Which temperature and humidity sensor for the Home Assistant? The sensor shown here features tiny dimensions of 40x13x26 mm and is powered by a single CR2032 battery. It normally works with the Tuya/Smart Life gateway, but Zigbee2MQTT also supports it. Here I will briefly test it, show its pairing and explore its internals.
The kit comes with the sensor, a thin strip of double-sided tape and tiny mounting screws. There's also a battery - suitably protected with an insulating strip so that the sensor doesn't discharge it in transit.
It's time to test pairing it with Home Assistant. Home Assistant already has a USB-connected CC2531 transceiver and the Zigbee2MQTT plugin configured. We put the device into pairing mode:
We make sure that we allow new devices to be attached in HA. After a while, the gadget will be recognised:
Home Assistant sees the sensor as ZSS-S01-TH, basic type TS0201.
The device is battery powered, so it is not a Zigbee router.
Battery level (percentage and voltage), temperature, humidity and connection quality are available in the data.
There is a calibration in the specific settings - measurements can be adjusted.
HA panel view:
Example charts:
Undoubtedly, the graphs show that the device saves battery, but this is more of a plus....
All that remains is to look inside - out of sheer curiosity.
The battery pack directly powers the ZTU module from Tuya.
The ZTU is a 32-bit Zigbee radio module from Tuya, it is based on the TLSR8258F1KAT32 chip, has 1 MB Flash memory and 64 KB RAM.
The device uses a sensor signed as the SH40. This is probably the familiar SHT40 offering communication via I2C.
In summary , this was another really tiny Zigbee protocol compliant gadget. Pairing with the HA is trivial, you don't even need to open the case. I definitely recommend this - it's hardly worth going down the Wi-Fi route for battery-powered sensors. Here you get everything you need and you don't even need to change the firmware.
Which battery-powered sensors do you use?
Feel free to discuss.
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