First Alert Smoke & CO2 Detector - Battery Mismatch

[ChrisUthe]

Hey all, I have 10 of these Smoke & CO2 detectors on my network and I had an oddity with battery % last night on one unit. I've noted flakyness in the battery accuracy before on these but I wanted to document it this time around.

Last night my wife asked me to go downstairs and check on the smoke/co2 detector in the laundry/mechanical room, she said it was chirping like it was out of battery, but she hadn't received any notifications on her phone that something was wrong (buy in!).

I pulled up a list of devices and noted that all smoke/co2 detector batteries were well above half, and that the one in question was at 77% and had batteries just a month or so old.

I went down and pulled it, and sure enough, chirp chirp. Here is the full event log, showing the fresh batteries on 3/6 and the slow decay:

(The detector was beeping at 77%, I replaced and tested at at that point)

These were generic energizer batteries, not lithium but very fresh date wise, should I be using different batteries? Perhaps these droop too much for the detector despite showing higher voltage.

Any thoughts are welcome.

[krlaframboise]

That's really odd...

I added mine to Hubitat on 10/28/2018 and the battery was at 92% and it's currently at 85%. I think I'm using Amazon batteries which usually don't last as long as energizer with my other devices.

[wve]

I have a couple of these and they do like batteries. I started using Energizer lithium and they are doing much better (5 to 6 months). It seems like they go down to 90% very slowly and then once it hits 90% it drains super fast.

FYI, the chirping will start at 77%, I had them on ST before and it was the same there. I created a rule that will send me a text when the battery level hits 79% or less, that way I can replace them before they start chirping away at 4 in the morning!