Intro
If you have been in the unfortunate situation of walking into a room in your house and finding a water leak you will appreciate this device. I myself have been in this situation and it is what drove me to find a smart home device I could use to catch the leak early to minimize damage.
I spent a fair bit of time looking for a device that would integrate into my current smart home setup but also one that didn’t need too much maintenance. I just wanted to setup the device and let it do its thing, occasionally changing the battery every 6 months or so. I did struggle to find devices that met these criteria which were reasonably priced and had good reviews. This led me to AliExpress. As a result, I have no idea what the brand is but I will review the device below and provide you with some branded options which provide similar features.
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Design
To be honest, the design was bottom of my list when it came to a water leak detector. However, the one I picked up off AliExpress doesn’t look that bad. It is a cylinder shape which stands quite tall, 34mm tall to be precise but it’s under my kitchen sink so that doesn’t bother me. On the underside of the device, it has 2 gold coloured pins which are the water detectors. There is a small screw on the side of the device which when unscrewed allows the base of the device to be removed revealing the battery (it takes a CR123A battery). Apart from that there isn’t much else to say from a design perspective.
Setup
Setup of the water leak detector was really simple like with most smart home devices. Once you put a battery inside the device a light on top of it starts to flash. Open up the Smart Life app and add a new device. Water leak detectors are found under the Sensors device list. Once you click the Flood Detector option it will ask you to confirm if the device light is blinking. When you click yes, you will then connect to the device through your WIFI settings. Once connected to the device the Smart Life app will do the rest and finialise the setup of the device. That is the setup pretty much completed.
Features
The water leak detector I picked up works in water levels between 0.4 and 3.2mm. Now if you have a major leak the water will obviously go above 3.2mm but I’m assuming that the device would still send a notification when the leak first starts. I have tested this by dropping the device in a sink with about 10mm of water in it and it still sent me a notification.
The device also has an LED light on top of it and a built in speaker which sounds an alarm tone when it detects water. This is a good feature as most smart water leak detectors just send phone notifications they don’t also have local notifications.
Smart Home
Looking to get started with your smart home but not sure how? Click below to check out our guide on how to get started.
How to Start a Smart Home
From a smart home perspective once the device is connected to Smart Life and setup in the app there isn’t too much else you can do. You can’t use the device as an Alexa routine trigger. You can’t really use it in Alexa routines at all. This would have been a good feature to set an Alexa routine to trigger if the flood sensor is triggered. The only thing you can setup is a smart scene in the smart life app. With a smart scene, you can trigger a notification when the water leak detector is in a flooding state. I have mine set up to send me an app notification if the sensor is triggered. If you also have smart bulbs setup in the smart life app you could also have these turn on or off when the water leak detector is triggered.
Other Options
As I mentioned above I got my water leak detector from AliExpress. AliExpress can often be hit and miss with the quality of the items so here are some other water leak detectors that are branded which I would recommend.
Shelly Flood
I have the Shelly Plus 1 relay controlling my front porch lights and I have been super impressed with it. The Shelly app is easy to use and Shelly gives you loads of potential methods to control their devices. Shelly offers a water leak detector, which offers a lot of similar features to the sensor I have. However, with it being a Shelly device it will integrate into voice assistants, like Alexa, better than my device but this is something I’d be keen to test out. I might look to get the Shelly Flood in the future to compare to my device.
Final Thoughts
A water leak detector is a really good device to have in your smart home. The ability to be notified of a potential leak can help prevent a lot of damage and expense. The device I picked up works and does everything it needs to, however, I would be keen to also try some other devices on the market to see if they can offer more smart home integration which is where my device underperforms.
Thanks for reading
