Ed-ST:
Bought a starter kit from Samsung and activated the presence fob on 24 Feb 2016 and the battery stated 100%. A day later, the battery stated 88% in the morning and in the evening, it’s showing 75%.
This fob has been in the house most of the day with about 3 hours away from home. Not looking good.
Most zigbee battery-powered devices use tier reporting for battery reserves. The drop to 88% is expected, and just means it’s less than 100%. Even 99.9% is reported as 88.
Many battery-powered " sleepy" devices reports battery levels in tiers. The exact tiers will vary by device.
For most contact sensors, the tier that is reported as “88%” really means “above 87% and below 100%”
So as soon as battery level drops below 100%, even to 99%, it will likely be reported by SmartThings as 88%, although the exact buckets vary by DTH/Edge Driver.
What you need to watch is the trend. If it drops 10% in one day. That was probably just a tier drop. You can even bounce back-and-forth by 10% because it’s right at the threshold of a tier.
But if it’s dropping 10% every week, that’s a different problem.
If you’ve had any device off-line for a while, it’s really common for it to come back in the next lower tier, which looks like a 10% drop but might’ve been a drop of ha…