How to use remote sensor (and issue w/SmartThings DH)

[joecool]

Just got my first HS-LS100+. Registering it w/my ST hub and updating the DH was easy. Issue w/the DH is that on the main screen it reports the temps as XX.XB0. What is B0? How about reporting this as degrees Fahrenheit? (I assume that's what it is, just like to see the display corrected).

Now to my question: how exactly is one supposed to use the remote sensor? Because of the shape and weight I don't see it being very useful - it wants to lie flat, in which case the sensor pins will be maybe 1/8 - 1/4 inch off the ground. That's not useful - I want the pins to be in direct contact w/the ground so they pick up a leak as quickly as possible. Honestly I'm just kind of scratching my head on this design. Can anyone enlighten me about how to use this?

[joecool]

Hmm. This is not good. So far today it's gone unavailable twice. This is w/in the first 24 hours of owning it. This obviously needs to be WAY more reliable to be useful for leak detection. Anybody know if this is solvable, or is it just not a reliable device?

[sparkman]

Does HomeSeer provide the DH for this for SmartThings? If so, I would email support@homeseer.com. Typically remote sensors like that are mounted along a wall with the prongs touching the ground. There are other leak detectors that have similar prongs. When you say it's not available, what do you mean? It's a battery powered device and only wakes up when needed due to a leak, or because you've set parameters to have it wake itself up on occasion.

[joecool]

The DH is direct from HomeSeer. I guess that makes sense for the remote sensor. By unavailable I mean the ST app reports it as unavailable. Maybe this makes sense given your description of how it operates?

[sparkman]

I don't have ST, but if it's proactively trying to talk to a battery powered device while it is sleeping, then it may report as not available. This could be potentially be an issue with the DH as well as perhaps ST does not recognize it as a battery powered device.

[joecool]

There are a lot of battery powered devices in the ST universe - lots of motion sensors, door open/closed sensors, etc. So ST obviously has figured out how to track this. But maybe as you say there is something about the DH that it's set up correctly so ST doesn't know what it's dealing with. Interestingly the senor just showed up available again. I am going to set the temp sensor to report hourly. If it does this consistently but shows unavailable between reports I'd guess you are right and it's working correctly.