Anybody used LoRa devices?

I'm thinking of using some LoRa devices in places where I just need to trigger Alexa routines. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084X9D9HY/ref=emc_b_5_t?th=1
Has anybody tried these devices? The long range and long battery life look very appealing.

Been testing a pair of 1 Watt (not FCC approved) LoRa transeivers now for about a year with no issues.  
 
Reviews are good on the devices you are looking at on Amazon.

Problem is no integration support. I tried IFTTT since it works with that and IFTTT is always so hyped. I was shocked at how limited that platform is! Single trigger, and if you want a condition or a filter you have to resort to writing code snippets. Also most devices expose a very limited amount of functionality to IFTTT so it seems pretty useless which in turn makes the Yolink LoRa stuff useless.

I see rumblings on Google searches regarding Tasmota firmware updating of these devices to utilize MQTT.  
 
YoLink has posted their APIs to tinker with.
 
Personally here all of the automation boxes are in the basement.  RF does OK there.  LoRa would do better.

I mostly just wanted them for cheap wireless leak sensors. Need an announcement when the sensor is tripped (easy) and then some status announcements in case I'm not around when the original trip happens (not so easy). Basic logic is: "If the time is 4PM OR 6 PM OR 8PM AND leak sensor X is in alarm then announce water detected at location X." (Not so easy) Things like IFTTT or Alexa routines just don't support AND/OR logic in the trigger and there isn't a clean way to interface YoLink directly to ISY or Homeseer to manage the logic there.
 
I can't get wire to the 10 locations where I need sensors. I tried Insteon leak sensors but they were not reliable. Elk does not make a wireless leak sensor to interface direct to the M1. I don't have wired ZWave or Zigbee meshes built out to provide a path to all of the wireless locations I need so I can't go direct to homeseer that way.Maybe a Yolink sensor could trigger an Alexa routine to make an announcement and then trip a virtual device that Homeseer could track to do the follow-up announcement logic?

I noticed they make a siren. Maybe hack that to trigger an Elk sensitive relay, then u would have a contact closure (though you would not know the specific sensor that tripped)

Curious why so many leak sensors?
 
Here have only installed wired water detection sensor near basement sump pump / ejection wells and hot water heater.  They are all adjacent to each other. Also installed wired shut off at main.
 
No issues ever here with bathrooms and sinks.  All copper plumbing in the last 3 homes.
 
I did install a water pressure booster in one home which worked well. 
 
Neighbor installed same one and cranked up the pressure of water in his home to some 80-90 PSI which blew out most of his newly installed plumbing a few years back.  In two of the neighbors home their children have clogged the 2nd floor toilets with some major leaking to the floor underneath causing a few thousand dollars damage to the ceilings below the toilets.  One neighbor replaced all of their toilets with power toilets.

You might look into these:
https://store.wirelesstag.net/products/wireless-water-moisture-sensor-2-0
 
I've got a couple of their temp sensors deployed. Does what its supposed to, but I have not yet tried any 3rd party integrations. 
 
http://www.mytaglist.com/apidoc.html
https://store.wirelesstag.net/pages/support
 

pete_c said:

Curious why so many leak sensors?
 
Here have only installed wired water detection sensor near basement sump pump / ejection wells and hot water heater.  They are all adjacent to each other. Also installed wired shut off at main.
 
No issues ever here with bathrooms and sinks.  All copper plumbing in the last 3 homes.
 
I did install a water pressure booster in one home which worked well. 
 
Neighbor installed same one and cranked up the pressure of water in his home to some 80-90 PSI which blew out most of his newly installed plumbing a few years back.  In two of the neighbors home their children have clogged the 2nd floor toilets with some major leaking to the floor underneath causing a few thousand dollars damage to the ceilings below the toilets.  One neighbor replaced all of their toilets with power toilets.

Click to expand...

I have had toilet tanks and shut off valves start dripping on me as well as drain failures in the kitchen where the disposer connects. I have 8 toilets and 2 sinks I would like to monitor. Also near each of my 2 water heaters, and the water softner.

sionxct said:

You might look into these:
https://store.wirelesstag.net/products/wireless-water-moisture-sensor-2-0
 
I've got a couple of their temp sensors deployed. Does what its supposed to, but I have not yet tried any 3rd party integrations. 
 
http://www.mytaglist.com/apidoc.html
https://store.wirelesstag.net/pages/support

Click to expand...

Third party integrations are key if I am going to do anything useful with the input.

BraveSirRobbin said:

I noticed they make a siren. Maybe hack that to trigger an Elk sensitive relay, then u would have a contact closure (though you would not know the specific sensor that tripped)

Click to expand...

Thought about that. It has LEDs also so I could probably cut the piezo sounder out and use the LEDs to hack a trigger.

upstatemike said:

I mostly just wanted them for cheap wireless leak sensors.

Click to expand...

When I had an Elk with a GE receiver, I used GE door transmitters with a printed board sensor for a sump pump and a dishwasher. They were quite reliable, perhaps too sensitive even, a spider could trigger the outdoor one.  You can do the same with a Honewell transmitter.

vc1234 said:

When I had an Elk with a GE receiver, I used GE door transmitters with a printed board sensor for a sump pump and a dishwasher. They were quite reliable, perhaps too sensitive even, a spider could trigger the outdoor one.  You can do the same with a Honewell transmitter.

Click to expand...

Looking at that option both with Elk and with Insteon. The advantage for me with Insteon is that there are enough wired devices so I have wireless coverage anywhere in the house. The Insteon leak sensors are not reliable but the door sensors seem to be OK based on tests I have been doing the last couple of days.

I think my biggest frustration in evaluating wireless devices is the concept of "trigger on state change" vs "monitor current state". A state change message back to a controller is fine for turning on a light or triggering an alarm but is all but useless for conditional automation logic. For example, if it starts raining it does me no good to know that the window was opened at 8AM, I need to know if it is still open in order to determne if a warning needs to be spoken. Having the controller "guess" what the current state is based on the last trigger it saw is not reliable because there are too many factors that could get the controller out of sync with reality. In testing Insteon sensors for example I found if the sensor is opened and closed several times rapidly (as can happen if the window sticks a little while being closed) the last valid message recieved by the controller might not match the final state of the contact.
 
I know that battery devices can't stay active constantly to be queried by a contrllor because of the power draw but they should report their current state using some sort of heartbeat transmission at least once per minute so that everything can correct itself and get back in sync. It's turning out to be a real pain trying to figure out which technologies support that level of reporting and which ones just blast out a state change message and then go silent until the next change. I would say 99.999999% (slight exageration) of my automation needs require me to know the current state of something at a particular point in time with absolute accuracy rather than knowing exactly when that device changed states.

upstatemike said:

I know that battery devices can't stay active constantly to be queried by a contrllor because of the power draw but they should report their current state using some sort of heartbeat transmission at least once per minute so that everything can correct itself and get back in sync. It's turning out to be a real pain trying to figure out which technologies support that level of reporting and which ones just blast out a state change message and then go silent until the next change. I would say 99.999999% (slight exageration) of my automation needs require me to know the current state of something at a particular point in time with absolute accuracy rather than knowing exactly when that device changed states.

Click to expand...

There are two kinds of Honeywell/GE wireless sensors, and probably other brands. A motion sensor sends a signal when motion is detected and then sleeps for 3min.  A door sensor is triggered/cleared similarly to a wired sensor (a signal is sent when it's violated and another one is sent when it's cleared), so it does reflect the state change both times as opposed to a motion detector.