A perfect example of this is a project I will be resurrecting from last year which repurposes a Utilitech leak sensor as a water sensor for a Christmas tree. To identify when the water level in the tree stand gets dangerously low I invert the readings from the sensor, making wet the normal state and dry the alert state. The battery life is noticeably reduced on the Utilitech sensor when left continuously in the wet state, although t still managed to outlast the holidays.
@SteveWhite What does invert state mean? I have the same device and use it for the same reason.
For notifications I created a custom smart app, but this should not affect the device?
What is a normal state versus an alert state? How do you switch the states?
@tgauchat I would think it works like you state, send notification when state changes.
Also if # of flashy lights are accurate in my experience some devices when placed in iffy network range ( my garage) may need to send 2 messages for the smart things hub to get message.
Yes but the explanation from ST when I checked with them last year was: but you test it without a load attached to the battery so you are reading an optimistic voltage.
however my observation is that in the recent months, I got longer duration for the motions sensors than last year.
Bedroom is a room being used every day in term of sensing

Playroom is a room barely used 2 or 4 times a week.

Entry door was a sensor under our outside porch. I stopped using this sensor after the many false motion detections. (PIR are not really suitable for outside usage)

For all of these charts, when the level goes back up (not always 100%!!!), it means the battery was changed because the sensor wasn’t responding anymore (no led when inserting the old battery, no reset possible).
great battery record. It would be a little more descriptive to include battery type and sensor make and model.
Your general lifetime with coincells is similar to mine, poor (anything less than 6 months is a hassle). I try to apply devices without coincells. Arrival/presence sensors were dead within 3 months, almost useless until hardwired.
What are you using to log and chart?
The battery type influence is not really making a big difference versus the frequent changes. I tried both genuine Panasonic and other brands, that doesn’t drive to significant difference in my case.
Regarding the sensors,
model: 3325-S
manufacturer: CentraLite
For the data collection, I use a homemade MySQL dump. I published my smartapp and associated php script/sql information on https://github.com/philippeportesppo/Dump_Temperature_Battery_Level_SmartThings
You can have a try. I record every 3 hours the state of sensors with temperature capabilities as originally, this was for a temperature recording purpose that I developed the scripts but I then added the battery monitoring later when I started having issues with the sensors to collect facts. You can add other capabilities if you want to monitor other type of devices (water leaking, etc).
Enjoy!
In my opinion the way ST gauges battery health is wrong. It was better two years ago. Smae model sensor the battery lasted months not a month.
Staff have acknowledged in the forum that one of the recent zigbee updates fried battery reporting.
They are aware of the issue and are expecting to correct it in the future, but no specific timeline.
Yes I heard that also, but I heard it a long time ago. At least 10 batteries back.
This was specific to one of the summer 2017 updates, I don’t remember which one.
This was specific to one of the summer 2017 updates, I don’t remember which one.
Firmware 18.22 introduced the 100% battery 100% of the time for the ST Multi Purpose Sensor. Never ending battery life. Love it! ![]()
Firmware 18.22 introduced the 100% battery 100% of the time for the ST Multi Purpose Sensor. Never ending battery life. Love it!
Sorry I wasn’t clear the amount of batteries was across a number of devices.
I both my SmartThings Arrival Sensor two weeks ago, I connect to my hub but I did use, today I started to looking for an app to open my Garage I got one from Rboy, set up and test, works.
After 1 hours Arrival Sensor only have 30% battery and after 2 hours open my garage 3 times, so I remove the app, I only now see other topics about this Arrival Sensor is not reliable.
Any tips to have arrival presence more reliable?
Looks standard to me, hence I don’t use them anymore. Reasons can be poor mesh radio quality which ST will asl you to improve by adding repeaters but that won’t improve the battery over consumption.
Looks standard to me, hence I don’t use them anymore. Reasons can be poor mesh radio quality which ST will asl you to improve by adding repeaters but that won’t improve the battery over consumption.
Thank you for you reply, I have my hub on my garage wall(inside the house) my car is 10 ft far from hub.