The Aeon Labs Aeotec Multisensor 6 battery is too short. On SmartThings, I would get 1 year of battery life. On the Hubitat, I do t get close to that. Since I have owned this hub, my sensor has gone from about 80% to dead in just a couple months. Which raises the next issue, battery lofe reporting. For the entire duration of the sensor being on hubitat, I have always seen 100% battery, even after it was dead.
I notice in my logs a lot if state change reporting, which is not normal. Any suggestions? Since I can only change reporting values for lux config, and set a calibration offset for temp, I suspect the temperature delta or himidity delta settinng are set too low, resulting in tmthe excessive chatter.
I have one of these installed flush in my kitchen ceiling. It started detecting motion very slowly last week, and I noticed the battery was at 50%. I was pretty sure it was reporting 100% the week before when I switched it over. I replaced the battery and am keeping a close eye on it. I also changed from the built in device handler to one that I found in a search on this Hubitat forum. I think it was this DH, but not positive. Seems to be a little better.
I wish the DH reported firmware version. There is a firmware update available for these multisensors, but I am not sure what version my sensor is on.
Did you fellas ever figure this out? I recently moved into a new home and rebuilt all my automations. I added a few new Aeon Multisensor6 units, along with some existing, and of course many other devices of both Z-Wave and Zigbee.
I am experiencing INSANE battery drain... like they are only lasting 5 days at best. It seems to be getting worse as time goes on. Hubitat support cannot see anything wrong and suggests maybe I add more repeaters. I have a TON of them already, so I find that hard to believe to be the issue. I have about a dozen Aeon plugs/sirens/etc littering my two-story home.
I've tried the advanced 3rd-party driver, as well as the official Hubitat driver for these sensors. The drain is simply astronomical. At first I thought it was somehow related to a bad batch of Amazon Basics CR123A batteries, so I bought a box of Panasonics, and they exhibited the same exact behavior. It's mind-blowing. Sometimes I don't even get 5 days out of these things.
Has anyone ever resorted to a full radio reset to try and knock out issues like these?
I have not had any battery drain issues lately. I did at one time but that has since gone away, many months ago.
I have motion sensitivity set to high, and light sensitivity set to 5 lux. After making this change, I issued a configure event. Then I wake up the sensor to receive the configure command by walking in front of it and turning on or off the light. I am using the official device driver for the aeon multi-sensor 6 by Hubitat, not one of the custom ones.
If you have been rebuilding your z-wave network in a new house, it is important to remap it. To do this, use the “Repair Z-Wave” button. Otherwise, devices can be battling over which devices to route the traffic through as I understand it.
I'm using the same batteries, and I've tried all sorts of zwave rebuilds. One thing I'm trying, based on support suggestions, is to completely remove the z-wave sensors and re-add them. Ensure they never see the custom drivers, and also do the configure right off the bat.
I really hope it has nothing to do with the custom drivers because seeing the battery run time is really useful to me, especially right now when they only last like a week.
After all this time, I still have issues with these sensors experiencing terrible battery life. Maybe they last 2-3 months. There are only two people living in my 2-story house, so it's not like I have these installed at a dance club. I just don't get it. I've removed/re-added/factory-reset all of my units. I've tried Amazon, Energizer, and Panasonic lithium batteries, to no avail.
Is anyone seeing the 1 year results like we had on ST? Is the problem that the hub is pinging the device really often? I don't see how there would be any difference otherwise.
I get poor battery performance with the AeotecMultiSensor6 from cSteele. The stock Habitat handler does not have this issue. However, the stock Habitat device handler only reports every 30 minutes, and make usage of humidity, or lumens in rules rather useless, because it takes too long for the 30 minute reporting interval. I use the cSteele driver, and I set the reporting interval to 30 minutes, and the thresholds as follows:
temp = 5 (tenths of a degree)
humidity = 2%
lux = 2
motion sensitivity = 5 (maximum)
Motion sensor delay = 1 minute
Now my exhaust fans kick in in a reasonable time when taking a shower, motion controls my lighting, and a hand wave over the shower door can turn the light back on, if it turns off. I put my sensor in a motion zone so that it can retriever motion every minute, but the zone resets to 30 minute countdown after any motion alert. This is so that I can manually turn off the light, and still trigger the light to come on based on motion, but only turn off automatically when the motion zone times out. I use a dew point calculation to determine when the mirror is likely to fog up -- assuming the mirror's surface temp is about 5 degrees less than ambient temp in the zone which is computed by the average hallway temp (I have to sensors in the hallway outside the bathroom).
With all of this, timely reporting was crucial for this to work, so I switched to the cSteele driver and by tuning like this, I get better than a few months of battery life, but know where close to the 1 year+ battery life I was getting with the HE driver.
