After all the setup simplicity of the last two IoTorero products, this one was not initially doing quite so well for me but it turns out I did things the hard way. Firstly no product ID on the box (but it turns out that on their website – there’s a “Sku” of SS01-DTH-BTH) so here’s the long name IoTorero Door Sensor, Temperature Sensor, Humidity Sensor.
Pairing – I just couldn’t manage it at first despite my best efforts. The device is paired into Home Assistant by Bluetooth integration or Bluetooth proxy – well, I have both. The only outstanding BT device on my HA screen (below left) was from another IoTorero product I reviewed earlier this week – I wasn’t interested in the BT angle so left it sitting there on the setup (it’s now magically disappeared but read on).
This new door sensor device has a tiny manual who’s text I can only see with my phone camera on magnify…. and it seems to show a similar screen to that on the left but with a completely different sensor number – and that BTHome sensor stayed put on my HA screen long after I took the batteries out of this device so obviously nothing to do with IoTorero. To be clear I tried rechargeable batteries as I’m all out of alkaline AAA batteries, that could have been my initial issue. Since writing this, Athom support have in fact clarified that they have not yet but WILL check on rechargeable battery use. Read to the end – I did and I’m happy.
Step 2 in the “manual” says to key in a tiny 32 digit hexadecimal key and I could not convince my Samsung S24 Ultra to scan that in so I could copy/paste to my PC to enter the value should the opportunity arise. What I’ve since found out from the company and their website link above, is that this key is available on their website for simply copy/paste use. Here’s the link.
It might have made life easier had the company supplied batteries with the units. I knew the SS01-DTH-BTH was doing SOMETHING as pressing the tiny button on the back brought up a slightly off-centre blue light (behind a hole in the front) which is easy to miss. Perhaps a minor layout adjustment in future batches?
I was sent two of these and both manuals stated “BTHome Sensor 5fe8”. On connecting the second device (temporarily) using my remote control’s AAA batteries, my Home Assistant screen “integrations” screen (not “devices” screen) eventually showed “IoTorero Sensor 5ec7”. I hit ADD and was asked for the 32 character hexadecimal bind key. I added the device to HA, then started back on the original device with the AAA batteries this time.
Now, “IoTorero Sensor 6099” appeared as a new integration. I saved it as “IoTorero sensor door temp hum 2”. Here’s the HA entry.. Note in the diagnostic section below, signal strength is disabled by default, presumably to save power.
As I moved the included magnet towards and away from the sensor, the door sensor changed from open to closed and vice versa. That display updated immediately on change. If I removed the batteries with the unit showing OPEN (for example), the readout stayed on open for some time – like several minutes – I got sick of waiting for it to go to unavailable (the other unit, now boxed with no batteries, said unavailable but I’ve no idea how long it took to get to that state). Athom have clarified that the door open/closed change reflects in HA immediately while other events are displayed at an update interval defined by HA. Fair enough..
For the sake of it, I put in the re-chargeables into the one unit still unboxed. While getting ready to do that I noticed one unit now said “unavailable” at last.
I tried the re-chargeables in the unit that still showed open (but 0, 0, 0 and 0) (centre image above), perfect operation immediately – so I guess pairing is the only time that lower voltage batteries are a potential issue.
The unit in the 2nd image above was showing open – 0% etc until I put in the rechargeable batteries in place, no change showed UNTIL I moved the magnet close – at which point the door status immediately changed to closed, and magically humidity, temperature, voltage, and battery all came to life (rightmost image above) – Athom have confirmed that the other sensor response times are down to HA defaults.
Note that with (not fully) charged rechargeable batteries, the battery diagnostic showed 52% – I can’t argue with that, but I can argue with the voltage reading of 3v, which was utter nonsense – but it turns out that Home Assistant defaults to integer precision and users can change this (see the image at the end – I’ve done that – a simple click on the settings cog for that sensor. My accurate meter showed the batteries in place to total 2.55v, which is kind of what you’d expect.
After all of that – the units work (a product ID would be nice). Right now, given that Ikea are at this moment announcing that their new IOT product range will be equally at home with alkaline and rechargeable batteries, this would be a great time for Athom to minimise confusion as they have indicated they will do.
Overall, operation seems ok. Battery life? Well, that’s always impossible to gauge immediately but I’ll come back to this once the units have been on the main door and possibly gate for some months in our new home.
And now having increased HA’s battery voltage precision from the rather useless 0 decimal points to 2 decimal point – the voltage pretty much matches my meter for the re-chargeables. Thanks for the info, Athom tech.
In anticipation of Athom doing their own testing, I just properly charged my (nothing special) NiHi batteries (2 required) and achieved 2.77v and 67% charge from the IoTorero unit. More when I have a new door to put the unit on.
Finally, I waited and fitted the second unit fitted it with rechargeable batteries I thought I’d fully charged overnight but on test, one was VERY low resulting in an combined voltage of 1.7v – the device provided accurate temperature and humidity as well as showing open/close state – even with such a miserable voltage – I’d clearly not recommend this but if you’d asked me if such a sensor could even start up at such a low voltage I’d have said no. Impressed.
All in, a good experience and now I’m going to look at other sensors in HA and check that default voltage precision.
Update January 16, 2026 – well, that answers that.. rechargeable batteries are OUT – only a week later, the one sensor I boxed up and put away with the rechargeables in it is already showing very weak battery. They’d been lying in a a cupboard for a long time but still. I can see this is going to need decent alkalines – in an older blog – https://tech.scargill.net/the-iotcricket-from-thingsonedge-com/ near the end of the blog entry – I compared different batteries for a now defunct ESP8266 device.. 2021 – https://tech.scargill.net/the-iotcricket-from-thingsonedge-com/ near the end of the blog entry – I wrote about success with Energiser Lithium (non-rechargeable) 1.5v batteries – up to 3600maH capacity compared to claimed 800maH on the battery in the photo above.