Zigbee devices eating batteries

I had 3 Iris motion sensors start to eat batteries progressively faster to the point where a battery would last 1-2 weeks so I took them out of service. Not all at once, died one at a time at least 6 months apart. Two were on the main floor and one in the basement. Main floor is within 20 feet of the hub and basement about 30 feet from a centralite plug repeater. I chalked it up to the specific brand and model but I’m now having the same experience with a ST water sensor. Was like a year with the first battery then every 3 months then 1 month and now the last time was 2 weeks.

Any ideas on if there is something I can do to figure out if there is something wrong with my network? When I replaced the last battery I did a zigbee network rebuild but no idea what else to do.

I solved this issue by stopping buy cell coins batteries on amazon despite panasonic branded. I only order on mouser.com and the shorter I have now is 1 year for a battery. You can see my previous posts about the consumption I add in a post call 18 months of SmarthThings usage from cell coin batteries view but now this time is over.

Hopefully this can improve your situation too

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I too started buying my batteries of Amazon and thought that was it too. . . but I have devices using the same batteries that last much longer. Maybe I need to look and see if I can get my pocket socket closer to the sensor.

I’m curious - check the firmware status for each sensor in the IDE and see if you find the same thing I did…after this conversation I went back and forth with one of the ST engineers for a while but we never made any progress so I took that sensor offline.

On the Iris front I was in a return window on the first so I swapped it and don’t have it any more. The second I threw away. I’ll take a look at the third tonight since I already removed from my network. The current issue is the ST water sensor so I don’t think that would be the same case. Reading through your thread made me realize I should try and reset it too, although it shows the same firmware and no update like the one not giving me problems.

I buy my Duracell batteries from eBay and even though they may look genuine, i think something is wrong with them, as they always tend to last a week or so and then I get low battery warnings. I have a handful of them and dont want to throw them away, so it will be a while before i can tell if its the batteries or not. I suppose it teaches me for being a cheap skate :slight_smile:

Tonight I moved the basement repeater much closer to the sensor, did a zigbee heal, reset the sensor, and replaced the battery. Fingers crossed.