- Looking for outdoor window and door sensors
to improve your smarthome automation setup?
Today I'm going to review and set up
the Strips by Sensative invisible door and window sensor.
Stay tuned.
(futuristic music)
- Hi again, John Stone, the DIY Smart Home Guy
here to let you know about a door and window sensor
that's relatively new to the smarthome world.
The Strip sensor is a battery-operated Z-Wave Plus device
that has an incredibly low profile
and can be used indoors or out.
Most battery-operated sensors are big and bulky,
they're difficult to conceal,
and the battery life is usually one year or less
but not the Sensative strip.
Not only are they ultra thin,
they have a 10-year battery life, 10 years!
It's important to note
that the strip relies on a magnetic sensor.
This means that you can only mount it on wood,
aluminum, or plastic frames.
My first choice was to put it outside on my gate,
but since it's a wrought-iron gate, that's off the table.
The sensor communicates to your hub
using the Z-Wave Plus protocol.
One advantage to this is that the strip
can be an extended distance from the hub
since Z-Wave allows you to use other power devices
like switches and lights as repeaters.
The manufacturer does warn
that using repeaters will reduce the battery life,
but who the hell knows what that means?
Is it like 50%, 10%? I don't know.
At the time I recorded this video,
he Sensative strip is not supported
by the Wink Hub for the Wink Hub 2,
however the Sensative strip does work
with FIBARO Home Center 2, FIBARO Home Center Lite,
VeraEdge, SmartThings, and a few others.
So I'm gonna go ahead and connect this
into my SmartThings hub.
Let's go to the lab and get this thing installed.
When you first pull the Sensative strip out of the box,
it's going to have this square magnet on one side,
and it's going to have this round magnet on the other side.
The round magnet will be attached to the round end.
It will be taped on there.
In that square magnet
will be taped on the square edge right here.
What you are going to do inside your app
is you're going to do the Add a Thing,
then you're going to do an Add Device Manully,
and we're gonna scroll down here to
Sensors,
and then we're going to have open close sensors.
At the bottom of that list
we are going to have Sensative Strips.
Once you have this on the screen,
you're going to hit the Connect Now.
It's going to be looking for devices.
You're going to pull both of those magnets off,
and it's automatically going to go into pairing mode
and it should get picked up
right into your SmartThings hub.
Right here I have this, called Open Window.
Now it's saying that my sensor's open.
When this contact plate,
so nice to have a logo on it and everything.
When that covers up the logo on the strip,
you'll see that on the app, that went to Closed.
Go to open, Open. It goes pretty fast.
Then you're gonna go to closed, and it's as simple as that.
Now the other thing I want to point out, as we said,
that you have that 1.4 centimeters,
so let's look at that in the app.
I'm gonna put that magnet right there,
maybe just about a centimeter away,
and you'll see there in the app it went to Closed.
You do have a little bit of distance,
if you come back let's go maybe about half an inch there,
still closed.
Were gonna come off their.
I'm almost an inch away still showing Closed.
And then we go over there to Open,
as they do still have a little bit of play with.
If I try to go to through my finger,
if you have too much in the way,
it's going to be a little sketchy,
but you can see there it went back to Closed,
so we're okay there.
Now that this is set up in the app,
I'm going to mount this into my window.
The kit comes with this little towelette
that you can use to clean the surfaces
that you plan to adhere the strip and the magnet to.
Make sure that the surface is very clean,
and that you have the necessary clearances,
and I recommend that you do a few test fits
before you mount the sensor.
Okay, so we are gonna take our towelette here
and I'm gonna put that strip on the side of the window.
Let's get that all nice and clean.
Yucky crap.
I'm gonna put the magnet on the inside here,
so get that all nice and clean.
All right, I've got this stop.
I'm gonna put that magnet
right here on that stop.
All right.
I'm gonna put that in.
I'm gonna slide it all the way to the bottom,
so I have no worries about where that's gonna end up.
There it is down at the bottom of that jam there.
Remember,
this is what I'm trying to make contact with right here.
That's gonna be about an inch off the bottom of that.
I'm gonna come about an inch off that to jam.
Right in the center.
There's that.
I should be able to close this window, open that up.
Right now on the iPhone,
you see that that office window open
inside my SmartThings app.
We are just going to go ahead and give that window a close,
and the app is to Closed.
That's just the way it should be.
Come back to open,
and my window is open.
Now that this is installed,
I want to connect this into Stringify
so that I can do some other cool things.
I installed this in my office window
because I'm always forgetting to close the darn thing.
I like to open the window
and get some airflow through the house.
The problem is this,
if the AC or the heater comes on while the window is open,
I'm just dumping money out the window.
My solution is this,
when the window is open,
I'm going to trigger a Stringify flow
to turn on my TV backlight and make it green.
At the same time,
it'll automatically place my Ecobee 3 smart thermostat
to a setting that widens my
high and low comfort setting range
which will prevent the thermostat
from being too sensitive.
This way I'll have a constant reminder
that the window is open with the green light
and not have the HVAC system cycling on and off
while the windows are open.
On my TV backlight at sunset,
what happens is this Strigify flow automatically triggers
and it cycles my lights every 10 minutes
through these various color changes.
This is kind of a nice sunset, sun is going down,
let's cycle through the various colors of the sky
around the time of the sunset.
It will automatically cycle ultimately through to a blue
and the blue state is where the television basically stays
during the evening while we're watching TV,
so now when we open the window,
that's gonna turn that backlight to green,
and when the window's closed,
it's going to resume it back to the blue.
On top of turning that TV backlight green,
you can also see that my thermostat
has switched into Away mode,
and when the window closes,
you can see that it returns to the At Home mode.
As I've mentioned before,
one cool thing about creating your custom DIY smarthome
is that you can save on energy costs.
This solution will help me achieve that goal.
Now, here's the fun part about the setup.
The Sensative Strip is connected to my SmartThings hub.
When the sensor's triggered,
it sends a notification over Stringify.
Stringify, in turn, runs a flow that controls the lights
that are controlled by my Wink Hub.
It's just like the Sensative Strip
is giving commands directly to my Ecobee 3.
The power Stringify is this,
my home automation is now able to control
my heating and cooling system
based on if I have windows open or closed.
This is a much better level of control
than what can be achieved through simple schedules
and home-versus-away detection.
I can also control the lights to provide a subtle indication
of how the house is configured.
Thanks for watching.
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and don't forget to click Like.
Over here are a couple other videos that you might enjoy.
For more reviews, tips, and DIY videos, visit AZHB.com.
Thanks to all of you that already follow me
over on Facebook, or Twitter, Pull
or @DIYSmartHomeGuy.
Until next time, cheers.
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