Motion sensors are useless recently with false alerts

Have had motion sensor downstairs and upstairs tied to hue bulbs for a few years now (insider tester in uk) and had very few false trips but over the last 2 months my sensors are useless. 1 of these is less than 6 months old. We have been away all day today and take a look at the attached log. I had to turn off the turn on lights on motion as the house was like a disco at night.

The sensors and hubs have all been reset and rejoined. Batteries are at 67% on both devices. It’s become so bad recently im thinking of changing to different sensors. Anyone else having this issue as it seems software related to me.

Battery levels are often completely wrong. False positives almost always happens to my motion sensors when the batteries are low, despite ST sometimes still saying they are 100%!

Every time I’ve replaced the batteries the FP problems go away, it’s just annoying that it’s seemingly impossible to get an accurate battery reading from these devices…

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If these are SmartThing branded (Centralite) , I bet if you change batteries they will work as expected. As many others have said, battery level readings are not accurate. I have had many different SmartThing brand sensors die/drop off with last reading of 67% without warning. False activations too. When I pull battery and measure with DVM they read up to 2.82V. The motion sensors drop off and give false readings when volts are around 2.8. The multi seem to be useable down to about 2.67V
I learned to use Simple Device viewer to monitor since you cannot rely on the built in health reporting either. I cannot use Home Armed mode of SHM because all the false activations waking me and the wife.

I ended up throwing away all my ST motion sensors and moving to z-wave motion sensors instead. Huge increase in reliability.

Hi @pcdave,

You really need this app:

The only problem, the developer has jumped ship to Hubitate Elevated platform and the GitHub location is broken. I can give you my copy af the code, just PM me your e-mail and I will give you a link to my storage.

Hi all,

Thanks for the assistance I have ordered new batteries that should arrive today so will try that. I’m also curious as to what you have jumped ship to pswired?

Did look at a few other sensors (fibaro) and eco systems such as hive as we have hive heating. Getting a bit tired of the smart things but im kind of tied into right now.

David, did the new batteries solve the false positives?

I added 1-1/2 inch cardboard blinders around the face of the sensor, which makes them more directional.