Lock Polling killing battery

Devices & Integrations
#1

I switched from Vera to ST and love it. However, since the switch my z-wave door lock batteries die rapidly and without warning. This never happened with Vera. I discovered the lock is being polled DOZENS of times a day.
Questions:

  1. Why is it polling so frequently? How do I limit the polling?
  2. Should I use an app like “Pollster?” If so, what is an appropriate frequency for polling?

Thanks for everyone’s help

#3

Zwave lock dths poll because the lock only reports each status like 32 total, per poll. So in otherwords if it didn’t poll this frequently, it would not stay synced day to day. Just the way they chose to implement zwave lock status. Annoying and drains batteries.

I wrote a custom dth to eliminate this but never released it. It’s not too hard to do the same.

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#4

Alrighty. So what do I, a newbie with no ability to wrote a custom anything, do about this? When I saw the batteries die frequently, it’s every 3 weeks and I get no warning. They were 70% yesterday and and dead today. Now I’m locked out.

#5

I used the official DTH for a generic zwave lock and my batteries lasted about 10 months. What DTH are you using? And what’s the brand and model of lock?

#6

I should back up…I had to look up what “DTH” stood for to understand what you guys are talking about. What are my options for answering the question “What DTH are you using?” The lock is a touchscreen Yale Z-wave lock. YRD240-NR-0BP

Thanks!

#7

Front Door get about 6 months worth of life with heavy traffic. Garage still going since last June. Back Doors installed last October and still going. Regular Duracell AAs

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#8

Sorry for not being clear, I had the impression since you mentioned pollster that you were already fairly familiar with the platform. That’s my bad.

Anyway, if you know where to look in the IDE for your devices, it will tell you what device type handler you’re using, but if you didn’t install a custom one, you’re just using the generic zwave lock handler.

#9

Thanks JDRoberts, that article helps.

Apparently I installed a few lock DTHs when trying to find a good app to control the lock. I didn’t have much luck with “Lock Manager” but in doing so it looks like I installed the “garyd9 : Z-Wave Schlage Touchscreen Lock” DTH for the lock.

Should I delete it as I’m not using it for anything? Seems like this could be a culprit. What is the generic zwave lock dth you’re using? Is it a default DTH that ST assigns?

Apologies for the naivete’.

#10

You won’t be able to delete it while a device is using it. You can just change what did DTH the device is assigned to through the IDE and pick the generic zwave lock there if you want. But @garyd9 's code is rightly very popular, as is lock manager, it just doesn’t seem like either of them would be the problem. They are both very widely used by the community.

SmartThings is very powerful, but not very intuitive or discoverable, so don’t worry about not figuring things out right away. We’ve pretty much all had to come to the community to ask. :sunglasses:

You should check to see just what smartapps are using the lock. Maybe you have multiples assigned. ( you can only have one DTH per device, but you could have multiple smartapps.)

#11

Thanks, man. This has been a helpful discussion.

After some monkeying I was able to delete and then reassign my DTH to a generic Z wave lock. I agree it doesn’t make a lot of sense that a reputable and often-used DTH would cause the problem but it’s my only avenue of exploration right now so that’s what I’m going with.

I’ll see if this does it. I’m also going to move the hub closer to the door as it’s now on a different floor behind a few walls. This might be worthless but I need to move it anyway so we’ll see what happens.

Thanks again. I’ll keep you posted as if you have nothing better to do than worry about my lock’s thirst for batteries. Ha! :wink:

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#12

Another possibility is that the device health option is causing problems, just because it’s a very new feature and it has caused problems for some people. You can turn that off in the IDE and see if it makes a difference. It’s not supposed to have included locks yet, but, hey, you never know. :nauseated_face:

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#13

Sometime the ST platform tends to poll excessively almost every few minutes and it’s a little random in that there’s no pattern. You may also want to check if the SmartApp is sending commands to the lock excessively (use the IDE Live Logging) which can be a source of drain.

You should also check out RBoy apps and get a subscription if you like it. We have a custom Enhanced Z-Wave lock DTH which provides a setting to cut down on excessive polling from the platform.

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#14

There are many people that use and like Rboy’s apps and consider them worth the license fee, but, as I’ve said before, I personally find it annoying when any developer posts a link to their own paid apps without mentioning that there’s a required license fee.

I’m not opposed at all to developers charging for their work if they choose to do so. But since most of the offerings contributed by this community are offered free, I think it’s important to mention when payment wil be required to use the code.

JMO

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#15

Thanks again, JDRoberts. I’ll definitely read that article and see if that might be the culprit. I removed the DTH I had running and swapped it for a generic zwave lock DTH. The lock was polled twice overnight but pinged about a dozen times. This is the opposite behavior I’ve seen in the logs over the past several weeks. Previously, the lock was polled about 10 times an hour. I’m trying to find information on the how pings different from poles but the proof will be in how long the batteries last this time around, I imagine.

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