ZWave: window/door sensors

The first ZWave devices I bought one year ago were window/door sensors. I started with 3x Everspring SM 103 sensors as I got a bulk price for them. Initially everything worked fine, until a few months:

  • One sensor, attached to a window, suddenly stopped communicating with the controller; changed the batteries, re-included into the network, did a reset, but still the same. Even at 30 cm from the controller, sometimes it takes a few seconds (to a minute) to wake up and send an event. Weirdly after it wake up a first time, it seems to work fine for a few... but after some time, it "lags" again. Finally, I replaced it with the "test" spare sensor I had.
  • Second sensor, the door sensor... Ok, that one was badly treated: since the base was too big to be installed next to the door, I installed the base on the door and the magnet on the side. Clearly a bad idea. This probably did not help. Recently this one also started to "miss" wake ups, but worse, it also missed sending events when the door got open :-(

From this I had to try something else and finally I ordered a window/door sensor from Fibaro, the "FGK 101".

The difference in size is huge... I could install the sensor base on the door side and the magnet on the door.


So far the sensor works well. Only noticed what seems to be a small difference in the wake up timings, especially after opening/closing the door. Will see how it goes over time... hopefully better than the others.

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