YoLink Smart Home Starter Kit: Hub & Water Leak Sensor 4-Pack, SMS/Text, Email & Push Notifications, LoRa Up to 1/4 Mile Open-Air Range, w/Alexa, IFTTT, Home Assistant

* * * * * Update:My previous review was a 4 star review that has wholeheartedly been upped to 5 stars. This is not only because of the product itself, but because of the amazing customer service and support I've received from YoLink. Read the review below that notes the one and only issue I had was with setting up cell number connection. I emailed them to ask for help.Within a day I received a reply from YoLink noting this is a known issue and they are working on a fix.In another 2 days, I received another email letting me know the issue had been fixed.I tried it, and it worked!Not only are they super responsive, they also impressed me with the fact that they actually followed through and contacted me to let me know that my issue had been resolved.-------------------------Initial review:I just received this today and had it 98% up and running in less than 15 minutes.The 2% part that isn't working is because I cannot get it to take my cell number.Very frustrating because receiving text alerts is what makes this stand out from all the many other leak sensors out there.Set up for all other aspects of this was amazingly fast and easy. Connections were made quickly and app and email notifications during leak tests were amazingly almost instantaneous.I just cannot get it to send me a confirmation code that's a necessary step in adding a cell number for text alerts.I "invited" my husband to join the household so he would receive notifications too. He opened his own account, accepted my invitation an was set up in less than a few minutes. All went smoothly for him except that he was not able to add his cell number for text notifications either.The step for this process requires you entering your cell in the settings portion of the app, then waiting to receive a text with a confirmation code. That code never comes.We tried resetting the hub, resetting our phones, texting each other just to be sure there wasn't some glitch with our ability to receive texts. After all this neither of us receives the code and therefore, we only receive notifications via email and app.It's a holiday weekend, so there is no support available from the company. I've emailed them and will try calling when they're open.

This is a MUST have in every home or apartment! I love owning the YOLINK water alarm. It is very user friendly, quick and easy set up too. It will tell you immediately if their is a water leak in your house when your not home and the message goes straight to your cell phone. And, I had a problem with my home hub and I owned this unit for 3 years. I called YOLINK and I didn't have to go through a robo call nonsense, you get connected directly with a person who knows all about the product and they will help you. I found the staff at Yolink to be courteous, professional and informative. I would give this item 10 stars if I could.

Highly recommend! We have been using the water sensors since August 2020. I can confidently say they have saved us, on several occasions, from major water issues and hours or days of clean up in our basement. I feel they are a great value for the money and well worth every penny. Love the text message notification feature. That has alerted me to water near a sump pump located in a room we rarely go into. Without that notification we would have had a major issue and clean up. After five years of use, today is the first time I've had to change the batteries in one of the sensors! If you are just thinking about these, stop thinking and get them!!

