it doesn't have the option to manually refresh the device. If it did, i could have made a rule to refresh it daily.
Because of that, my device just died after a while due to flat battery. HE still shows 100% battery. I kept wondering whats wrong. Only when i tested the battery did i realise its just dead.
I had made a audio broadcast for all my battery devices. If the battery levels fall below 15%, i get a audio alert. Sucks that due to incorrect reports of the fibaro button, i couldn't replace the battery earlier.
Anyone else had this issue? im prepared to replace this zwave fibaro button for something else if i have to. I need proper battery reports.
You can’t refresh battery zwave devices on demand, they are asleep.
Church the event history for battery reports, it is likely the device was reporting the battery every day, at 100%. Not uncommon especially with lithium batteries. Search around on the community, it has been explained many times.
but then thats bad right? i mean going from 100% everyday to suddenly dead, doesn't help. I have over 10 battery zwave devices and just waiting for them to stop working to replace their batteries is very reactive not proactive.
It does not happen on all devices. Lets just say battery reporting is very inconsistent. I believe most devices just go off voltage output to determine the battery level. Some devices feel like they could do a better job of determining the percentage, and others do it pretty good. Personally I just use the DAC app ([RELEASE] Device Activity Check - Get notifications for "inactive" devices) to monitor device activity and replace the batteries when the device stops working. I use the battery % to know when the device might stop soon but I let it fully die. None of my battery devices are mission critical.
That ER14250 looks very similar to the CR123A. I get pretty good results with those devices. The button batteries are the worst (CR2023, 2450 etc..), those will fluctuate under load so the percent goes up and down, and then I also have found some devices will get down to showing 1% but still work for months like that.
Here is some devices using the CR123A
This one only uses one battery, you can see it holds at 90% for most of its life then drops off and dies within a month at the end. This is how Lithium usually works.
Here are my locks using AA Alkaline batteries, you can see they are more of a slow and steady decline. The front door just stopped working right last week and it was only at 80% so I never know when its going to stop working actually, again, very inconsistent. I really need to find some good inexpensive lithium AA to use in these, the voltage will hold longer so they will last longer.
I don't use it, but I think there's a community app that monitors when a device hasn't reported in for a while. Called something like "Device Activity Check". To save battery though, I think a lot of battery powered devices report in infrequently.
Every once in a while I'll look at the device page, with a sort on last reported, and then glance over to the battery column. See if anything has dropped off. Nothing critical. I've had a Zooz Temp/Hum sensor, used indoors, that has had abnormally low battery %, but keeps on running. Weird.
Its sort of normal with the Zooz devices that use the CR button batteries. Here is my ZSE41 contact sensor. The small uptick is when it finally died and I put another used battery in it. Was running showing 1% for 3 months. This thing seems to run on the weakest batteries so I feed it all my almost dead ones to finish them off.
