After the November SmartThings Hub firmware update, I have been receiving a lot of false positives from one of my SmartThings Mutipurpose Sensors mounted on a door, indicating it opened and closed at the same time when the door is deadbolted shut. When I look at the sensor in the app, it shows that the battery has a full charge and there are also false positives indicating its aceleratometer has occasionally tripped.
The false positives seem to be getting more frequent, while another sensor on a different door is starting to experience a similar issue where it’s aceleratometer seems to be falsely registering movement when the door itself is deadbolted. However, it is not enough to trigger a false positive like the front door sensor. The battery level on the other door sensor is also showing 100% in the app.
Anyone have any ideas as to why this is happening?
My experience of this is: replace the battery and reset the sensor.
The sensors are jittering open/close, or reporting only temperature but not movement/open close when battery isdead.
To verify your battery is really 100% and not wrongly reported like usually ST sensors do, remove the battery, press the reset button of the senor while inserting again the battery: if the led doesn’t lit up, the battery is dead.
Any easy way to see what you battery level is without messing with the sensor since reporting is broke on the Centralite versions in the stock DTH:
Open logging in the IDE
Go to the app and hit refresh on the thing page for the sensor
Look at the log for the sensor. It will show the battery raw value. 29 is 2.9 v, 28 is 2.8v etc. My model 3321-S multis stop reporting open/close after dropping below 2.6v.
I record the BatteryLevel from my sensors and dump that in an MySQL database for more than one year, for the sensor above, you can see how the battery level moves over time.
When you see a drop and then back to 100% it means the battery was replaced because the sensor wasn’t responding anymore.
It actually shows in the log, not on the the device page. Sometime around the begining of September they changed the stock DTH and broke the battery reporting for the Centralite models (Also for other ST branded senors like leak sand motion). They read 100% all the time, even when they get low enough to stop reporting anything. I have resorted to using a modified DTH that correctly reports battery percentage for my ranges for most of mine. This refresh with logging on is how I get percentages on the couple that I have running with the stock DTH (wanted local processing) with out pulling the battery to measure.
Ok i see it now.
So next time I have one disconnecting or behaving erratically I have a check but since the sensor generally doesn’t get online after reinserting the same battery I doubt this will change anything.
Even ST support always encourage to change the battery in such caaes as it also depends on the radio condition to reach the hub.
Anyway thanks
I checked all my sensors one by one following your method.
I found that between 2.8V to 3.2V the sensor is 100% in the device view
Then starts the mess and strange… I have one at 1.8V showing 30% remaining that works like a charm while it’s outside and has a bunch of walls to cross to reach the hub…
I have one at 2.0V showing 50% (?) that is straight to the hub without any perturbation/wall.
I have finally one at 2.6V showing 83% and another one at 2.4V showing 90%…
So doing that, I had again a sensor behaving like I share earlier: so far it was 100%. I refreshed it then reported after the refresh 2.8 then found itself “open” while it is for sure “close”. So I remove the battery, press the reset button while inserting the battery again: no LED lit. Done it 2 times, same.
Put a new battery while pressing the reset button: the sensor is back.
By chance, do you have a V1 hub? Are you using SmartSense Multi Sensor for the DTH? My 3321-S multis never come off 100% now with the stock DTH on a V2 after they tried changing the way the percentages were calculated away from the battery table version. I have had 2 stop reporting open/close, measured the voltage and both were around 2.55v but showed 100% and reseating the battery did nothing. Every once in a while reseating the battery gets a stuck one going again, but the batteries are over 2.6v. Support changed my DTH while trouble shooting which got the battery off of 100% but broke the temperature and being able to use them on a garage door (tilt).
The DTH handles battery reporting of Samsung Multiv4 differently. They use the old battery table style. It was 67-68% in the past. I am out of luck on the warranty. I have slowly been replacing them and have 3 just monitoring refrigerator temperatures. Most are running a modified DTH where all parts of the sensor are working and eventually they all will be replaced.
It could be the magnet is just on the edge of it’s range. If it is installed on wood, temperature and humidity in the house as it changes seasons could cause the gap between the sensor and magnet to increase. This could make a working sensor become irratic.
Thanks for the suggestions @rhoffer. Looking at the IDE and the sensor log for the “CentraLite” 3321-S, the battery raw value is 2.9v on a v2 hub with firmware version 000.019.00017.
The lowest level I have is 2.2v on a Garage Door sensor, but it’s not as erratic as the front door one which is mounted on a heavy wooden door. Since it has been installed for about a year, I don’t think this is the issue, but I’ll try replacing the battery when I get the chance to see if improves the behavior.
I’ve also noticed the firmware on the erratic front door sensor doesn’t appear to be current, I I’m showing:
Current Version: 0x11035310
Target Version: 0x1F015310
It would stand to reason that the firmware may not have updated because of the battery level being below 3v. I’ll give it a shot and let you know.
This is what the Samsung troubleshooting guide has…not much help. You should be able to force a firmware check from the device’s page in the IDE. I assume you have OTA updates for zigbee enabled since you have others on the current firmware. A full battery or just reseating it may kick start it into updating.
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