Ship a repeater too… I’m convinced that is the core of the problem.
GOOD LUCK! Best news in several months.
That’s an interesting thought. Is anybody having these issues WITHOUT an Ikea repeater or outlet? I have 2 5 button remotes, 1 on/off remote, 2 blinds and several Tradfri bulbs and have not had this battery drain issue come up (knock on wood). No Tradfri repeaters or outlets in my house.
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It is purely a guess… But in my house the button in the room with the hub works fine as do 5 of my 7 blinds… 2 of my blinds are doing a hop and they last 4 weeks. The others last 6 months.
Sorry can’t really say about my setup, as I have a few ikea outlets and buttons scattered around my house.
I have no repeaters but the problem remains. Nevertheless this doesn’t kill your theory as all bulbs are repeaters and I have lots of them.
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The only certainty I have is that there is a difference between the ST 2.9.0 and 5.x.x Zigbee versions that is significant. I am not saying the problem didn’t exist with 2.9.0 at all, but I didn’t and still don’t see it, but with 5.x.x it is like throwing a switch.
My opinion remains that changes of button routing are the trigger. Back when I logged the bug in March I probably had a relatively weak mesh. All my buttons failed inside two days. I believe I have a better one now and devices don’t see the need to change their routing so much so my buttons can last weeks before the status quote is disturbed.
As for the Tradfri Outlets. I treat them with suspicion. They can certainly mess up battery reporting.
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I don’t have any tradfri outlets, in fact I have no other IKEA/tradfri products except the six 2 button ‘dimmers’. Problem persists.
Lots of aurora bulbs that act as repeaters though.
I’ve given up waiting for this to be fixed and have started replacing them all with aotec buttons.
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My house is ALL ZWave… I have no Zigbee devices other than the IKEA battery blinds which don’t signal repeat… So I removed ALL of the powered repeaters and i bought a bunch more coin cells (I’m putting the kids of my local dollar store owner through college on the sale of cheap coil cells) I have added a couple of buttons to Smartthings (complete with the annoying up is down and down is up) and will report back in a couple of days if this works.
I’m having the same issue. This happened after the handler was updated on smart things: did it and the batteries, which lasted all over an year, died in a day. Changed and died again. I’m very disappointed, as I got this hub as works with anything, but when something goes wrong no one can help.
Have anyone manage to revert the handler?
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It doesn’t appear that the problem is the DTH, rather it is a change to the Zigbee stack used in the hub. Unfortunately we as individuals don’t have any way to change that stack on the hub. 
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I don’t have any repeaters and use the 5 button and 2 button switches from IKEA without any issues (last changed the batteries 6 months ago).
The only caveat to add is the battery reported levels fluctuate by the day from 0 to 80% and everything in between, however they still work so I ignore the reported levels.
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With all of my repeaters removed the buttons are not draining the batteries… The bad news as everyone knows the Zigbee range is about 20’ (less if you are going through a wall) so the buttons are alive… but you find that you need to pull them off of their magnet and wave them over your head when you push them…
This is clearly something with how the buttons deal with a “hop” or a “new” or unexpected “hop”
Which make and model repeaters did you remove?
I’ve other zigbee devices that are not affected (aqara cube and motion sensor), only the IKEA 2 buttons are draining battery / unpairing, reason why I speculate it could be the handler.
It’s definitely an ikea-specific issue, and it’s being reported as a problem with other hubs, not just SmartThings. And SmartThings hubs with older firmware but the same DTH are not having the problem.
So it’s not just zigbee, it’s the way Ikea has implemented zigbee for those specific devices.
It’s not the first time Ikea has had this kind of standards issue, they pretty clearly test their devices with their own hub but no one else’s.
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No repeaters as such but lots of Hue bulbs through Hue bridge, very little except sensors, some sockets and Ikea directly through ST. I have the drain issue with blinds, 2/5 button and Symfonisk remotes…
Maybe of interest; I got some USB 5v to 3v cables and, with the use of some rubber disks for dummy cr2032’s, have rigged a temporary USB powered solution for a couple of the 5 button remotes. Seems to work OK but nowhere near ideal;
The ones from IKEA that came with the blinds… But as other have posted, the buttons will hop from any powered Zigbee device and will be dead in a few days. This includes bulbs, plugs, etc.
I’m pretty sure we have figured out the problem… Now we just need IKEA to fix it.
Zigbee bulbs are “powered” devices and can act as repeaters.
The hue bridge forms its own mini network. Bulbs connected through the hue bridge will only act as repeaters for other devices connected to that hue bridge. Not for other zigbee devices connected directly to the smartthings hub.
See the community FAQ:
FAQ: Are Smart Bulbs Repeaters? (Updated 2019: the new answer is yes, but may be inconsistent)
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You can add me to the list of people who have given up on the IKEA buttons. As they are they are “broken” in their current firmware state. I have ordered a few Aqara buttons and an Aqara cube to replace all of my Ikea buttons.
Next time Blind #7 dies (in 3 weeks) I will completely reset the blind and see if it fixes its battery issue, the other 6 blinds are working normally with no other Zigbee devices in my house.
One last thought… on the FAQ page [2021] Battery Power Switches and Buttons - #11 by JDRoberts
The FAQ is still posting these buttons as “compatible” with smart things. While that is technically true, we should make it clear to potential customers that they only really work with the IKEA hub and even then they can not be used to run scripts or drive other automations. If you dig into the “detailed” FAQ pages on the IKEA battery buttons you will find the bad news about the batteries… But it probably worth while updating the main FAQ page to warn potential customers.
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