PSA: Going all-in on wireless sensors cost me a service call nightmare

Switched a whole apartment complex in Cleveland to wireless sensors 2 years ago to save on labor, and now I'm replacing batteries in 40 units every 8 months. The old wired system barely needed touching for a decade, but everyone said wireless was the future. Has anyone else seen a bigger drop in reliability than they expected with these?

2 comments

2 Comments

claire6426d agoTop Commenter

You said "barely needed touching for a decade" and that's probably the part that's getting you. Most of those old wired systems weren't actually bulletproof, they just had way less stuff to break. The sensors were simpler and the wiring itself was the main connection. With wireless, every single sensor has its own little computer and battery that can fail, plus the hub and the radio interference from all those apartments. I'm in a smallish building in Cincinnati, same thing happened to me. We switched to wireless for half the units and now I'm swapping batteries every 9 months like clockwork, plus I had to buy a signal booster because the range was crap through the concrete floors. The old wired stuff just worked because it had one power source and no moving parts.

the_tessa26d ago

My building had that exact same wired setup from the 80s and the only time it broke was when a maintenance guy accidentally cut a wire during a renovation. We switched to wireless three years ago and I'm already on my second hub because the first one just died randomly one afternoon. Now every few months one of the door sensors stops talking to the hub and I have to climb a ladder to pair it again.