Aeotec Door Window Sensor 7, Z-Wave Plus Enabled Zwave Hub Required, Gen7, White (Door/Window Sensor 7)

I bought the Aeotec Door & Window Sensor to use as a Mailbox Sensor, and it works very well. In order to get the Z-Wave signal to reach all the way to my mailbox, I also had to buy the Aeotec Range Extender 7. That’s a Z-Wave Repeater. I tried many other contact sensors, repeaters and WiFi Sensors, but the cooldown time was never fast enough. This contact sensor has SmartStart so it awakens from standby mode very fast. The Z-Wave signal also travels about twice as far as Zigbee. This makes the sensor a great choice if you’re planning on putting it far away from your home Hub. Also, this sensor has a tamper resistant shell, and you’re notified if anyone tampers with the sensor. The signal and sensor work so well that if I open the mailbox door about an inch, it registers that the contact sensor is open. I live in South Dakota, so I can tell you that this sensor operates in the rain and cold. I hope this helps anyone else who is looking for a good Mailbox Sensor.

I really miss the little triangular sensors Aeotec used to sell. They were so easy to pair, charge, and reset if needed. I had one of those go bad and had to be replaced. I got one of these thinking it would be just as good. It works great once you get it working. It's a pain to get it to pair, the pairing button is hard to reach when you have it mounted. It was hit-and-miss getting it paired. I use homeassistant and zwave-js-ui. I have over 70 zwave devices in my network. This little sensor was one of the most aggravating to get working. But now that it's paired, it works great. Just get ready to pull some hair out with this. But it will eventually work.

Used this to replace an old sensor. Installed and discovered in Home assistant easily, plug and play

The magnet does need to be quite close to the sensor for it to detect it. The door I installed the sensor on pushed the limit of this distance so it took a while to get it working properly.

I am reasonably tech savvy, and this thing was a joke to set up. I was about to throw in the towel, and decided to call the company for support. No phone #. So I just sent it back.

Works great

While the sensor itself works well, there are some issues with replacement batteries. The manual on Aeotec's website says this takes a "1/2 AA" battery. However, there are multiple battery types that are "1/2 AA". * ER14250 (3.6v) * CR14250 (3.0v) The photos on the product listing show an ER14250 battery. The paper manual that came with my most recent purchase says it takes the CR14250. I suspect Aeotec revised the hardware to change the battery type at some point, but did not create a new model number. Of the 4 sensors I own with the same model #, 1 of them works with the ER14250, and 3 of them only seem to work with CR14250

Battery that came with this has a date of 9/18/2020 ... Not surprised this is DOA. Hopefully the replacement will work. The replacement didn't work. Same battery expiration date. Amazon gave me a credit to buy fresh batteries. That worked! Getting this to connect with the Z-wave hub was a little challenging, but finally got it working.