In Use:

Your best bet for guidance and helpful user experience with these devices is to visit this page at the SmartThings Community. Plenty of tips about adding them to your SmartThings network, as well as links to 2 different third party device handlers. You can get away without using a third party device handler, as these will be functional with the included SmartSense Moisture Sensors, but that device handler is limited in functionality, in particular because it does not include battery information. Both the MaverickASC developed device handler and the prjct92eh2 developed device handler worked well for me, but I have stuck with the prjct92eh2 since it is the one I tried second.

Adding the device to SmartThings was easy enough for me, once I visited that community discussion posted above. The instructions included in the box are entirely in Chinese, so I didn't know what I was supposed to do. Basically, with SmartThings ready to add a device, you press the button for 5 seconds and let go. Repeat if necessary, but if it seems to be taking a while and it's giving you a sore thumb, look for reset information at the link above. Many have reported needing to take extra steps to reset the sensor in order to pair successfully.

SmartSense Moisture Sensor Device Handler:

This device handler is available within SmartThings without any extra work. As you see in the images below, it will give you wet/dry status updates, but it does not give you battery status information. The settings page implies that it will give you temperature information, like many other water sensors, but that does not work. So, if you just want to get up and running and do not like adding in your own device handlers, this is the way to go. Unfortunately, you won't know the battery is dying until it is totally dead and the device drops off your network.



prjct92eh2 Xiaomi Aqara Water Sensor Device Handler:

The images below show what you can get with a third party device handler. The key addition is battery information, which winds up being a blessing and a curse.



I say this because having battery level information is very useful, but the battery performance in these sensors seems to be very unreliable / unpredictable. Using either third party device handler would initially show decent battery life, but new batteries would drop to empty within days. I went through three batteries in about 2 weeks, wondering if the batteries were bad, and with that third one I had pretty much given up and just left it in the sensor even after it dropped to 1% charged - which you can see in the image below. It dropped down quickly to almost empty, and then popped back up to 98% charged. Others at the SmartThings community were reporting the same behavior, so I continued to watch the battery levels.



The next screenshot fast forwards a week from the screenshot above and we see that the battery still has charge, and is now discharging in a linear fashion. While this is far better than completely draining in under a week, what we see here is that the battery drops about 4% every 2 days. That gives you about 50 days of use at this pace, and when you add in the first 5 days or so of rapid battery dropping, we're at about 55 days total life on one battery. Less than 2 months total life is pretty sad in my opinion, especially compared to other leak sensors in my home. I have two Aeotec sensors that have been on the same 2x AAA batteries since May and they are at 49% charged, and I have two LeakSmart sensors that have been on the same 3x AAA batteries since May and they are at 66% charged. On top of that, the listing for this item at Gearbest indicates that one battery can be used for 2 years! Who knows - maybe the battery level reporting is really wonky and these will last 2 years anyway, but I am not confident that this is going to happen.