I paired my 2 button Ikea Remote with the stock ST ZigBee Button Edge driver. Using the Edge driver my battery had stayed at 44% for about a month. It started at 44% when it was paired with the Edge driver.
When I was using an old style DTH it burned through a battery evey couple days.
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Concluding my (crude) battery life analysis of the Ikea 2 Button battery using 2xAA batteries with the original DTH it lasted ~52 days before completely dying.
I’m now trying the Edge Driver, initial findings look promising (whilst battery voltage started lower, the discharge rate is less over the few data points I’ve have to date):
Will keep monitoring…
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Great!
Is this your button?
What driver are you using?
Yep - this two button one.
I’m using the “Zigbee Button” Edge driver
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After about 5 weeks the battery level on my 2 button Ikea Remote using the ZigBee Button Edge driver dropped from 44% to 30%. It started at 44% and stayed at 44% until this morning.
I’m not sure the reported battery % within the ST app for the Edge Zigbee Button is working correctly though. As mine currently shows 8%.
Hence will continue to monitor with my multi meter for a while longer.
When I switch from the DTH to the Edge Driver the battery level immediately dropped from 87% to 44%, so it appears that the Edge driver reports battery levels about 50% less that the DTH.
Yep - same with the IKEA motion sensor too - went from 77% to 30% when switched to the “Zigbee Motion Sensor” edge driver.
Stupid question maybe but how do I get the edge-drivers? In the list of available drivers I can’'t see any “edge” only the ‘ZigBee Button’ driver. I really would like a solution to get my three buttons working OK again
You must go to the desired channel and enroll. Then install the desired driver(s).
In this case you want this channel: Channel and Drivers Web UI
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See Preview | SmartThings-managed Edge Device Drivers
Just follow the “Getting Started” instructions, once you’ve clicked through that you’ll see a list of drivers and you want to select the “Zigbee Button” and install it:
Remove the existing device (button) from ST, the re-add it using the “Scan for nearby devices” option. It should then automatically pick up the edge Zigbee Button when it re-registers it. You can check by going into the device in the ST app and looking at the settings - you should see a “Driver” option. Or use the ST CLI to show devices and it should show ZIGBEE under the Type eg:
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Thanks for the instructions. The link by andre_petinga didnn’t work but I found the link from the thread you provided and that worked out well. Then I got stuck att removing/adding the device. I have now the edge driver for my TRÅDFRI button and it will be very interesting to see if that makes any difference. Thanks!!
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Still spending too much mental energy on this. Decided to enroll for the Edge beta, the ST app shows “Zigbee Button” under “Drivers” and I made sure the Tradfri Button is nowhere on theapp or the IDE. When I “add device” nothing happens until I back out, then go “No room assigned” and see “Thing,” connected in the cloud. It does nothing and shows nothing, so it appears it’s still finding it the old way and it needs the “Zigbee button” Groovy handler added. Any hints?
ETA: while waiting for any help, loaded the Groovy DTH as per @jjjj’s instructions again and got the new button up, but would really like to test the Edge driver’s performance and see if it helps with battery life in my mesh.
When I updated my second button, I had to add/remove it a few times. First time it showed as a “Thing”, then did another scan and it found it as a button.
BTW: if you’re using a IKEA shortcut button (which looks very similar, but has only 1 button) eg:
I had to add my own package and publish my own driver to channel. Source here: daltskin/SmartThingsEdgeDrivers (github.com)
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Well, the edge driver didn’t sort it out. Battery life less than 24hrs. In all fairness it was a cheap cell, one from an 8-pack for a few dollars (and I never measured it prior to installing it).
When added, the button reported 44% then within 24 hrs it was dead. Measured it to below 2.5v if I remember correctly. That was my last 2032 cell
Too bad I only have one of the really old buttons, that one does not seem to be affected by this issue at all. I have a total of four buttons, where all three newer ones have issues, but the old one is flawless still. It is mounted just a few meters away from the one I tested above. Or is it the fact that the old button always seems to be connected directly to the hub but the new one isn’t. It always seems to mesh of something else even though they are about the same length away from the hub. I would like a way to force it to not mesh
In my experience, and many others report something similar, it is not what the buttons connect to but whether that changes. I have had buttons work fine for weeks and then fail in hours because they’ve changed their routing.
On another forum it was described as the button still trying to use the old route even when there was a new one, though I don’t know if there was any rigorous low level analysis behind that.
Given the problem was triggered by an update to the Zigbee stack, there is always the hope that a further update might cure the issue. It rather depends where the flaw actually is. It is tempting to look to Ikea but it might be we should be looking at a chip manufacturer instead.
I have resorted to using these and hard wiring my buttons to getting them to work.
SMAKN® Premium External Power Supply 3v 1A AC/DC Adapter, Plug Tip: 5.5mm x 2.5mm https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00R5BT2O2/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_VZFGD2A5ATP0MK9VKNPC?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
probably there is a bug in the battery level, there are two ranges for battery in Zigbee
[0…100] (%)
[0…255] (byte)
and different manufacturers use different ranges. so likely DTH treat value 87 as percent, but edge driver uses byte scale
I just put a new battery in this Ikea 2 button remote, and it reads 44%.
The button stopped working with the old battery when the battery indicator was at 30%
The battery lasted about 6 weeks using the Edge drive, vs 1 or 2 days with the DTH. The button got moved twice in that 6 weeks.
The following is a picture of the remote.
Well 6 weeks is way better than 2 days… but still a fair bit short of the 18-24 months that IKEA claimed we should expect.
Do you know what level of firmware you are running on your button?