Iris Contact Sensors in Fridge/Freezer

There’s a small possibility that the harsh conditions are causing the batteries to cut out and that this particular device with each restart is rechecking its settings and therefore sending another report.

Normally, you would look at lithium batteries for cold weather situations, but I don’t know if they’re compatible with this particular device.

rechargeables would definitely have more problems in a freezer.

That is a possibility and these have lithium batteries in them.

I changed the code to report at a minimum time of one hour and a max of two hours. It also reports at 5° increments.

I then excluded the device, reset it, and then repaired it to the hub. It was found and identified automatically with the modified code.

So far, it’s only reported on the 5° change. It hasn’t been two hours since the repairing, so we will see what happens then.

I believe it resets the two hour counter with each temp change report. I’m not sure.

I may set it to report on a temp change of 100° and also to report on a certain time schedule. That will probably cut out the constant temp changes.

I’m going to report everything I find here.

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Please do @bamarayne. I have one in my deep freeze and it is going crazy. Been there a day and already down to 66%

Preliminary reporting:

Ok it seems to be working now. To rehash what I did, this:

Exclude sensor from ST and remove in app.
Remove battery and reset sensor.
Repair sensor to ST.
Wait a couple of hours.

It’s now reporting every 2 hours and only the 5 degree changes. I reset it at 1:46 pm and the report at 2:03 pm was my hitting the refresh.

I wonder if when we install a device if it then fingerprinted into the cloud with a copy of the device type attached. And, does it run off of that device type? But what about saving and republishing it? You’d think that would refresh the server copy, but it doesn’t seem to look that way.

Could you link to the github device type you are using with the changes included?

I’d be happy to… but I need someone to give me the directions on it.

I’m using code by @mitchpond. i changed the code based on the help from another community member, @plantucha.

This is a link to the post relating to that.

This is a link further up in this thread where I got the code:

And this is the change from my version of the code, this is line 285:
“zcl global send-me-a-report 0x402 0 0x29 3600 7200 {F401}”,

Sorry, I’m still trying to figure out all of the quirks of the forum… and I’ve been to github very little… I am trying to figure it out though.

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It does, but the sensor does not get reconfigured unless you remove and re-pair. I could add a configure button, but then you have to get the timing right when waking the sensor up to reconfigure since they’re asleep 99% of the time

Well, what if to reconfigure you have to hit the refresh button first, and then the configure button?

Would that work?

Oh, and if I change the code on any device, do I have to remove and repair it as well? or is that just for this particular smartapp?

Not likely. These types of battery-powered sensors are not listening except for during pairing/join and for a short window after they wake up to report updates to the hub. The best way to do it is to reset the device and re-join. You shouldn’t need to delete the device from ST, just reset and re-join.

Hard-wired devices like light switches and bulbs can listen continuously without worrying about draining the batteries, so those can be refreshed and reconfigured whenever.

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Ok, thanks. That makes a lot of sense… also tells me why my changes did not occur with my motion sensors.

Question:

I have a smartapp set up to tell me if the temp goes over a certain amount. If I configure the device to not report temp, will the app know if the temp goes up? So, is the app polling the device or is just waiting for the device to report a temp that is too high?

Also, is it possible to configure the device to only report if the temp is above a set level and of course still report the open/close?

Thanks for answering all of my questions… it is appreciated.

Updates are pushed from the sensor to the hub. You can’t really poll these devices since they’re “sleepy”.

I don’t believe that this is an option as far as reporting goes. You can set a reporting interval and a minimum reportable change, but there’s no provision for temperature limits or setpoints.

Ok. Thanks for writing this app and talking with me about it. I appreciate it.

I have one more question for you…

What lines in the code define the battery reporting?

I’d like it to send the battery % at the same time that it sends the temp.

Thanks.

Just out of curiosity - how often was it reporting before you made your change? Mine appears to be reporting no more than once an hour and if no change, it will skip a report. It is down to 55% battery life, BUT when I placed my ST motion sensor in my refrigerator, it dropped down to 55% within a week and has stayed there ever since. Not sure if I should be concerned or not with the Iris contact sensor battery life to the point where I should change reporting interval.

Mine was reporting every few minutes… Literally anywhere from 8 - 12 times an hour. Now is reporting every two hours.

Since its in the deep freeze I’m going to have it report every 12 hours. There isn’t a need for any more. Even if I lose power right after a report it still takes a couple of days to lose the meat.

That may not be a bad idea. I’m kind of paranoid though and want to make sure I see regular reports to ensure the device is still connected; 12 hours is probably too long for my comfort zone :slight_smile: . Maybe once this battery dies, I’ll set it to 2 or 3 hr reporting.

Line 281

There’s not a way to tell it to always send both together, but you can adjust the interval so that it’s not as frequent.

People have reported the same thing when using a ST Multi outdoors in the winter. It’s just the nature of the batteries; the voltage is going to droop when they’re exposed to very cold temps. I’ve heard that the Energizer e2 lithiums do pretty well in the cold, FWIW.

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Correct, I use lithium AAs in my outdoor Honeywell temperature sensors and they last upwards of 2 years.

Same for using them in some Acurite sensors I kept on my boat. There I was tracking the high/low temps to get a better idea how the bilge was doing through being in-water over the winter. Air temp in the salon was about the same as outside, bilge stayed right near water temp of 42F (even with a skin of ice on it).

At some point I do want to automate monitoring on the boat, but for now offline stuff works fine.

Definitely look into using lithiums anywhere you’re going to be dealing with low temp extremes.

@mitchp I know this is an older post, but I wanted to let you know…

The zigbee devices can be updated on the fly with the configure button. No need to remove and repair.

I know it works for the iris sensors anyway, not sure about anything else.

I’ve found the Iris devices to be pretty responsive to on-the-fly reconfigures, but not all ZigBee devices are. Particularly those with smaller batteries… (Quirky)

edit: //// Of course no actual correlation to battery size, I’ve just noticed that those sensors which need to be more conservative with their energy use tend to be sleepier.

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