it lives on my son’s backpack and sitting in the corner of a room but it keeps on being detected as NOT PRESENT then PRESENT then NOT PRESENT then present again!
it has done this in the past but kinda stopped when it ran out of battery (of course) but did not bother since school was out. when I replaced the battery it was good for awhile until 2 weeks ago I think. and I think it has gone crazier this time around.
is there anything I should do to correct this other than smashing this thing?
I see other people have already given you good advice, but I just wanted to mention my own personal experience.
The most common reason for this is Wi-Fi interference. Wi-Fi and zigbee are in the same band, but Wi-Fi is a much stronger signal, so it can prevent is it the device from connecting. This can cause it to be marked as away then present then away then present, etc.
By any chance is there a Wi-Fi booster in your son’s room?
At our house we have a Wi-Fi booster. If we put it on the north wall in one room, and all the SmartThings zigbee devices to the west of it become unreachable. If we just move the Wi-Fi booster to the east wall instead, everything works again.
I also had an ongoing problem for over a year where my SmartThings presence sensor would start doing the away/return repetition every weekday afternoon around 330. I’m pretty sure one of my neighbors had boosted Wi-Fi and a kid who got home from school about that time.
I worked with support and we tried everything, including increasing the delay before the device was marked away, but it didn’t help. I ended up not being able to use that device at my house.
Anyway, the first thing to do is to change the reporting interval as @csc suggested. After that, look for sources of Wi-Fi interference which you do control. See the following.
This kept happening to me a while back. It turns out it kept doing it whenever I turned on my wireless 2.4 ghz headphones connected to my tv which was also near my hub. I moved the hub, and the frequency that it kept happening was reduced. It still happens occasionally, but not nearly as much. See if your hub is near any device that uses 2.4 ghz (like your router, microwave, wireless headphones, old school cordless phone, etc) and also if they are active when you see the sensor going bonkers.
Heh. Sorry for the repeat information. I didn’t see @JDRoberts reply before I hit my publish button. As usual, his response is spot on and contains more context and history of the issue. Cheers!
Yours was helpful because you also mentioned other devices that could cause the same problem. The 2.4 GHz band is just very busy in United States, there’s a lot of stuff taking up that space.
thank you for all of your replies. I thought his backpack was in the same room where the smartthings hub and a signal booster is in but I may have to double check since I did not see it in that particular room last night when I went to bed (it was still doing the hide and seek thing and decided to power off the smartthings hub and I happen not to see the backpack in the room.)he probably moved it to the our bedroom where he does his homework with us.
thank you again for all your inputs. I will try moving the backpack and see if it makes any difference.
I didn’t see 