How's your Minimote battery life?

Mine isn’t used much but goes dead about once a month. Is there a way to see battery level?

Fantastic. I have a few of these batteries, I think they go up to 500mah, but I’ll have to check on the size.

Batteries arrived, first one connected (quick and dirty twisting of board/battery wires to confirm it’s working before I finalize and close it up) and it’s charging showing a red light. Gonna let it run for a while and confirm it charges and then start doing the rest (I have five to do the battery swap on!).

At a total cost of about $5 for minimote and replacement battery (and the fun of doing the battery swap in front of my family -“Hey, look, aren’t I amazing!?”) I feel like I made out like a thief! :D]

@destructure00 - many thanks for your info and pics!

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Great job…sounds like fun to me also.

Yeah, @TGreenway, once you’ve done the first one, the process becomes pretty rote and things move quickly. All five are done, and dinner was ready when I finished, so it was pretty perfect. :slight_smile:

Only had one brief issue - one of them wouldn’t join my network. It flashed just like the others before and during pairing w/the hub, but then the “taking longer than expected” message appeared and it wouldn’t join. Ran an exclusion on it, then it paired up perfectly. Victory is mine!

Three of the five are “spoken for” (two in the office, one for me in the bedroom) and the other two will be assigned to various duties later.

I would have been lost in the dark (and pretty sad about getting five dead minimotes) w/out the help on this thread. Thanks again!

BTW - I’m using Kyse’s DTH, that still considered the best handler for Minimotes?

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Just realized I have a perfect use for one of my minimote spares…I’m going to use one as a “charging spare” for the office. Planning on having two minimotes in there, and I can use a third with the same button configuration to rotate into the room when I need to charge one of the minimotes there. Just swap in the charged minimote for one that needs charging.

Family tech support is the most painful, and not having to deal with the “Where did the light remote go!?” conversations will be very nice. :slight_smile:

So I see a few people haven’t been happy with the minimote, but what are the alternatives? I haven’t seen any z-wave remotes with this same size/form factor.

Also, it appears that they are no longer available on Amazon, so it’s starting to look like Aeon Labs has discontinued the product.

I use a ZRC-90 remote. Hereks a link with more info. I’m very happy with this remote. It uses aaa batteries, has 8 buttons. With “pushed” and “held”, so really it’s 16 buttons. Easy to add to ST as well.

Minimotes are great. Most complaints have been purchasing the old discontinued v1 and the batteries not lasting. The v1 was discontinued years ago so there is risk buying them. ZwaveProducts has Minomotes in stock. I have loved mine. I purchased replacement batteries from link posted in this community that I will use once mine die.

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Thanks, Eric. What are the dimensions for the ZRC-90 remote?

4.5 x 2.5 inches

That’s a little too big for my application.

Where do you buy these at? I see them on Amazon for $45. That’s a bit much for a remote. Is there a place that sells them at a more reasonable price?

Go with the Aeon Quad.

They have been available in the past on eBay for cheap (like ~$2 to $3 each) but you generally have to replace the battery as these devices were manufactured quite a while ago and they batteries in them have failed/won’t take or hold a charge. The eBay seller a lot of us got them from is out of stock.

Battery replacement is very simple and only costs a few bucks. I did it on five Minimote V1s I purchased on eBay (the batteries are available on eBay as well).

Minimote battery replacement info:

Unfortunately, the vendor on eBay who used to sell Minimotes v1 is out of stock:

Cheapest I see on eBay is $15 each in a two-pack, but remember you’ll want to also buy the batteries on eBay as well if you buy the Minimotes, as it’s highly likely the batteries are DOA on these.

I was wondering - if you have a minimote w/a bad battery, would it be a bad idea/unsafe to simply remove the battery and connect the two battery leads inside the Minimote to each other and then just keep the unit plugged in via USB for power?

Yes that is a very bad idea lol.

Can you explain the “…very bad idea lol>” part above?

Pretend that I know as much about electricity and batteries and circuits as cavemen knew about SmartThings. (Because that’s about how much I know.)

I"m genuinely curious about this…to my uneducated mind I’m just getting the bad battery out of the way between the USB power and the Minimote.

If you connect the leads together then you are “shorting” the connection, causing the little pixies to travel as fast as the wire will let them, creating heat. Best case it will just burn out the charging circuit of the remote. if you take out the battery, you actually want to leave the terminals free and not connected to anything. In that case, it depends on how the remote circuitry is designed whether it will still work with external power connected or not.

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Ah, good, thanks for explaining the basics, I appreciate it. I really should learn more about electricity so I don’t blow myself up.

Much gracias.