Update 9 Feb 2021. Customer service support, especially from Eric, has been outstanding. Web-based product description has improved greatly and their suite of products continues to expand with interesting new applications for the YoSmart ecosystem. I have alerts set on all of the components of my YoSmart system, and am impressed to see notices come in on email and smartphone when a component exceeds threshold I set (example house humidity), or the hub falls off the network (example, short power outage).The main issue had been Hub would not stay connected on 2.4 GHz channel on WiFi, and so had to operate as an Ethernet hardwired connection. Today Eric suggested I unplug the Ethernet and move the Hub more than 6 feet away from Netgear satellite station, so I moved it 50 feet away. After about 30 minutes, my app showed that Hub was again "Offline". Perhaps it was offline immediately and just took that long for the update to percolate through the ecosystem and back to my app.***************************************Now that the Hub and Water Leak Sensors are configured, and deployed and Hub is hardwired to home network (NOT WiFi), I give the system 4 stars for intuitiveness of App, functionality during testing (including sending texts and e-mail messages), and connectivity of sensors with Hub. Customer service was also extremely responsive or I would have returned purchase at end of first week. Post-deployment with replaced Sensor and new Hub would be 5 stars if the Hub had not kept dropping off the 2.4 GHz channel on house WiFi, or if I had not planned on using WiFi to begin with.I have given the purchase an overall 3 stars due to problems with initial Hub setup, a sporadic set of water sensor probes on one of the 4 Leak Sensors, unreliability of the WiFi connection on 2.4GHz, and the delay for YoLink to send a new Water Leak Sensor (new one worked fine) and a new Hub (new one would not stay on WiFi 2.4 GHz channel either). Tech support was were responsive, but shipping took a number of days.Tips covered below:* If something doesn’t go like you think it should during initial set up, contact Tech Support ASAP. It’s not worth your time to try and do trouble shooting with a lack of YoLink FAQs and updated useful YouTube demos.* High Marks to Tech Support responsiveness, though the one time I called they answered the phone just saying “Hello” and not identifying themselves as YoLink Tech Support.* The Hub is designed to only ride a 2.4 GHz WiFi channel and that DID NOT work reliably for the Hub or replacement Hub YoLink sent. Mine is now configured via dedicated Ethernet cable to my WiFi satellite station modem. I have seen other reports on YoLink Hub that had the same 2.4 GHz channel problem.* Once Hub was connected to WiFi via Ethernet, connectivity and reporting with Water Leak sensors at the other end of house and in attic was great, showing strong signal strength.* Configure your Hub to send a notice if the Hub goes offline.* Test all your Water Leak Sensors in the environment where you expect them to work, as well as e-mail and phone alerts. I set Alert Interval to 1 minute with both App alert and e-mail. One set of probes did not consistently alert when tested (worked about 20% of time) and I exchanged with YoLink for a new Sensor.* Pay attention to naming conventions of Hub and Sensors. It will not give an error message if you don’t follow the naming convention (which I haven’t found, just trial and error of what was allowed to be saved).* Check for firmware updates for sensors and Hub on the App’s “Detail” page.* I like the battery-low-warning feature, but only time will tell if it actually works as designed as the battery life winds down.- Problems began immediately out of the box. The instructions are by no means complete and there is no place to find out the cause and fix of error messages. A couple of YouTube clips are short and go too quickly to completely understand what feature on the App was touched.- The YoLink HomePage FAQ had no questions, just preformatted form fill information.- The first step, “Binding” the Hub to your App (making it part of your “ecosystem”) produced the following error when I pressed the “Bind Device” bar in App: “Error The device has been bound” . Way too much research to try and figure out what this error meant and how to clear it. Finally I emailed YoLink. I actually got a fairly timely reply. Basically, the devices get bound when being tested before being shipped, and YoLink failed to unbind the device before shipping. So Tech Support “Unbound” the Hub for which I had provided the serial number. Once Tech Support Unbound the Hub from their location, I was able to Bind it into my YoLink ecosystem. Lost a day and a half on that.- On to WiFi connect problems (never resolved with 2.4GHz channel). I have a Netgear Orbi base plus two satellite station router with both a 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz channels and a separate back channel. I have other devices on both channels and none have ever had trouble finding an appropriate usable channel. While the Hub would connect fine using the ethernet connection on the router, it was not my intent to use the last ethernet-connection on the master station for this Hub. When I unplugged the ethernet connection and attempted WiFi, it immediately detected the network name broadcasting and I entered the password. When I attempted to connect, the App eventually errored out with an error notice that said “Connect Faild”. I called Tech Support and they apologized and said I need to do the WiFi set up while it is still connected via ethernet (this is not in the instructions either), admitting that it should connect just fine to the 2.4 GHz channel. I did that, finally connected Hub to WiFi and removed the ethernet connection. Things were fine until I went to test the water sensors and they were not sending alerts when sitting in water. Turns out the Hub fell off the WiFi (and I had not turned on the alert to let me know Hub was offline). NOTE: DURING ALL OF THIS CONFIGURING AND TESTING, THE HUB, ROUTER, PHONE/APP AND WATER SENSORS WERE ALL WITHIN 2 FEET OF EACH OTHER. Once I reconnected ethernet to Hub, alerts began coming to the app and my email, both which I had selected.- The Hub and Water Leak sensors can be given unique names and assigned to unique room names. I found that renaming the Hub as "Hub #1" was a non-starter. The naming convention would not accept the “#”. This was a trial and error discovery. The naming function also went stupid and would not accept a space at the end of the name I entered accidentally, along with special characters within the name. No error or notice….just would not save the name until I corrected the name to comply with the unknown naming convention. A "Space" within the naming conventions was fine, just not at the end.- All Sensors and Hubs required Firmware update. You have to search for that in the devices’ Detail page. Updates were all completed within about an hour.- I double checked the Water Leak Sensors and subsequent Alert notices. I laid a wet paper towel across each of the three sets of probes (two sets of probes on the bottom, one set of probes on the top), one set at a time. I watched for the Water Leak Sensor red alert light on the Sensor and waited for alert to come to phone. On the four water sensor modules I bought, one set of sensors on the bottom of one Water Leak Sensor did not consistently come on (about 80% of the time no red alert light and no App alert to the phone). I returned that Sensor and YoLink promptly sent a new one which worked properly.- After testing all sets of probes on the Water Leak Sensors initially with a wet paper towel across the pairs of probes, I tested them on the actual surface I will deploy them on. These Sensors are deployed to the attic on the plywood floor. What I found when testing on a piece of plywood was that a steady drip-drip away from the probes eventually ran around the probes and the probes were apparently submerged in a thin layer of water and set off the probe light and alerts. If I just wet the plywood and let it soak in and then put the Sensors on wet plywood with no more dripping, none of the Sensors alerted. Since that’s not the scenario with a leak that would wet the attic plywood I deployed them. But it’s smart to actually test them in exactly the scenario and material you want them to perform…not just with a wet paper towel.- YoLink send me a replacement Hub because the original Hub would not consistently stay on the 2.4 GHz channel even sitting 2 feet from the router. The replacement Hub would not stay on WiFi either. The Hub is now Ethernet connected to a satellite on the WiFi network (using a NetGear Orbi Modem with a master and 2 satellites). I have turned on the alert to tell me when the Hub is offline, which is how I knew it was falling off and getting back on many times over a few hour period when I was connected via 2.4 GHz WiFi channel.- Both email and call to Tech Support (California) were VERY responsive. At some point that frequently stalls in companies and if YoLink doesn’t substantially improve their printed and access to YouTube instructions, their own in-house procedures before shipping, WiFi connection problem, and FAQs, I expect customer satisfaction will fall off.

These are my second set I purchased through Amazon. I ordered the first set and love it because it was able to catch the leak under my kitchen sink within minutes which pretty much save extensive damages if I had left it for a long period of time. I also ordered the thermostat to add to my collection as well. The sound wasn’t loud at all but you are able to hear it at the same time it alerts you through the app.