Fix Aeotec Water Sensor Not Working with Home Assistant

Smart Home

Update 2022-05-12: This was originally posted when the legacy Z-Wave integration was in use. Using Z-Wave JS I believe you will need to enable the parameter 121 setting for “On Trigger: Send Binary Sensor Report” is toggled on as shown in the next screenshot. The original article follows the screenshot:

I picked up a couple of Aeotec Z-Wave Water/Flood Sensors for my water heater and under the kitchen sink to add to my Home Assistant instance. We recently had a leak under the kitchen sink and didn’t catch it before it damaged the cabinet, so I was motivated to make sure we receive a notification via Home Assistant the next time a leak happens.

I included the sensors into my Z-Wave network and everything showed up correctly. However when I tested each sensor in a cup of water I wasn’t seeing the binary_sensor change state to indicate that water was detected. After a brief search I came across this helpful post on the community forums: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/how-to-aeotec-dsb45-water-sensor/51704.

This is one of those times when Z-wave shows its complexity beyond the typical “plug and play” setup for most devices. The sensor must be configured to send the proper report type for Home Assistant to work with it.

To do this, in Home Assistant go to the Configuration > Z-Wave screen and select the water sensor from the Nodes dropdown.

Select the water sensor from the Nodes dropdown; you may need to click on the question mark for the Z-Wave Network Management section in order to view the first option in the Nodes dropdown.

Then scroll to the Node config options section, choose “121: Report Type to Send” as the Config parameter, and enter “4113” as the value.

On the water sensor, make sure you press the “Z-Wave” button to wake it (don’t use the “Wake” button) and then click the “Set Config Parameter” button on the Z-Wave screen in Home Assistant to save the change to the sensor.

Now the sensor should be reporting the state change correctly for the binary_sensor entity it created. I would also recommend using the Customization screen to set the binary_sensor‘s device class to “moisture” if it isn’t already so the icon in the UI uses a water droplet and the state says “Dry” or “Wet” instead of “Off” and “On.”

With the sensors working, I created a simple automation that sends me a notification via the Home Assistant iOS app whenever one of the sensors changes to “on.” In the future I’ll probably look into installing a Z-Wave water shut-off valve so I can stop leaks when I’m not at home.


Comments

  1. Do you have any issues with the buzzer going off? I've had mine go off like 1 time and then won't go again. I have a setting of "set the alarm time for the buzzer" but don't know how to set it. It may have something to do with the buzzer not going off for a period of time after it's been last triggered?

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