I only use these sensors where I need them. I have learned z-wave motion sensors are horrible battery hogs, and have switched all motion sensors to Hue Motion Sensors which report motion, temp, and lux. which other than a bathroom, is all I need. These batteries last well over a year. My outdoor sensor have been running for 1.5 years now, and still doing great.
Interesting -- because back on the ST platform, MS6 was the sensor to get. Worked so flawlessly, and reported quickly. I am not sure I ever changed a battery on any of those sensors until I moved to Hubitat. Surely it's a 'ping' thing, or maybe it's sending a weird command that's causing the sensors to choke.
That being said, if you're putting the sensor in your shower area, you probably aren't giving it much traffic, and it also wouldn't be updating the humidity 100 times a day. Probably 15-20 times over the course of your daily shower.
My sensors that have the most problems are in the common areas of course, which probably see 100 motion events a day. If I DO have friends over, I'm sure they see 500-1000 in a single night, from multiple people moving around. To me that seems like it's still reasonable, considering that doesn't happen very often. It just seems like when you are comparing apples-to-apples, that the sensor drains much quicker on HE right now. It's to the point where I am seriously considering mounting a rechargeable USB battery bank on the wall next to each sensor. Just keep a spare in the kitchen drawer and swap them out when needed. I feel almost like a criminal for throwing away so many damn batteries, plus it's a massive PITA to get them here in Hawaii.
I use the usb power for all my MS6's that way I can crank up the reporting. Be careful how you pair them though - if you pair them using USB power then they will behave that way even if you then switch to batteries. This could mean faster battery drain due to them acting as repeaters (poorly) etc.
So probably best to pair them while on battery, AND keep the setting in the device configuration at battery-grade reporting? I might be mixing that up with ST. Can't remember if that option even exists here.
According to @csteele the initial pairing is what sets the mode - either battery or usb. You can't change it afterwards. ***
In my case yes - because my ms6's are basically surrounding my hub in the basement. They were all acting as repeaters and slowing things down. I ended up re-pairing them under battery power first then changing back to usb. The issue with battery is speed in reporting and sleepiness.
If your devices are on the "edge" of your mesh / furthest away from the hub like outdoors etc and powered then maybe not necessary to do it that way..
If you are using batteries then they should have always been paired using batteries otherwise that could be an issue.
I would also mention that you will have the ability to update the firmware for those MS6's from HE very soon..
*** EDIT: I still have yet to verify this with the latest firmware.. so this info may change.
I have one MultiSensor 6 that is outside, under an eave, facing my front door area. The batteries in it lasted MORE than a year. So much more that I didn't believe it and would go out front every few days to verify
I have a MultiSensor 6 at the top of my stairs. It goes through batteries in 2 months or less. I blame it on the Dog. I imagine the dog going up and down the stairs all night long. Then again, maybe it's the kids, delaying going to bed by running all over the house.
I have 12 of them and they all seem to have a different battery life.. Even though they are all set up to the same Reporting values.
I have a box of CR2 Rechargables and I've given up on them. At least two don't work on rechargables at all and the rest eat them faster than regular batteries. Also, Aeon Support warned me: that some rechargables don't have the exact form fit and that can cause a problem. Some rechargables don't have the tiny (1mm) recess on the negative terminal. Thus when you insert aone of those rechargables, the battery tab in the Device are bent 'more flat' and when you do use a proper battery, it lightly holds the battery, or allows it to fall out.
I always had these issues with battery on SmartThings, and had to tune it way down to save battery affecting the reporting there too. It really does not seem to matter. The sensor only reports in based on the reporting interval, and if the fluctuations were large enough, they appear to work well, but for things like I described, I didn't see any real difference compared to the cSteele driver.
When used outdoor, PIR motion sensors, like this one, don't work in the Sun so they only sense motion at night saving a lot of battery. Again, if you set it for every 30 minutes, you won't notice the temperature, humidity, or lux issues, or even the UV index because 30 minutes is more than enough time to report changes. for motion, it will only report when the sun goes down. This setup will last longer than a year, even indoors you can expect this kind of performance. When used in-doors, humidity and lux change faster that outdoors, and if you need these other values for indoor use, you will burn through your battery faster. Aeon labs has many support documents you can read that address this type of information.
I too keep boxes of all the different batteries I need for all my devices. This way, I can swap out when needed. And your driver seems to actually work for battery level reporting. These are the only battery level supported devices I have that actually give me a level other than 100%. Thanks for your work on this driver to bring this over to HE.
According to Aeon labs support, they have tested they MS6 and confirmed they will not operated as repeaters even under USB power. Are you sure they operating as repeaters? Seems like it may be worth addressing with Aeon Labs so they know.
[update]
Apparently, there is even confusion at Aeon Labs as the their documentation does state repeater mode is enabled in USB powered state.
