For the last few months my ST water leak sensors have been going offline and then back online 20-30 times a day. It’s frying the batteries. ST v3 hub. Happens to sensors close to the base and far away. Nothing changed it just started happening. Removing and re adding them doesn’t seem to help. Something went haywire. I’ve seen some commentary online but nothing exactly the same. Muting the notifications isn’t helpful because the entire idea is to be notified of a leak. Plus it’s killing batters in weeks instead of months and months. Help!!
I have seen the same thing with both Sensative and Zooz water sensors. Not quite 20-30 times a day, but probably every day or every other day. They go offline and then come back online by themselves later in the day. My best guess is that ST changed the checkin interval, but I haven’t verified that.
What edge driver are they using?
You can find it at the advanced page of the web interface:
And then click on the device name to see its details.
Here is what I see – these are the actual ST water leak detectors… it’s probably 1-2 times per hour – so it’s a ton… and they stay offline quite a lot…
Ok, those are using the stock edge Drivers and they are an officially supported device, so you can go ahead and open a support ticket for them.
Another community member may have a suggestion for a custom edge driver that might help.
Meanwhile, what’s the physical layout with regard to these devices? In particular, how far are they from the hub and what repeaters are they likely to be using? A number of community members have reported that for whatever reason, zigbee mesh appeared to be somewhat weaker once they switch to edge drivers, which resulted in some devices, which had previously being in range, now being right on the edge of out of range, which could definitely result in them, sending multiple messages trying to get through . 
Smartthings doesn’t give us any real diagnostic tools for a situation like this, so it’s just guessing using the actual physical locations of the devices.
I’ll play dumb - how does one open an official support ticket?
re: physical location-- I saw those reports so I placed one directly next to the hub to see if that fixed it. And nope, the one next to the hub goes offline just the same as the ones that extend farther from the hub physical location.
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That’s the link I gave you. Follow that link and then use either the email or the phone option and you will connect to the official smartthings support. (This forum was set up a number of years ago so that customers could help other customers, but it’s not an official support option.)
FWIW, I had a Zooz ZSE42 XS Water Leak Sensor doing the same thing. Plus it ate batteries like there was no tomorrow!
Now, I thought I had decent ZWave coverage in the basement: a couple of line-powered (albeit older) devices nearby presumably acting as extenders to the more distant hub. Another nearby battery powered ZWave device never had a problem.
Several dead batteries in the ZSE42 XS Water Sensor later, I happened to pick up a Zooz ZEN76 switch to control the basement lighting. Volia! The switch, about 12 feet from the water sensor, seemed to fix the issue: perhaps it was just a stronger extender, perhaps it was because of its higher/newer ZWave security–I don’t know enough about recent variants of ZWave to even guess. Maybe @JDRoberts has an idea about the newer ZWave vs. the original stuff?
YMMV, but start by making sure you have a strong, clean network path between the (battery powered) water sensor and the hub.
Zwave is supposed to be generally backwards compatible, and so it is except for association. But smartthings always adds its own twists.
I think it is possible that conversion to a new edge Driver may have somehow affected situations where a zwave repeater and a battery powered device are at different security levels, but it’s not supposed to. So I can’t say for sure One way or the other.
@Mariano_Colmenarejo has probably done the most with custom Z wave edge drivers, I’m not sure if he’s seen anything in practice that might apply.
Also tagging @krlaframboise just in case he has anything to add.
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That would have been my guess/hope. A ZWave extender (or device acting as such) should simply relay traffic back to the hub without caring what was in the payload. The pre-existing line-powered devices I assumed were acting as extenders are all original ZWave. (Although almost immediately upstairs from the water sensor were several newer lines-powered switches. This is a Net Zero home, so insulation is massive & I have no idea what the RF attenuation of the insulation might be at these frequencies between the basement and the kitchen upstairs. ) Many vendors in the mix and many chances for incomplete implementations.
Thanks for your insight!
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got it thank you
I have a Ecolink Zwave Plus Flood & Freeze Sensor, White (FLF-ZWAVE5-ECO) leak sensor using the Z-Wave Sensor driver with its battery pulled out and every week or so ST sends me a notification that it’s back online. And about an hour or so later it shows it’s offline! (??)
| Key | Value |
|---|---|
| Name | water-battery-tempalarm |
| Mfg Name | SmartThingsCommunity |
| Mfg Code | 014A-0005-0010 |
| Model | 0005-0010 |
| ocf Type | x.com.st.d.sensor.moisture |
| Category | LeakSensor |
| Room | Offline |
| Presentation ID | ** |
| Type | ZWAVE |
| Parent ID | ** |
| Parent Name | Home Hub |
| Driver ID | d58d8432-ea22-4d38-8300-2bd75fdf1358 |
| Driver Name | Z-Wave Sensor |
| Network ID | 2E |
| Provisioning State | PROVISIONED |
| NW Security Level | ZWAVE_LEGACY_NON_SECURE |
| Local Execution | yes |
I have another with it’s battery in, and it flips offline every few weeks. Both sensors have falsed water detection (but I’m not ready to call that an issue just yet, I think it may be bugs causing it and i put down a sticky trap to confirm).
I think there’s more going on here than meets the eye…
Has anyone seen a resolution to this? My water sensors started doing this after the change to the new driver system, and I am about to get fed up with it. I ran my water leak and valve setup for years, and they were rock solid.
Are these ZigBee devices?
They are probably not truly offline, but only marked offline my the ST app.
Next time they are marked offline test them and I am guessing they will work. Which proves they are not offline, only marked offline by ST.
My tuya waterleak sensors do that. Say offline on the app but as soon as I drop some water on then they work as expected.
These are all the Zigbee SmartThings branded water sensors. Regardless of whether they still will function, I am about to have to turn off notifications for the SmartThings app because it is constant. If OP opened a support ticket, I hoped they could share the solution. Or if there was none, it may be time to move on to something else.
None still for me. Same set of issues. It’s gotten less bad in last month but still 2-3 times a day. It’s effecting battery life on the devices.
I’m struggling to find a good alternative though.
I saw the same thing with my zwave water sensors. I eventually removed them from ST and put them on a different zwave controller with no issues.
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Mine are doing the same thing……anyone have any resolution?