The false sensing is annoying, but going completely offline is unacceptable. The motion sensor in the basement was triggering the Wyze plug to turn on the lights. Now here I am in the middle of a biz trip with my wife in the dark . Nice. I will try a support ticket before dumping the whole sense package.