Batteries go dead very quickly as soon as the device has trouble connecting. If the connectivity is good it lasts a few months. If it loses connectivity it can go down from 70% to flat in a couple of days. Seems to kill the battery when it cannot connect. Have no idea how to stop this behaviour.
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Strange this is the one that died was literally a few feet away from the Hub.
I’m going to install another one at the other side of the house, so I will keep an eye on all three, before I commit to buying some more.
Hub reboots are a common cause of loss of connectivity even among native sensors. When smartthings sensors get stuck you only need to worry about reseating the battery. With these sensors if the same thing happens you need to get to it quickly to prevent it draining all the power. Hence me adding the heatbeat to the DTH to monitor connectivity.
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You can install a Device Monitor smartapp.
That’s the only way I know.
I’m a big fan of:
It’s really very good!
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Me too, already installed. I just wondered if you were getting notifications about ‘lost’ sensors. Thanks.
i have 27 orvibo contact sensors. Of these I have one which is dropping occasionally. I’ve proven this is location based by swapping them around. That particular location is baffling as it is quite close to the hub and mesh but since I know it’s not hardware I will move it at some point.
I had tremendous stability issues a little while back as I was building up my network and all zigbee sensors including my smartthings ones were constantly getting lost or stuck. I was close to giving up until I found the root cause to be zigbee bulbs (osram) causing it. Once I moved all those off I’ve had excellent reliability and the only time I have any issues is when the hub is rebooted or I add and remove things from the zigbee mesh.
I added the heartbeat during the times of instability to help me track “lost” sensors. In fact, I have tinkered with other DTH of other “quiet” devices to give me the same facility so that I monitor their connectivity.
I have another 10 door contact due to arrive soon and from a hardware perspective have only had one which I would call defective. Hope that helps.
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Thanks for the info.
The contact sensor that I was having problems with has dropped from 100% battery last night to 65% this morning!
Any ideas what I could do?
It’s only a couple of feet from the hub, so can’t see it being a signal issue.
Could it be the Window it’s on having a metal frame is triggering the sensor
I’ve learnt the hard way that distance is not the only thing that determines signal quality, not signal strength.
Secondly, smartthings staff will also tell you this, that monitoring battery power levels of lithium batteries are difficult and power levels fall off a cliff at some point. It’s not an exact science and you will notice them dropping in levels as it is averaged over time. If it drops again I would replace the battery unless you’d prefer to wait until it does completely to maximise life.
It’s using the battery that came with the Orvibo sensor so is not a ‘known make’
I have some branded batteries coming today from Amazon so will swap it out and see what happens.
If it still drops I will take it off the window and then see what happens.
Is the heartbeat suppose to last forever? I have two of these sensors at windows that I don’t use often (for several days/weeks) and both of them stop to send heartbeats in a day or two. Is that expected? After the heartbeat stop, when I open the window they do not respond immediately and I need to open/close them several times for them to start working which makes me don’t trust them for security applications…
I’ve had zero luck getting any door contacts working on metal frames. So you’ve done well to have it working at all!
Doesn’t that rule out most doors / windows in the UK ?
It’s UPVC, but they contain a lot of metal dont they ?
Yes it should continue forever hence me putting it in. What you’re describing is a signal issue. People then respond with that it cannot be because my signal is great etc … I do not have a fix for that it is up to yourself to figure out. I have zero affiliation to them.
These contacts do not have strong signal strength. When they have trouble they exhibit exactly what you describe and as I said before, will then rapidly drain battery in that state.
Put these same contacts next to the hub. See if the heartbeat ever stops after a few days.
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On most of the upvc frames I have they are fine. There are a couple in my house which are older which I cannot get any contacts to work reliably with. My suspicion lies with the metal content.
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Thanks for all your help. I will have a play around with them before I commit to buying more of them.
Both of my sensors are in the same room as the hub with direct line of sight between hub-sensor and around 2-4 meters distance. That is why I didn’t consider a signal issue 
Also both of them report 100% signal battery and they do not seem to drain battery as one of them was in that state (no heartbeat) for more than a week.
My initial guess was that they entered a “deep” state to save battery as no motion/movement was detected but if you say the heartbeat is suppose to stay on then I am out of ideas. Will replace the batteries and see. Shame as I was thinking on ordering a bunch of them to cover all windows. 
Thanks for the help!!
No, they do not sleep if they are talking to the hub properly. Try what I said and place next to the hub for a few days to discount faulty hardware.
Just checked the sensor again and it was showing 60% battery this morning and now it shows 90% !