I wanted to throw this out there to hopefully save community members some cash on batteries. If you own the older Centralite/rebranded Iris/rebranded SmartThings leak sensors that look like this (ones that don't have the sensors on the top):
...don't trust their battery reporting! In other words don't replace the battery when they start reporting 0. Batteries in these sensors last over a year and they will report 0 for months. After my parents attic HVAC caused $10k damage to their house I bought 20 of these devices and put them under ever sink, toilet, and any device that has a water connection like the dishwasher, washer, and fridge with ice maker. Cheap solution to save you $1000s in damage and headache cost especially combined with a smart water valve.
I started to notice that these moisture sensors in particular run zero for months. For example I have leak sensor under my kitchen sink that started reporting zero on August 19, 2020 and it is still working today (January, 24, 2021)!
There are several community solutions to monitor device reporting and I would highly suggest leveraging one of these to help monitor your battery devices. I personally use NodeRed as I am listening to the event and log sockets and logging that data to a MySQL database and InfluxDB on my NAS. I have a database trigger update my "devices" table with a last update time stamp for every event received and then I have a flow that queries the devices table for devices that use batteries every 6 hours and notifies me if a device hasn't reported.
Given most of us are locked in our houses these days and not traveling having a device report 0 for months is not as big of a deal. But if I were traveling and away from home, I would probably replace them for peace of mind. Interesting experiment nonetheless.
Also you need to test monthly. Just like smoke detectors you can't rely on self monitoring of batteries or that they are still functional. Our leak detectors get a good weekly workout every time we mop the bathroom floors they go off. I have also given my mom a monthly check list for testing the sensors at her home. We found one of our Dome sensors even though reporting didn't detect the leak in her laundry sink because the plug to the remote probe worked loose.
I'm slowly converting my battery devices to usb where power is available or can be added with reasonable effort. Thanks for reminding me that the one in my upstairs hvac pan needs converting. (Belt & braces!! The pan already has two overflow drains routed outside which have saved me at least 3 times over the past 30 years.)
I had a Dome water sensor and probe in my sump pump pit. That was one of the worst devices I have owned as the probe failed many times, even got a new one under warranty. I threw it away and bought an Aeotec instead.
Yup. No way to run power to 80%+ of my leak sensors. Will have to live with battery.
Easy to monitor that they are still reporting with Device Watchdog, and the samsung ones have no moving parts/connection points to check/come disconnected like the kinds with remote probes or USB connections do.
I get >18 months battery on those, but change them yearly in the hard to reach places (HVAC pans). Not a big burden in my opinion - I'm at the HVAC multiple times a year to change filters anyway, so just do the batteries then.
I mean... If you are using something like Device Watchdog - who cares what the battery % reported is? With the activity report you will know within a day (assuming you run it daily) if it stops communicating anyway (when the temp reports that come in multiple times/day stop).
Run the battery until it completely dies for all it matters.
My 2 dome sensors, for whatever reason remain totally dormant until they are triggered since I moved them to my C7. So nothing changes in the driver and therefore Device Watchdog keeps telling me they are off-line... Not very practical...
All this said... I may go back and put powered ones on my HVAC pans since I have an outlet available. That's a good idea, in my opinion where an outlet is an option.
May need to hit Configure on them to reset the battery reports. Unless the device ONLY sends battery on change and not on a periodic basis (then there is nothing the hub side can do about it). The latter are the type I won't use.
It’s funny, I was thinking the same. I went to do it and found that there is only a “Refresh” button in the driver. I’ll see if I can find another driver...
It is really annoying that Hubitat was not more consistent when they made drivers the 1st 18 months or so. I find all sorts of little differences like this in the older in-box drivers. Seems that it depends if Mike, a contractor, or someone else made the driver.
Maybe something @mike.maxwell or @bcopeland can add to their very long to-do lists as a low priority item.
Crikey, I wonder how long two D batteries would last! I might do this.
I only have 2 water leak sensors, the Centralite version (not SmartThings, but probably the same thing?). They have disappeared from my mesh without warning twice now due to fresh batteries suddenly dying, so I am monitoring battery levels via Grafana to see what's up. My suspicion is they stay at 100% for months, and then suddenly drop to 0% and die over a few weeks. I love the double D-battery idea though, that would definitely take care of that lol.
I have 3 zigbee devices -none of them battery- that have recently started doing that on Device Watchdog. I'm on a C4 and was thinking it happened with the update to 2.2.4.xxx (currently on 2.2.4.158).
