Just took the Yolink plunge...

[TheA2Z]

So far so good. just wanted to give the forum my perspective.  Isy user since 2016 with over 70 insteon, zwave and matter (Smartthings) devices controlling/ detecting leaks, hot water recirc, lights, motion, Temp, humidity, fans, humidifiers, mailbox, shades, LEDs, alarms and AV.  You can say I am hooked...     Now adding Yolink.

Bought the speaker hub, 3 leak detectors, two temp Humidity sensors for the fridge and freezer, two outdoor contact switches(1 for Luba robot mower to ensure still in dock at night and 1 for my hot tub cover to ensure its closed when Im not home.  Got them all on Amazon for less than Yolink site and 1 day delivery.

Bought the PG3 Yolink node.  Install was very cut and dry on Eisy with PG3.  Works great.

Have been running insteon leak detectors for years but get bad intermittent reception on a couple of them.  Full strength signal with Yolink. Nice that they have a siren on the actual device as it makes it easy to determine where the link is quickly. I still have quite a few Insteon leaks but will only replace if they go bad.

Nice to have full strength signal in the fridge and freezer too.  Alerts setup in case fridge breaks or other outage.

Will continue to monitor but I have high hopes for Yolink due to increased signal strength and distance.  Not to mention uses regular AA batteries with some devices getting 2 to 3 year battery intervals.  I will definitely look to see Yolink options going forward vs zwave for any new devices.

[glacier991]

I, like you only discovered Yolink. I am very enthisiastic. I am watching closely as they add more "action" devices. 

It really has added increased functionality to my system. 

On my wish list is a door/window sensor with external contacts  connectors in something besides combat, all weather black

Edited February 26 by glacier991

[Ross]

My wish list is a wired Yolink temperature sensor where the cable is about 1 foot longer.  I bought 2 of them and tried to splice the cable, but the readings were off.  I would have then had to waterproof it anyway which I don't think would have been successful.  The cable appears to be proprietary; so, I don't think I can just use an off-the-shelf temp sensor cable.

Ross

 

[TheA2Z]

3 minutes ago, Ross said:

My wish list is a wired Yolink temperature sensor where the cable is about 1 foot longer.  I bought 2 of them and tried to splice the cable, but the readings were off.  I would have then had to waterproof it anyway which I don't think would have been successful.  The cable appears to be proprietary; so, I don't think I can just use an off-the-shelf temp sensor cable.

Ross

 

I would think that it would change the resistance of the cable skewing results.  Does it offer a temp offset in the sensor where you can calibrate it so it would be accurate with the longer cable?

I had to offset the temp of a Yolink temp sensor in my fridge as it was off a little.  Was able to do it in Yolink app.

[Ross]

1 minute ago, TheA2Z said:

I would think that it would change the resistance of the cable skewing results.  Does it offer a temp offset in the sensor where you can calibrate it so it would be accurate with the longer cable?

I had to offset the temp of a Yolink temp sensor in my fridge as it was off a little.  Was able to do it in Yolink app.

Thanks for the idea and I'll take a look to see if it's off on a consistent basis.  I'd still have to waterproof the whole thing and I don't trust my ability to achieve that.  I'd rather take my chances on soldering a longer cable.

Ross

 

[glacier991]

The long range of the Lora that Uplink offers has enabled real time temp monitoring from my cherry orchard, including temperature based calculations of critical importance... From about 1000 feet away... Not completely open air.

Priceless.

Edited February 28 by glacier991

[oberkc]

After I saw this thread, I looked harder at the range of devices available from YoLink and also decided to take the plunge.  The only trouble I had was trying to "copy" the various credentials from a phone app to a computer screen.  It is, apparently, easy to get a character wrong.  Initial device was the power strip and was happy to be able control each of the four outlets separately, along with the USB ports.  Anyhow, all seems to work well and I am going to try some motion sensors and see how well they trigger some of my motion programs.  I continue to get the dreaded "all on" problem and tend to blame the Insteon motion sensors for this.  I will replace a few of them with YoLinks and hope to reduce the house lighting up at the wrong time.

