Blodgett IoT Upgrades & Extensions ~ Zooz Gear @ Home 08Mar25

I wanted to add especially flood sensors to the Blodgett IoT network, for the dishwasher on the main floor and the H2O heater on the lower level. The Fibaro stuff I've used before is old, ZWave 400, and expensive. I discovered a new vendor, Zooz, with a bunch of good sensors, strong support for SmartThings, and all having the most modern and secure ZWave 800 chips/support alongside their older versions. They are a tad expensive on Amazon but I bought it all from Smartest House for 60% of that. Their stuff is not only modern & secure but very well designed & packaged... and all the stuff is absolutely tiny with long lasting & larger batteries. Great job product design. So, I not only got the moisture sensors but a temp sensor, an open/close sensor, and a motion sensor, for next steps in other Blodgett situations, and to test their range. My experience thus far on these sensors is 5 stars for size, user manual, and operation (including "add device"). The product part of this company is well run. Of course the biggest issue with all this automation, whomever the vendor, is batteries ~ sure every sensor provides alerts when they are low on battery but do you have the right one and do you even remember where you put the sensor? With 2 houses I tend to use a lot of this stuff, so the tasks are doubled, but I need the insights. I appreciate the progress and compatibility, even though I know Samsung knows which room I am in and when, and at what temperature I take a spa and when, but I need the insights.

I get appropriate and timely alerts from my IoT installs and despite my general paranoia, my system is not harvesting bitcoin against my knowledge, nor sending data to China, nor participating in ganged robotic DoS attacks ~ it is just doing as I've asked, alerting me to issues. And, while I've expunged Google from the domicile (except for YouTube, can't do that), my biggest risks are likely from Apple, who is listening on the spy pucks and likely every search. Heck, disappointingly, even Mozilla/Firefox have given up the mantle of data privacy under the current administration... they'll sell what they know about you... grrr.