Ikea 5 button remote killing batteries

Aqara buttons will probably have it’s own set of issues since they don’t use standard zigbee profiles…

Done, thanks for the suggestion. :sunglasses:

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Yes I know… out of the frying pan into the fire!
I will probably leave my blinds on Smartthings and run the aqara buttons off of my HUSBZB dongle on Home Assistant.

  1. My Ikea 5 button remote has been working since mid Feb, still reporting 74% (havent been game to disturb it by measuring actual battery).
    During this time I changed 2.4g channel to #1.
    Just removed the 2 Ikea repeaters, so thought it was time to test the Ikea 2 button rocker. Set up 2 using Scan Nearby, neither reported battery state in And. App or IDE. Set the third up using IKEA Button and it did report battery in both App and IDE. The only difference I could find in the IDE is that the first two not show Battery, everything else was same.
    Now - the first 2 lasted 3 days and the 3rd lasted 6 days !
    PS when I added one of the first 2 again, this time using IKEA Button method and it still did not report battery. Something very strange as all report the same firmware revision!?!?
    Ah-well back into the cupboard with all the others.

Ya same here, I removed all of my repeaters which means the buttons at the front of the house work… but barely and they would take a few pushes for the Smartthings hub to see them… It died after 5 days. It is clear that the repeaters are at play (since they die within 48 hours if paired to a repeater) But they are still dying without repeaters. But the buttons in the room with the hub last about 6 months. Still less than advertised but that is acceptable (ish)

Again, guessing here, but maybe they are trying to phone home with a status update (hi I was pushed up) and they need a response from the hub or repeater, (in IT lingo we call this a “handshake”). No response and they call again and again and again.

They are all in my junk drawer now.

So far the most viable theory floating around (but not fully confirmed yet) based on reports from multiple platforms is that for some reason these devices are responding with a long poll rather than a short poll. That would use up battery much more quickly.

The data for this is that there doesn’t seem to be more messages being sent, which is what would happen in the scenario you described. But longer messages could have the same affect.

Whatever it is, it’s weird. :thinking:

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You are lucky! All my 3 that died within 6 days is in the same room as the ST hub!

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I wanted to give short update on my findings with the ikea on/off buttons. I have 4 in my home and I have had the same problem with the battery drain, within 48 hours any new battery would be fully drained. So after having wasted like 8 batteries I gave up. A week ago I had to install a new IKEA light bulb and I couldn’t get my smartthings hub to link the new bulb. So I read somewhere that the hub being to close to a wifi router could cause this. I moved the hub to a different room in my home away from the router and voila, the hub saw the light bulb straight away.

Out of curiousity I then added a new battery to one of my on/off buttons and paired it again. This on/off button is now online for 72 hours and still reporting 100% battery. I have now added the other 3 buttons again and will keep monitoring them. So far so good, cross my fingers!

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They do, but when they stick, they do run for years without any issue.

There is another rumor that this only is an issue on V2 hubs… Do you know if this problem exists with V3 hubs too?

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Out of curiosity, what ZigBee channel are people on?

I use 18 and 19.

I use 11 zigbee and 11 WiFi. These two are about as far apart as you can get. :sunglasses:

I have v3. Yes it’s a problem.

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I am getting about one month battery life out of FYRTUR blinds with ST Hub. It should be much more. I think it’s the same problem as the remotes.

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Ikea repeaters or no repeaters doesn’t matter for me. Still battery flat within days. I still have zigbee bulbs/globes though however ide says the remotes are connected directly to Hub.

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New thread with a poll on which hub people have if they are having this problem

Ikea Button Battery Issue Hub Poll (2021)

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I had a SmartThings v2 UK version and upgraded to a Aeotec v3 EU version and have not had any issues with the IKEA battery drain after upgrade.

I still have same problems that I have to pull to refresh in the iOS app to fetch the device status.

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Here’s a update from the guy with SmartThings.

Progress is being made.

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Two days? That simply isn’t how it works. My buttons can run for three or four weeks and then eat three batteries in a week.

My gut feeling is that routing is a factor. If the mesh is such that the button always picks the same router or routes direct to the hub it seems to be happy. If one day a different route is selected it is dead in one to two days.

I don’t rule out certain firmware versions of Tradfri Outlets either. They can do some weird stuff to battery reporting sometimes. I actually wish I didn’t have them everywhere.

Unfortunately I have three outlets very close to my hub so the routes often change.

It shouldn’t be forgotten that it is also a factor of the hub Zigbee firmware version. 2.9.0 still works fine with the buttons. I’ve not changed a battery since April on that firmware.

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