[TheA2Z]

6 minutes ago, oberkc said:

After I saw this thread, I looked harder at the range of devices available from YoLink and also decided to take the plunge.  The only trouble I had was trying to "copy" the various credentials from a phone app to a computer screen.  It is, apparently, easy to get a character wrong.  Initial device was the power strip and was happy to be able control each of the four outlets separately, along with the USB ports.  Anyhow, all seems to work well and I am going to try some motion sensors and see how well they trigger some of my motion programs.  I continue to get the dreaded "all on" problem and tend to blame the Insteon motion sensors for this.  I will replace a few of them with YoLinks and hope to reduce the house lighting up at the wrong time.

Nice.  I still have a zwave outlet strip from Zooz for a few years that works really good.  May look at yolink if it goes poof.

Be interested in how the motions do.  They make an outside version that I will need to try.  Right now I have motion floodlights on zwave switches.  I find motion floodlights to have alot of false alarms no matter how much I adjust the sensitivity.  I wonder if Yolink will be more concise.  It would also enable me to point the motion more strategically vs just where the floodlight is. 

Also want to try inside motions too as my zwave battery motions are just ok.

[oberkc]

4 hours ago, TheA2Z said:

I still have a zwave outlet strip from Zooz for a few years that works really good.

That device slipped past my attention.  I am sure it is good as well.  

 

4 hours ago, TheA2Z said:

They make an outside version that I will need to try

I am trying one inside and one outside motion sensor.  I intent to mount the indoor sensor on the ceiling.  My interest (besides the "all on" problem) is coverage area and sensitivity compared to the Insteon and zwave motion sensors I have tried.  I will also be interested in determining how the YoLink sensors behave in programs based on "control" and "status" conditions.

Edited February 29 by oberkc

[TheA2Z]

11 hours ago, oberkc said:

That device slipped past my attention.  I am sure it is good as well.  

 

I am trying one inside and one outside motion sensor.  I intent to mount the indoor sensor on the ceiling.  My interest (besides the "all on" problem) is coverage area and sensitivity compared to the Insteon and zwave motion sensors I have tried.  I will also be interested in determining how the YoLink sensors behave in programs based on "control" and "status" conditions.

Good plan.

Would love to hear how the motion analysis turns out.  Not a big fan of the insteon and zwave motions I have now.  I wish they offered a motion with humidity sensor too.  I have these zWave in bathrooms now.

So far yolink has been rock solid on the temp sensors in fridge and freezer and water leak detection.  Integration with eISY has been perfect too.  I will really look at going Yolink before zwave devices going forward.

Only drawback is Yolink does not have a local hub yet.  Everything goes to cloud.  Has not been a problem yet but connection with Eisy would stop working if internet was down.  Not an issue with me as I run a dual wan at the house since I need always on internet as I work from home.  Their new hub is supposed to offer it but still not released.

[paulbates]

2 hours ago, TheA2Z said:

So far yolink has been rock solid on the temp sensors in fridge and freezer and water leak detection.  Integration with eISY has been perfect too.

Same for me with the temp sensors... in fact after installing them I found my kitchen fridge & freezer temps were way off and both needed to be adjusted with the fridge's controls- i cold make changes and track with the app's graphs. The garage fridge door  stays open sometimes when grandkids go to get something and don't close it completely.. a simple ISY program alerts me.

The only challenge was my first use of the 8003 temp humidity in my bathroom to operate the vent fan when the humidity rises. Since humidity is relative, I couldn't put a raw value (like 45%) in the program as it moves around.

It took more elaborate ISY programming than I anticipated to capture the humidity and compare at every reading so I got the "slope" right...  Too low of a delta and just walking in, siting and breathing in the area starts the fan.... Too high a slope and doesn't start after the shower is used. The built in app's graph was really helpful  to look at usage of the room over days and figure it out. It works pretty good now.... the dwell between sensor reports makes it come on a little later than I prefer, but does the job.

FYI, in my conversations with yolink (scroll to my messages in this yolink forum)... local api is a software feature release slated for later this year, but not specifically associated with unreleased hub 3. Hub 3 brings a physical ET port and mobile data backup connectivity. Hub 3 does not come with Hub 2's text to speech feature, so I bought hub 2 and did not wait.

[oberkc]

9 hours ago, TheA2Z said:

Would love to hear how the motion analysis turns out.  Not a big fan of the insteon and zwave motions I have now. 

