REVIEW: GoControl WAPIRZ-1 Z Wave Indoor Motion Sensor

Automating Z-Wave/Zigbee Home Basics

REVIEW: GoControl WAPIRZ-1 Z Wave Indoor Motion Sensor

Motion sensors are a big part of the Smart Home. Today we are going to setup and review the GoControl PIR Motion Sensor. My original plan was to put this in my kitchen. But for reasons that will become clear in this video, my plans have changed. This is now destined for my office.

In a previous video we installed an EcoLink Motion Detector in my garage to make sure the lights automatically turn off. This seems to be working well and I want to use the GoControl Sensor for both on and off functions.

The GoControl motion detector, which uses Passive Infrared or PIR, hangs on your wall and sends status updates to your smart hub. The signals are: motion started, and motion stopped. The GoControl also has a temperature sensor that can be connected to robots for additional home automation control.

Inside the box you will find the motion sensor, a battery, double-backed tape, and the instruction manual with text that can only be read with a high-power magnifying glass.

An immediate downside to this sensor is the lack of mounting plate. Remember, the EcoLink provided a mounting plate to allows for quick removal.

This is an important feature.

The only option for installing the GoControl motion sensor is the double-backed tape.

Notice the location of the clip that opens the sensor. It faces backwards and will be very close to the wall. You will need to access this clip to change the battery, and I imagine a lot of cussing will take place.

The pin-hole for pairing is also back here. If you need to access it for any reason, you’re out of luck.

Once this is on your wall, it’s going to be a pain in the butt.

I also don’t like that my only option is using adhesive tape on my wall.

Small screw holes are easy to patch. Removing adhesives, not so much.

Let’s get this setup.

The first thing you need to do is open the sensor. If you want to spare your fingernails, use a flat screwdriver to open the clip on the top of the sensor.

Once it’s open, you will see the slot for the battery.

Install the battery and you are ready for setup. You will want to have a paperclip ready for this next part.

Over in the Wink app, select your hub. Next, we will click add product. The GoControl sensor support the barcode function.When you get the confirmation that the hub is ready, you will need to insert the paperclip into this little hole on the back of the sensor. After a few seconds, you should get a confirmation that the sensor has been added to your hub.

If you have pets, you can use this jumper to set the sensor to ignore small or large pets. There is also a test setting that will monitor for motion every 5 seconds. But, this will run your battery down faster.

No matter how hard I tried, I could never get the unit to enter test mode. Or at least I had no indication it was working in test mode. This was not the case on the EcoLink sensor. But the sensor does work, and I am going to use the default setting that will wait 4 minutes after a detection event before it looks again.

Until I come up with a better way to mount this, I am going to hang it on my wall with this little picture hanger. It will get me by for today. This location will only detect movement in my office and ignore movement in my hallway.

Now, back in the Wink App,

I am going to set up a robot to automatically turn on the light on if motion is detected.

As I mentioned before, this model also not come with a mounting bracket. Your only choice is  to mount this is with double-backed tape. This, to me, is a serious design flaw. Remember the back of the unit? It has the pairing access on the back. Also, remember the mechanism to access the battery? It is the clip that faces backwards. I imagine a lot of cussing when it’s time to change the battery.

All in all, this is a useful piece of technology, as long as you can get past the mounting options.

At this point, I probably won’t choose the GoControl in the future unless these design problems are sorted out.

This is a shame since other cool features.

The temperature monitoring for example. This would be great for my sunroom and would allow me to automatically control the temperature through my in-wall A/C unit.

The GoControl also has a Tamper Alert to let you know if someone pulled the faceplate off.