Zircon Leak Alert Wifi - Smart Electronic Water Detector Alarm with Email, Audio & Visual Alerts - Battery Included

I've only had this a short time so can't say anything about long-term reliability or effectiveness, but conceptually and functionally, it's an impressive product for the price.It works standalone as a leak detector if you don't want to bother with the email alerts, but the WiFi was easy and quick to configure.I don't see a big need for the flashing LEDs when the unit alarms--presumably you know where you put it, although if you have multiple detectors in one large location, it would help you find the unit which has been triggered. You can also give each detector its own location name which will be reported to you via the email alert.I like how the WiFi system works. You don't need to set up an account with some third party to monitor your detector, keep a record "in the cloud" and send you messages; the detector simply sends you an email directly using your WiFi network. I connected the detector to my guest network, so it has no connection to my private network, just in case the detector can be hacked from outside or there is malicious code built-in (knowingly or unknowingly--I'm sure lots of Chinese-designed IOT devices have built-in spyware).I programmed the detector with both my email address, and my mobile service's "email-to-text" address, so if there is a leak, I get both an email and an immediate text message on my cell phone. It worked perfectly when I tested it.Assuming the product is reliable, there aren't really any improvements I would suggest.I did get the "low battery" alert when configuring the device, as the instructions mentioned I might. As someone who has designed embedded systems, I find their explanation unlikely (that configuring the device draws the battery power down briefly). The unit uses a powerful Lithium battery which can supply close to 1 Amp continuously for many minutes. I'm more inclined to believe it's a software bug which causes the battery voltage to read incorrectly under certain circumstances, but it doesn't really matter. As long as you don't continue to get low battery messages, even from a new battery, it doesn't appear to be an issue in normal use.

Works well one from of water and beeps and text report

We placed the Leak Alert near our sump pump drain. The pump unexpectedly stopped working. The alarm on the Leak Alert went off at 1:30am and sent me an email. Because the unit is highly sensitive to detecting water, the loud noise was enough to wake us up and investigate the problem before the any water damage appeared. I bought this device because of the positive reviews. I can't believe someone would give the product lower than 5 stars. Easy to set up and easy to use. The Leak Alert is a keeper - Highly recommend!!

I ordered this product on 10/24/19, received it on 10/25/19, and set it up on 10/27/2019. After setting it up, I tested it and both the audio alarm and the email/text alert worked. Set up did not take that long. The toughest part was doing the research on the Internet to convert you phone number to an email address so you can get the email alert as a text. I placed the Zircon Smart Electronic Water Detector underneath my water heater.On 12/6/19, at approximately 7:30 pm, after my son reported no hot water, I discovered my water heater was leaking and causing a flood in my basement. The flood radius was probably 6-10 feet around the hot water heater and the water was maybe 2 inches at its deepest point. It was a mess. My kids said that they heard a boom at approximately 4:00PM that day, so that is when the leaking probably started. The detector was almost submerged in water, yet it failed to create an audible alarm or send out an email/text alert!The most frustrating part of all this occurred at 12:23 AM. While I was still in the midst of clean up, I put the detector on top of the metal hot water heater which set off the detector's audible alarm. Sure enough, at 12:23 AM in the morning I had a text letting me know that a leak had been detected. Felt like salt in an open wound.

Tl;DR: When connected to wifi, they work as advertised, but the units I bought repeatedly lost their wifi connection over time.I bought 6 of these to place around my home a couple of years ago. Setup was not the easiest, but if you follow the instructions, it's not bad - just not remotely intuitive. I checked/tested the units a few times over the first few weeks and they correctly sensed water and sent e-mail alerts so initially I was very happy. You can configure them to send weekly status reports, regardless of whether they're detecting any water, etc. I set this up so that I'd be able to confirm, weekly, that they were still functioning.Over time, they all dropped off the wifi and stopped sending updates. This was not due to low battery, as there's a separate alert that's sent to let you know there's a low batt, and none of them sent that alert. They just disappeared from the network spontaneously.After several months, I got them all out and reconnected them to wifi. They were fine again. Eventually, they started to alert to low batteries (this is in-line with the battery life expectency, so not a surprise). Replacing the batteries required me to add them to my wifi again, which was a little aggravating, but worth the effort.Unfortunately, they again dropped off the wifi network over time. I thought it may be due power outages or router resets, but they don't all drop off at the same time. One might go after a month and another a month later and so on. I moved them around to see if it had anything to do with location or specific devices. I can't find any pattern - sometimes, they just lose their wifi config and can't get it back without you having to go through the wifi setup steps.At this point, I've stopped using them, because it seems the wifi drop issue will continue and I don't want to have to deal with it.