I have one indoor and one outdoor YoLink motion sensor.  They work great as program triggers so far.  While I have had less success with using z-wave motion sensors (or most other z-wave devices) as scene controllers, the YoLink motion sensor seems to be just fine as scene controller.  While not quite immediate as with all Insteon scenes, it is still pretty quick when using as a scene controller.  The motion sensor appears to have a temperature node but I have not tried using it in any program.

[Ross]

@paulbates "The only challenge was my first use of the 8003 temp humidity in my bathroom to operate the vent fan when the humidity rises. Since humidity is relative, I couldn't put a raw value (like 45%) in the program as it moves around."

 

Even though the relative humidity is relative, I would think you'd be safe running the vent when it gets above 85%.  That's considered "wet" in meteorological circles.  At 85%, the dew point is pretty close to the temperature resulting in surfaces "sweating" regardless of what the temperature actually is.  Possibly start there and wander down to your liking.

You could also use a dew point calculation (anything with a DP > 60), but putting that formula in a program is above my pay grade.  I have the formula if you want it.  However, it might be easier saying If temperature >70, then RH > x.  If temperature <70, then RH > y.

Ross

[paulbates]

@Ross...The "set it high" method does work for my upstairs laundry room fan which was the first project. The fan didn't always get used manually and a couple times the comment "the dryer smells funny". If the fan is used consistently it's not a problem. The dryer's operation will "punch through" upper temp and humidity values fairly quickly and it works. 

I tried this approach also in the bathroom and it doesn't work. the shower never makes it to a level that is consistently very high, or where it doesn't take a long time to do so. 

Empirical is a place where yolink shines. I looked at the yolink graph and downloaded the yolink data into a sheet and cacled a delta of 3.5% between readings based on when the shower was actually used. If current reading >3.5% of last reading, the shower was used. 

It works well now. They only comment for this application with the 8003 is there is dwell in the time that the sensor gets a reading, and when it decides to send it through the hub to the cloud... I can see the readings jump up on the sensor it self, but it can be a few minutes before it makes it back to the plugin to turn the switch on.

[TheA2Z]

This is why I use a Zwave motion, Temp and Humidity sensor in shower area of bathroom.  Using motion, fan comes on for 5 minutes if someone uses the bathroom and stays on for 5 min.

The motion gives the humidity sensor time to stabilize in that 5 minutes if using the shower and stays on until humidity drops to the desired level.

However, I dont find the zwave connection to eisy stable on these battery motions.  Sometimes I have to remove battery and reinstall to get it to reconnect.

That is why I would love yolink to create a motion with temp and humidity so I can mimic how I do it now.  Yes I could put a yolink motion and temp/humidity sensor but would prefer not to have so much hardware on ceiling and it makes it costlier.

[Panda88]

YoLink makes a temp/humidity sensor with display - I find it handy in the bathroom.  Naturally it is 2 devices if you also want motion 

What is the issue with doing relative changes - I believe you can transfer the device temperature/humidity to a variable (press the "play" top change input types for variable assignment) 

Edited March 4 by Panda88

[paulbates]

I use the 8003 in my bathroom. I do save to variables and compare when it changes to the previous reading to determine a delta rise to turn on the fan.

It's a bathroom that's open to the master suite so it doesn't always peg at a high value, like my laundry room does.

Works fine for when the shower is used. However some of the sensor updates can be a long time, and when the 8003 decides it's time to update, the Delta is that same 3% - 4% and the fan comes on at unexpected times, eg middle of the night. (I've based the values on looking at days of yolink logs)

It's related to my thermostat letting the house cool down at 10pm, and then the first cycle after that happens in the middle of the night.

I've updated the program so it doesn't run then and will see what happens

 

[Ross]

On 2/27/2024 at 7:16 AM, Ross said:

My wish list is a wired Yolink temperature sensor where the cable is about 1 foot longer.  I bought 2 of them and tried to splice the cable, but the readings were off.  I would have then had to waterproof it anyway which I don't think would have been successful.  The cable appears to be proprietary; so, I don't think I can just use an off-the-shelf temp sensor cable.

Ross

 

My wish was granted.  YoLink now sells a temperature/humidity sensor rugged enough for outdoors with a 5' cable.

They do suggest you don't subject the unit to too much of the elements (no direct sunlight and don't let it get too wet).