I can second that battery life experience. When I contacted support about it, they said Wow, that’s terrible battery life. They suggested that I remove automations, and smart apps that use the device. Which honestly doesn’t do a lot of good if the battery life is better but I can’t use them for anything.
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Batteries, particularly lithium, can be tricky. Like @nastevens said, lithium battery voltage readings stay flat-ish for 10%-90% of their life cycle. When they get down to <10% the internal resistance starts to increase and the voltage drops dramatically. The combination of these two can make it difficult to measure the remaining charge. A battery with 5% left, for example, could read anywhere from 1.8V to 2.4V. This makes it easy to know that the battery is on it’s last leg, but very difficult to know when it’s over the cliff.
So why would you see wildly different and potentially ‘very low’ voltages when measuring a seemingly good battery? A battery that is fully depleted might have just enough juice that it can hold up voltage on a meter, but it turns out that even the best multimeter will present 1Mega-ohm of load and once the battery is attached it can draw the voltage down to close to zero.
Manufacturers do their best to eek every last drop out of the batteries. The tricky region when the energy left in the battery is less than 10%, the voltage is dropping, and the internal resistance is rising can be the difference between 10 months of life or 12 months of life for a device. That’s significant for users. On the other hand, in the case of the faulty motion sensor (don’t hate me for saying this) it would probably be better to have device shut itself down when it hits 10% battery remaining. This seems like it would make users unhappy, but personally I would rather have 5-10 months of battery life than 6-12 months of battery life with faulty readings toward the end.
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I agree wholeheartedly on that last point. Have it give a dying gasp response, semi-predictably of course, and have it shut down. Then the hub PROPERLY announces it. I would be far happier with that then the unpredictability we currently live with.
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I have (2) Osram Lightify light strips in my kitchen – connected directly to the hub. After the hub firmware update one light strip keeps turning on by itself. The other does not. Seems like the one trying to grab an update turns on at that time. See below.
One that turns on by itself (turned on today at 9:30AM):
Current Version: 0x01020205
Target Version: 0x01020205
Last Updated: N/A
Last Checked: 2016-12-24 9:30 AM EST
The other one is fine:
Current Version: 0x01020205
Last Updated: N/A
Last Checked: 2016-11-20 5:19 PM EST
What is the short term solution everyone is performing? Disabling the hub’s OTA zigbee update under utilities?
For the long term solution, what’s been the answer from the SmartThings staff?
I had the same exact problem as you. I have one Osram strip under my cabinets and one osram strip on top of my cabinets in my kitchen.
They were randomly turning on at the same time they were checking for firmware update. So I disable the OTA firmware updates. @tpmanley
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I may have to do the same. Hoping there is a permanent fix that can be applied.
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Did that have any effect? The only time the osram devices check for firmware updates is after they power on so I believe the sequence of events is:
- something causes the bulb to reset
- the light comes on
- the bulb checks for a firmware update
- five minutes later the device reports that it’s on (according to the reporting configuration)
I am talking to OSRAM and doing my own tests to try to figure out what is causing (1). I don’t personally experience this with any of my own osram bulbs unfortunately.
One thing someone could try if willing and able is connect some of the frequently misbehaving lights to an osram hub to see if the behavior continues or not. A hubv1 would work too.
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Any chance you could move the hub closer to the strips for a short period, until it gets the update? Even though the strips are close together there may be something in the environment making it harder for one set to receive the update. Note, it could work perfectly fine during normal operation because typical RF packets will be short. During update it’s receiving much more data.
I don’t know if this will work for you, but it’s a thought.
My light strips are mounted under the kitchen cabinets so I can’t bring them closer. The hub cannot be brought closer – it’s in a location that has the wired Ethernet connection. The distance between the light strips and the hub is probably 20-30 ft. I’ve rebooted the hub and it finds the light strips but one still randomly turns on.
Are Osram Lightify strips even capable of getting a ZigBee update through Smartthings hub? I thought the Osram hub may be needed for that.
No only thru lightify hub so that would be a waste of time.
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I have 3 Garden Gardenspot minis on the same plug strip. All of them check for updates and reset periodically. But not all at the same time.They are all on the same software version.I have turned off the software update on the hub weeks ago and this behavior continues. Tom did mention that a power fail would cause this issue, so I put all three Minis on a UPS. The software check and the reset continues. It is not related to a power fail.
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My mistake. I thought he had one strip that updated and one that didn’t. Sounds like it’s not related to the hub at all.
Good feedback. I also tested with a variac transformer which allows me to adjust the input voltage to the bulbs and I had to lower it down to 50 or 60V before the bulbs would start doing something visibly strange (usually just blinking). I am not an expert on household electricity but it doesn’t seem likely that this would be happening often in the real world without something else acting strangely.
Just an idea for the ST update engineers, whatever changed in the update regarding the Osram Lightify bulbs, could you go back, and undo it please, because I have 4 bulbs that keep going offline and I’m getting bored un-screwing them every 3 days, one involves getting the ladder out, THEN I have to also change the dim settings to what it was before, maybe not today as it’s Christmas but before New Year’s if you can, thanks.
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The problem is that it isn’t just Osram light bulbs. I have two ZigBee lightbulbs, and around 17 motion detectors, and one garage door tilt sensor that are dropping offline, sending false positives and generally activing very erratic. I have already disabled OTA, unplugged the hub for 30 minutes and done numerous battery pulls trying to get things to stabilize. No such luck.
Last night we had lights flashing, the garage door sending SMS texts, but no lights when we got up to investigate because the motion sensors were all stuck.
But other than that…Merry Christmas.
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So glad I am not seeing this. I would throw it out the door.
I have lost control of all of my Zigbee devices. They are conveniently all OSRAM. I disconnected one from the network and now I can no longer get it to reconnect. I’ve tried rebooting the hub and the fixtures. Still no success. I’ve just been manually turning them off at night or unplugging them. This is very frustrating because they are my main sources of light in several rooms. I do hope this gets fixed soon.
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I just got pointed to this thread. I have 6 LeakSmart sensors that sent offline on the 22nd of December within 3 hours of each others…
This update is feeling like ST said “Here hold my beer, I am going to try something”
I have osrams going on all hours of the day and night. My contact and osrams keep falling off. It is a mess. I contact support and all I got was “Yea we know” and then nothing.
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Manufactory Reset them?