The button I sent him would eat a battery within 24 hrs.
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That’s kind of my point. Every single one of my Ikea buttons can and has eaten a battery in 24 hours and those that have been allowed to have done so repeatedly. When the Zigbee update was pushed out into production on the V2 hubs I had predicted the sky would fall in immediately because until then my experience was that no battery would last more than 24-48 hours with that Zigbee version on the hub. I was pretty frustrated that ST pushed out the update knowing what was likely to happen to a lot of users.
The reality was different though, the problems trickled in over a period of weeks. My buttons started failing in about three days rather than a matter of hours. I moved most to my other hub where I knew they’d be fine but the one I left behind lasted four weeks before it suddenly failed. Since then it has lasted two weeks, three days, four days, a month (still showing 100% battery when it failed), four days, one day, and over three weeks.
I’ve moved other buttons across to see how they behave. One most recently lasted one week, then had three battery changes in four days, then lasted a week, and has been going a week on the latest battery.
The pattern is always the same. No sign of battery drain at all, and then a totally drained battery in hours. I am convinced there is a trigger.
Having a button that is known to exhibit the problem is valuable. Having it in an environment where it regularly exhibits it is the tricky part.
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24 hours? You are lucky. My lasted 14 hours. No matter what brand of batteries. I have replaced them 3-4 times, before i have stopped. Now remotes are just seating there without any function. Luckily i have plenty of ecosmart remotes, but i have not tested them yet.
Here’s an update not a good one.
I asked if all the settings and firmware on his hub matched exactly to mine. Still waiting on an answer.
I had deregistered all my Ikea 2 buttons some months ago. Had tried changing my wifi bands, etc. So I brought back 3 buttons, reregistered them with new batteries AND 2 died within a few days; however one is still running since 5 Aug.
Interestingly, only one of the three actually showed any battery state in the St app or IDE. The one that showed battery status was registed as an Ikea button while the others were by Discover Nearby. So I thought ahhh-ha! And reregisted one of the “no batt status” one using Ikea Button - - but alas it still showed no battery status.
As far as I can recall all had the same firmware version, which was listed as “current” on the Ikea Firmware site.
I am now wondering if the battery discharge problem relates to zigbee interference as I have the Hue hub near the main ST wifi Hub (also not too far from the wifi router), and do have 2 additional ST wifi Hubs (not very familiar with how zigbee works, sorry).
PS 2 more details:
- The still working Button is connected via my downstairs wifiHub rather than the main wifiHub directly across the room from it
This Device (0A0E) ↔ Samsung Connect Home (Serial #: RF7M803???S) ↔ SmartThings Hub - The IDE does not even report that the device has a “Current State : Battery” field.
You probably don’t want to be the go-between on this, but on my V2 Hub one way to trigger this is to route the button through a repeater that is within a few feet of the Hub (that would kill them quick) or if you route them through a repeater and then unplug the repeater (trigger a new mesh/route) and that will cause them to die. If the mesh/routing is stable and the the buttons are close to the hub they will work for about 6 months… and then die.
Maybe have the Samsung tech try that. That should cause the issue on both V2 and V3 Hubs, at least that is the latest theory.
As for the blinds, they also seem to remember the mesh route and will drain their batteries if the mesh changes. In my house I managed to fix this by removing all of the repeaters and then resetting the blinds back to factory and then linking them back to the Smartthings hub. But this only works for customers who have NO other Zibgee powered devices in their house since most powered devices will act as repeaters and will build a mesh (with some exceptions) and where the hub is in the same room as the blinds. Because of the large size of the blind battery they take about a month to drain… Normally they should last 6 months.
Thanks for your help, you have gotten the closest to fixing this!
I’m confident that is what I see too.
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I forwarded your post to the developer. I also asked for an update.
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I agree with your idea.
I have IKEA Shortcut Button which eats up all the CR2032s in my home.
Recently, the battery got drained when
-
ST Hub Firmware gets updated so that ST Hub is down for several minutes
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Power outtage for 30 minutes in my house
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When I manually restarted ST Hub for testing of the ST Edge Driver.
All of these situations are causing rearrangement of the mesh routing.
I just had to change the battery in an On/Off button that was still reading 100% for the battery (it would have been changed in March when this saga began for me). So on the face of it the usual drain problem. But in this case:
- This button was on my beta hub which has older Zigbee firmware and has thus far been immune to the problem.
- The latest route showing in the IDE has an unknown device in it.
I draw no conclusions, just mention it on the remote chance it is significant.
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Have there been any updates to this issues that I’ve missed?
If there have then I have missed them too. Personally I am going through a relatively quiet period. I’ve only changed three batteries in the last month, and one of them was probably just a routine change (I don’t think the battery life is anything special to start with). However I did have a couple of repeaters unplugged for a while yesterday so that could shake up the mesh and trigger a few failures.
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Just received my button back from the developer. They could not reproduce the problem on there hub. They also sent me a button that they knew to be in working order. However when I added it to my hub the battery was dead within 24hrs.
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Hmmm…do they have the same model hub you do?
To me the most important question is does the routing chop and change on their mesh? Back in March I probably had a rather ropey mesh and batteries lasted a day. Now it is a lot better and instances of battery drain are rarer.
I also remain suspicious of Tradfri Outlets as repeaters, especially those not running the latest firmware.
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I think I will throw in the towel with these Tradfri buttons, as it has been a while now and I haven’t been able to use certain lights since then, and all along I was waiting for a miracle…I have a handful of Tradfri Outlets in my house, which vastly out number the buttons and also by cost, so I need to keep them in place.
Luckily I only have 3 buttons to replace, but now I need to find a decent replacement that actually works, my previous Aqara ones drop off every couple of months, so I suppose in total I have about 8 to replace 
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For what seemed like a good reason at the time (and may well have been), I moved my Zigbee channels at the weekend. End result was my arrival/presence sensor tags were binned as I spent hours trying to pair them again and they just weren’t having it. I like the things when they work but they really don’t like pairing. So I’ve finally started using mobile presence more and I’ve also invested in SmartTags in the hope they will develop. My Zigbee mesh is taking rather a long time to stabilise which, of course, triggers the Ikea battery drain. Having changed at least twelve batteries in the last three days (probably several more as I lost count) I’ve conceded defeat and ordered eleven replacement buttons. I’ll keep a couple online just to monitor them.
Earlier this year I junked my Aqara sensors and Z-Wave outlets, and sold my Z-Wave+ outlets for a nominal price. It has been a disproportionately expensive year, even when buying at the extreme budget end of the market.
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What buttons did you decide to go with?
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