Aeon Labs Panic Button battery life

Devices & Integrations
1

I recently purchase two of these buttons (within the past two months)
One was installed two months ago and just stopped working
The other one was installed about a month ago and still works

These buttons use CR2450 3V batteries and I have tested the battery in the one that still works and it reads 2.9V
The one that doesn’t work reads at 2.8V

I know the problem is with the battery because when I swap the good battery into the button that failed it works.

Question: Is two months of battery life a reasonable lifespan for this device? I press the button about 3-4 times per day.
For as beefy as the battery looks I would expect a lot longer life.

2

It really depends on the device and on the battery. Those batteries, when new, are usually around 3.2 - 3.6 volts. When they get to about 2.6 - 2.8 I’ve found ththem to be pretty much useless… But again, it depends on the device.

It’s kind of like with a AA battery. When new it’s usually about 1.58 - 1.62. When they reach about 1.35 they are trash… Depending on the device… I’ve had then still work ask the way down to 2.9.

Also, you could just have a bad battery… When you put the battery in the other control, dues it work?

And finally, how much the device is used is directly related to how long the battery will last.

@JDRoberts can point you to some links that will break this diwn to the most basic engineering level you can imagine.

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3

The device is spec’d to have a typical battery life of one year, or around 10 hours of actual transmission use. If you using it four times a day that’s still probably less than 30 seconds of daily transmission time.

There are a couple of things that could be causing extra transmissions, and therefore running the battery down faster.

What Messages is the device sending, and why?

First, obviously, if you’re doing any kind of polling on the device. If you’ve done something to try to set it up as a presence sensor that could do it. If you’re running one of the battery Checksmart apps that keeps asking the device what its battery level is every few minutes, that ironically can run the battery down pretty fast. But those are situations where you had made changes to your account rather than just using the stock code when you added It. Check to see what smart apps are associated with the device.

One) open the SmartThings mobile app

Two) choose the “my house” icon (four tiny squares at the bottom of the screen)

  1. choose “things” at the top of the screen

Four) find the panic button that is having the problem and tap on its name to open its detail screen (not the icons on the left or right of the name, just the name itself)

Five) once the detail screen has opened, first tap on “recently” at the top of the screen and just look to see what events the device is reporting. If you see a whole bunch of events that are not button pushes, then there’s some polling issue.

  1. now choose “smart apps” at the top of the detail screen and see what smart apps are associated with this device

So this process should give you a good idea of how many “events” your device has in a day and what smartapps are causing/handling them

do messages have to be sent multiple times?

Another possibility is if your zwave mesh is not strong and the device is having a hard time reaching the hub. Then it might be doing a lot of retransmitting. But if you’re only using it four times a day that honestly shouldn’t be a big deal.

Still, you do sometimes see one device rundown much more quickly than an identical device that is in a different location in the house just because the first one has to keep doing multiple transmissions due to weakness in the mesh

bad battery

Those first two things are things you can check just to see if there’s anything unusual about your set up. But to be honest the most common culprit is just a bad battery. Batteries do vary tremendously in quality, and sometimes the battery that ships with the device from the manufacturer just isn’t very good.

If I were in your situation I would try replacing the battery with a good quality brand, probably Duracell or Energizer, and then just see how it goes. (Panasonic generally don’t test well so I would avoid those. Amazon basics seem to vary a lot in quality, I suspect they are made by different companies.)

There are a lot of cheap batteries which should be avoided altogether. And a lot of mid range quality which are OK for a number of uses. But for home automation, reliability is almost always one of the top priorities, and I tend to go for higher-quality battery brands for that reason. I know they cost more, but they do make a difference.

For AA’s, I like the Kirkland brand from Costco and they test very high on pretty much every lab’s tests including Consumer Reports. But they don’t make a CR 2450.

So in your specific situation, I’d check The first two possibilities I listed above just to be sure there’s nothing goofy going on. Then I’d go ahead and buy one good battery and see what the battery life is with that. The panic button is a one-year warranty, right? As long as you have at least three months left on your warranty for the device, I’d do a two-month test with a good battery. If it runs through that battery really fast, return The panic button as a defective device. :sunglasses:

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4

I admit that I didn’t test the voltage of the battery before I installed them so I don’t know where they started. When I replace the batteries I will note what their voltage is and how long it lasts.

There is nothing special I am doing with them other than using a button press to change the mode to away.
I am using whatever the stock device handler that was chosen when SmartThings found the device.

I use CoRE pistons to detect a button press and change mode to away. Button is pressed on average 3-4 times a day. Button is within 25 foot of the hub.

I am looking for others that use the same button and wondering what their battery life is. If I have to replace batteries every other month then these buttons are not worth it.

5

Wanted to followup on this issue.
Went out and bought a brand new 2450 battery for this button and installed it on 07/31/16.
Today, 09/13/16 the battery is dead after 71 button presses.

I didn’t calculate the first battery that I installed but it lasted roughly a month as well.

I don’t know if this is typical but that seems terrible.

Is anyone having problems like this?

6

Definitely doesn’t sound typical. It sounds like the panic button itself might be defective and is draining the battery. I’d make a warranty claim on it.

7

I contacted Aeon and they said I should be getting 15-20 presses per day up to 1.5 months on battery life.

They claim the distance from the hub could cause is to transmit several times if the signal is weak. Seems plausible except I am less than 50 foot from the hub and when I press the button I get a green light in under a 1/4 second. The green light is confirmation the hub got the signal.

They also made the suggestion that the button ships configured to wakeup periodically and that I should disable that. I have asked how to do that but no response yet. I did check the IDE logs and the only thing being recorded are the button presses.

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8

I a quick google search does suggest that you can adjust the wake up frequency. But no information on how to do this on smartthings. Would be interesting to see what aeon suggest?

9

Did you ever get a reply on this, I have the same issue?

10

I never received a satisfactory reason for the degraded battery life, but from doing some experimentation battery life seems to be effected more the further away from the hub. Not that I am that far away with either but one of my buttons is within ten foot and gets pressed twice a day and the other one is in my car which is about 30 foot and pressed twice per day. The one closer has about three times the battery life. IMO, both are battery hogs and would not buy more of them.

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11

As part of your test, did you trade the buttons around with fresh batteries in each to see if results were the same? (Your supposition about range is probably valid, but this additional step rules out device differences.)

12

Yes, swapped buttons and the battery life remains lower on the one further away. Again, for as large as the batteries are in these buttons I should be getting much longer use out of both of them. BTW I am still on the V1 hub so I don’t know if that has anything to do with it. I don’t know the details of handshaking they do but I know that the button receives a confirmation back from the hub upon a successful button push which cause a green light to flash. If unsuccessful it flashes red. It also does not report battery life. It will stop working at any time. Not a good testimony for using them for the stated purpose, “panic button”

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13

Sorry just seen this, thanks for replying. I was suspecting it was working as a repeater like some of the other Aeon sensors. In its current state its just not a viable option. The recessed door sensor which is about 10 meters from the house, outside in the wooden gate has had one battery in 3 years and triggered multiple times a day. The panic button I can leve doing nothing for weeks and it drains the battery to nothing hence why I was suspected it waking up and acting as a repeater or something.