I’ve been using the original Aeotec Water detector (DSB45) for several months using the stock Z-Wave Water Sensor handler. It has never failed to detect water when I periodically test it but it is by far the least ‘chatty’ device I own; nothing appears in the IDE event list for this device unless it is reporting a ‘dry’ or ‘wet’ condition (battery has always shown 100% in the app but I have never seen a battery event report in the logs). The ST app similarly never shows any ‘Recent’ events other than wet/dry.
If I let it go a week or two without testing it and check the IDE, there are no events listed in the log. Yet it always shows its status as ‘ONLINE’ and there usually is an entry in the ‘Last Activity’ column that may show ‘an hour ago’ or some other recent time-- still with nothing in the logs. Simple Device Viewer also must be seeing this activity and has never flagged it inactive. Any ideas as to why the IDE event list is always empty (other than dry/wet events) even though it is reporting recent activity? I thought any device event would show up in the logs.
I’ve used the DSB45-ZWUS since 2015. fuzzysb’s “Aeon Water Sensor” device type will poll for battery updates. It looks like the message handlers are not implemented for all devices, which might cause false alarms. The device is probably waking up every 4 hours, notifying the hub that it woke up, and then going back to sleep without the hub creating a log of the wake-up notification. The hub has to poll the device for the battery status when the device wakes up, and by default the hub does not poll the device for about 2.2 days.
Good information; thanks. I get paranoid about it silently dying since it has no audio or visual indicators to show its status. Didn’t know there was a custom device handler for it; I will give it a go.
I have been getting false alarms on SHM using fuzzysb’s device handler. I am now working on a new device handler. SmartThings has API support for all of the DSB45’s message classes. fuzzysb’s “Aeon Water Sensor” device handler parses the Alarmv2 message type as notification v3 (due to the Z-Wave standard re-using the message ID 0x71 for both).
[edit 13 hours later]
… I was not receiving false alarms, and Fuzzysb’s device handler is fine. The alarms were caused by my parents checking the water sensor to see if it worked, at a different location. Fuzzysb’s device handler is fine; I may attempt to add some log messages and add a routine to set configuration parameters defined in the DSB45’s data sheet.
@mcgrathm do you have any advice for dealing with false alarms from the DSB45 water sensor?
I’m using stock Z-Wave Water Sensor handler. The sensor and surrounding area are bone dry. The sensors I’m using are new and have fresh batteries. Every once in a while I get a false alarm and the devices never seem to reset to dry.