Door sensors and battery life and SmartThings oh my

I have a couple of different door sensors one for the garage, one for my sliding door and one for my frontdoor.

I’ve changed the batteries a few times but I have to say the lack of actual reporting on battery levels through SmartThings makes these almost useless.

It takes me sometimes a couple of weeks to realize I haven’t received a notification from them and then having to go through the troubleshooting on whether it’s the battery or the Z-Wave is an issue.

Since these don’t add to the mash I think I might remove them and in this place put cameras facing those doors.

At least the cameras would have motion sensors and have the ability to take video and photos as opposed to just a notification when something is open or closed.

Am I the only one with this issue or do others have the same?

What sensors are you using? Mine tend to be accurate an the device handler alerts when it has dropped offline via device health.

I will have to check the brands. They are older. But I know they are not reporting when the battery dies.

The Lowes Iris contact sensors report battery and are cheap. They often go on sale too. Do you happen to have a wired security system installed? If so you can integrate those wired sensors to SmartThings as well via Konnected or an Arduino.

No wires system. I have a Lowe’s Iris sensor. Maybe I’ll just replace my other ones with those and see if I haven’t yet reporting. Especially when. The battery dies

The other issue is they get stuck in open state even when they aren’t open.