Hourly status of smart lock is draining battery. Can't figure out how to disable

Devices & Integrations
1

Every hour, my smartthings app is showing that it’s polling status of my lock, twice. I went from lasting a year+ on a set of batteries, to draining from 100-0 in about 1 month. I never enabled anything to pull status that often, and can’t figure out how to get it to stop. But at this rate I’ll be going through a ton of batteries and is unsustainable.

Any ideas?

Lock is a schlage connect Camelot, if that matters.

2

If you are using the default zwave lock DTH, hourly checkins are by design
Excerpt from zwave-lock.groovy:

Device-Watch pings if no device events received for 1 hour (checkInterval)

Also I have the same lock w/ the above default DTH and my battery life has been fine, even with the hourly “poll”. If you’re using some other DTH you might try switching to the default to see if it improves things or try some other brand of battery as they are not all created equal.

3

No special DTH… Added device to smartthings hub v3 using smartthings app and all control /configuration is done through there.

4

A couple messages per hour should not be a significant drain on the batteries. Likely you have something else going on here. I would look at signal strength and repeaters.I

@RBoy may have more helpful information on this.

1 Like
5

I am doubtful that hourly polling should contribute significantly to your batteries draining in a month. Something else is probably causing the drain.

6

You have probably checked this, but if there is any kind of binding while the bolt is engaging the hole it will cause the lock to enter a higher current mode to try and actuate the bolt completely.

I’m pretty sure I read that result on other threads concerning powered locks.

I doubt that’s your situation, but never hurts to check.

1 Like
7

Thanks for the suggestion. No, the mechanism is clear. Really nothing has changed on that end. 1 year of lasting a full year on 1 set of batteries, then suddenly a couple months or less ago, it starts eating them up quickly. No variables introduced. Just randomly began.

8

Could be connecting to a bad parent relay. Have you tried performing a zwave mesh repair and look for errors?

9

That correct. Hourly polling or even every 15 minutes doesn’t have that much of an impact on battery life.
Something like that is typically caused by the following reasons:

  1. The deadbolt is touching the door jamb or something is interfering with its operation. This causes a huge battery drain. The operation should be like butter from start to end. Even the slightly obstruction or touching or scraping can cause a huge battery drain. This is the most common reason because lock mounting shifts over time during normal use. Sometimes it just slightly touches the door jamb due to the shifting hardware on the door or the lock.
  2. The module has become and starts draining more battery. This is more common in Kwikset locks, usually after one to two years of normal use the locks tarts draining more quickly. Is Yale and Kwikset locks you can replace the module but in Schlage locks unfortunately you’ll have to contact the manufacturer for a replacement. The best way to determine this for Schlage locks is to remove the lock from the door and see if it still drains quickly.
  3. Defective module where it’s stuck in a loop every few seconds. Seen this happen on some Schlage FE599 Locks but a reset of a lock will usually fix this.
10

No, I honestly wouldn’t know how to do that (zwave mesh repair".

11

Using the new app, open the app and find your ST hub in the list and tap it. In the upper right, tap the three vertical dots and then tap Z-Wave Utilities. Tap “Repair Z-Wave network” and then tap Start. It will take some time to finish.

12

Completed. Will monitor battery life and see if anything happens. For what it’s worth, the lock is about 8 feet from the hub (through a single wall). Also haven’t added any new z wave devices in a long time (at least 10 months)

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His was my solution:

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14

Have the same problem. Added Z-wave to all 3 August pro and now battery life went from 6 month to 1.5 month or shorter. I am considering removing z-wave on one and see if that improve over control (leaving z-wave on).