I’m in the planning stages of my system and I have a couple of doors and windows that the “normal” magnet/sensor orientation doesn’t fit well on.
I’m curious if any of the following orientations will work. I suspect “A” might, but I am skeptical that the others will.
A might work, but I wouldn’t recommend installing that way.
I would recommend spacers or switching the position of the sensor and magnet.
It would be helpful to have a photo of the location you are having trouble with so that we can provide a potential suggestion or work-around.
I will take some pictures when I am at the property later today and post them here.
The most common case I am trying to solve is for casement windows. These window types seem to come up from time to time in this forum. Casement windows do not have two flat adjacent surfaces to mount the sensor and magnet to. You are almost always dealing with a 90 degree corner where the sensor is on one surface and the magnet on the other perpendicular surface, which is what I was trying to represent with the “A” image. The frames on these windows aren’t usually wide enough to do it another way.
Here is one odd case that I don’t think I would be able to get a good picture of and a drawing is easier. I have a sliding door that for aesthetic reasons I would rather not put the sensor on the face of the door or frame. But when the door is fully closed, there is a natural gap between the door and frame such that I could put a sensor on the edge of the door and a magnet inside the frame. But I would need a sensor/magnet combo that could be oriented in this manner.
But I would need a sensor/magnet combo that could be oriented in this manner.
The wireless surface contacts do not work that way like in your drawing, and there are no surface contact sensors I am aware of set up for that kind of installation.
I’ve seen a couple people successfully use a small wireless sensor inside the door track before so it can be done, but there is no one size fits all approach or how to guide for something like that. It would depend on your door and the sensor model, trying to orient it in a way it reliably closes.
You may be able to use a wired contact and run wires to a wireless sensor that has inputs to act as a transmitter. Wired contacts would be smaller and may be able to be positioned in a way that would work. You could try a small recessed wired contact, in the side or the top channel.
With casement windows, often there may be room for a small sensor like the IQ DW Mini to be mounted to the frame, with the reed switch facing toward the window, and the magnet on the window behind it. Recommendations would depend on your windows and layout.
Here is an example of my casement windows (sorry for the poor lighting). I have 20 of these windows on the ground floor that I need to put sensors on.
As you can see, the PowerG sensor fits exactly in the space between the screen (marked in red) and the window, with no room for the magnet. I have 1.25" total to work with on that surface, and only 0.875" total to work with on the perpendicular surface. I’m not sure even the IQ Mini can fit the sensor and magnet in 1.25" of space. Are there smaller sensors you can recommend I look into?
The IQ DW-Mini is the slimmest compatible sensor I can think of and would be more like 1 3/8" Of course it looks like in your photo that the sensor could just overhang 1/8" and fit.
Alternatively you could again use a wired contact with an IQ Extended sensor as a transmitter.
If I let the sensor overhang 1/8" I won’t be able to put on the screen (the screen sits against the edge I marked in red).
Digging around a little I did find the IQ Micro DW:
https://qolsys.com/iq-micro-s/
It appears the sensor is about 7/8" wide, so if the magnet is less than 3/8" that should fit. Any thoughts pro/con that sensor?
As an S-Line 319.5 sensor from Qolsys its going to have the same encryption and range expectancy as that of the DW Mini or DW extendeds.
Sensor specs 1.83”H x .87”W x .4”D
Just to close the loop on this in case someone is searching the forums in the future for casement window sensors, here is a comparison of the IQ DW Micro-S and the PowerG sensor:
The IQ Micro is quite small by comparison and seem like they will work for me. I will need to put a piece of mounting tape on the side of the magnet to affix it to the part of the window frame that opens. Turning the magnet to use the existing tape on the bottom won’t work because the magnet is taller than it is wide.
