Hello everyone! We're building a house and it will have an ELK M1G security system along with a homeseer automation system (I'm an engineer, so the tech is pretty easy for me) like our current home does. I want to instrument the the toilets, and the laundry and the sinks with flood sensors (we'd have issues in the past with leaks), and the ELK system is wired to control water shutoff valves that can cut off house water as well as discrete valves on the washing machines, etc...
I am trying to decide between using the Trident flood sensor that can interface to the Elk system: http://resolutionproducts.com/products/environmental/trident/, or the Fibaro Zwave flood sensor: https://www.fibaro.com/en/products/flood-sensor/ .
The thing that is nice about the trident is that it has a 10 year battery life, and can interface nicely to the security system to turn the valves on etc... The sensor has nice probes, and communicates with the panel using either the GE or Honeywell wireless protocols. It's pretty cheap, and looks nice, plus has a nice wall mount bracket so I can mount it to the wall so it doesn't get moved around when people clean around it. It also has a temp sensor that alarms when it gets too cold or two hot.
The bad thing about it is that it's a one way sensor, and if it can't talk to the panel I'll get an alert after awhile, but not right away so I can correlate it with some event.
The fibaro sensor is also pretty nice. It is battery powered and can go approx 2 years before a swap, but can be connected to DC so the battery just becomes backup. It too has a nice set of pin sensors to sense water like the trident, but has a pair of contacts for an additional water sensor like a leak rope. I have tried this with the honeywell leak rope that comes with their cheap alarms, and it works really well with that.
The Fibaro also has a pair of contacts that can be hardwired to an alarm system, in addition to talking Zwave to homeseer. This is nice because if I put it under the laundry machines etc..., the mesh network should always have a path to talk to it, whereas the trident depends on a one way path to the wireless receiver for the M1G (though I can add more wireless interfaces to help make sure sensors will be able to communicate). The zwave capability is nice is that I can interrogate it easily, and if it gets moved around (it can alarm on that), I can tell that's happened and make sure it's in the right place. And the homeseer system can tell the Elk to turn off the water if it's detected.
The downsides of the fibaro are the shorter battery life, and the lack of a wall mount to keep it tethered in one spot. I could extend a zone along with DC power from the elk in something like an RJ11 connector on the wall near the sensor and wire it into the alarm system, but I'm not sure how that would look next to a toilet etc...
What do folks think would be best for my application?
thx
mike
I am trying to decide between using the Trident flood sensor that can interface to the Elk system: http://resolutionproducts.com/products/environmental/trident/, or the Fibaro Zwave flood sensor: https://www.fibaro.com/en/products/flood-sensor/ .
The thing that is nice about the trident is that it has a 10 year battery life, and can interface nicely to the security system to turn the valves on etc... The sensor has nice probes, and communicates with the panel using either the GE or Honeywell wireless protocols. It's pretty cheap, and looks nice, plus has a nice wall mount bracket so I can mount it to the wall so it doesn't get moved around when people clean around it. It also has a temp sensor that alarms when it gets too cold or two hot.
The bad thing about it is that it's a one way sensor, and if it can't talk to the panel I'll get an alert after awhile, but not right away so I can correlate it with some event.
The fibaro sensor is also pretty nice. It is battery powered and can go approx 2 years before a swap, but can be connected to DC so the battery just becomes backup. It too has a nice set of pin sensors to sense water like the trident, but has a pair of contacts for an additional water sensor like a leak rope. I have tried this with the honeywell leak rope that comes with their cheap alarms, and it works really well with that.
The Fibaro also has a pair of contacts that can be hardwired to an alarm system, in addition to talking Zwave to homeseer. This is nice because if I put it under the laundry machines etc..., the mesh network should always have a path to talk to it, whereas the trident depends on a one way path to the wireless receiver for the M1G (though I can add more wireless interfaces to help make sure sensors will be able to communicate). The zwave capability is nice is that I can interrogate it easily, and if it gets moved around (it can alarm on that), I can tell that's happened and make sure it's in the right place. And the homeseer system can tell the Elk to turn off the water if it's detected.
The downsides of the fibaro are the shorter battery life, and the lack of a wall mount to keep it tethered in one spot. I could extend a zone along with DC power from the elk in something like an RJ11 connector on the wall near the sensor and wire it into the alarm system, but I'm not sure how that would look next to a toilet etc...
What do folks think would be best for my application?
thx
mike
