If you get a chance someday could you take a pic of the guts of that hack.
Thanks
Would love to see more info on this newer hack.
Best motion sensor ever...have a bunch of them bought back in the day and more recently when I could find them on eBay or from users here.
@PunchCardPgmr / @danabw - here you go! Hopefully I've been able to hide the poor soldering job..
This is with a buck converter in the battery compartment. I clipped the battery terminals for additional room and soldered closer to the sensors circuit board. Also used a dab of hot glue to hold things into place. Just used the red and black wires in an old usb cable for the bucks inputs and wired the outputs to the battery terminal stubs.
Here is a sensor using the battery saver wiring.. all I had to do was clip the clips and solder the wires directly onto the terminals:
In both cases just drilled a small hole in the back of the sensor to run the wires through..
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Thanks for the pics.
Below is how most of my soldering projects end up, so I am in no position to complain about yours. 
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I can see @lewis.heidrick 's eye twitching with a vein pulsing in his forehead just looking at this picture 
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LOL!!!
Shhh, don't tell him, he already knows about my problems with hammers...
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Very cool. Never used one of those Bucks before.
Do you have a "go to" reliable brand/label/source.
And I assume this could apply to a wide spectrum of devices we use in that 3 VDC ball park.
Thanks for taking the time.
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Yee Gads as they say in some parts of this country.
Hotter, thinner tipped iron pre-tinned,
maybe some flux or at least a good rosin core solder.
I know even with that it takes practice...just know less-is-more, it's all about that "first swipe" of the iron. If the heat isn't applied right the goober-ing still happens to me. ( Let's avoid the topic of stick welding. )
Keep an eye out on https://www.allelectronics.com/ sometimes they have some really good temp control-able stations at a good price.
Haha, I have a stick welder. Needed it when my welder ghosted me 3 days before the engineering inspection on the house. Hooked up a 50 amp breaker and welded 4 steel posts and 2 I beams into place... It was a tad ugly.... Somehow the engineer looked it over and passed it.... Hey, my second floor is still intact...
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So I did this a while ago and appears I did not use Amazon - can't find the order... as long as the dimensions are okay then something like this should work:
https://www.amazon.com/MP1584EN-DC-DC-Converter-Adjustable-Module/dp/B01MQGMOKI/
or maybe this one which can be set to a fixed voltage:
https://www.amazon.com/Weewooday-Regulator-Voltage-Converter-Transformer/dp/B08JZ5FVLC/
You'll need a multimeter to make sure you are getting the proper output voltage.
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You and me both. I have a bunch, that's the only one I will use, its way better than the stuff sold now. Same with the door sensors. smaller and fast and more reliable than anything else I've used. These rebranded centralites are just amazing. And yes, Ive had the same battery in ALL my iris v2 stuff since I installed about a year ago and still going strong.
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Same. they were advertised as no batteries and all were brand new with tabs.
Here's an option I used in mine. 3.3V fixed regulator and they are small enough to fit inside of a 3d printed CR2 "battery" I paired these with a micro usb socket. I can use any microusb cable and phone charger.
https://www.amazon.com/Partstower-Step-Down-Supply-Module-AMS1117/dp/B01FWFSTBY/
https://www.amazon.com/ZXUEZHENG-Pinboard-Interface-Adapter-Breakout/dp/B07KS1RPMP/
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Here is my version of hardwiring them. Since many of mine are plugged into outlets in the attic being able to remove the “battery” to reset it was useful to me.
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The USB hacks that these guys have reminded me are possible were less interesting over a year ago....as the device count increases I'm interested 
Although...if everything reliably sipped juice like the Iris Motion that would be nice. As has been said by the OP and you, the Iris battery sipping design is more valuable than their price tag!
I have some older Visonic security system motions which use the same battery and are also sippers ....but I expected years out of those because Visonic spent years refining those sensors and they weren't cheap. (That system tells you when a device has poor signal or hasn't been heard from, but I have one sensor in an infrequently trafficed area that must be on 4+ years and I find myself leaving the system armed just to trigger that one occasionally because I can't believe it's still going! Yeah there IS a sensor health check that I could run to check them all but it's easier to just trigger it.)
It is interesting how the Iris designers (and a few others) realized how much of a hassle a full topology of battery driven HA devices would be if the battery wasn't long lived... while other shops didn't give this the attention it deserved and were more about making some small cool Swiss Army knife device that runs (out) on a coin battery. As if 10+ of those weren't ever going to be a headache to maintain.
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They probably didn't care. There's always a market for cheap devices. Why spend years and huge cash on research when you can sell them fash and cheap is the mentality.
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There was a time, long long ago, when a manufacturer that wanted to build a reputable brand and stick around long enough to have it recognized....would make stuff that held up that brand.
Those names are far and few between because it's all about "first to market" these days. You would think with the speed "bad raps" get shared in this age of the Internet that manufacturers would realize they can't hide/deny/profit off bad product for very long before it catches up to them.
Right or wrong it's all about agile and the MVP "Minimum Viable Product" these days..
But honestly it's hard to see how small companies like Hubitat, Inc could even survive without doing so..
But in the case of smart home systems, quality devices with long battery lives weren’t a saving grace for Iris. Lowes still shut down the entire service (and stopped selling the branded devices made by a couple OEMs).
That was presumably a complex decision made by a large retail company that does a lot of other business not specific to smart home tech. But I think it’s unlikely Iris was making money hand over fist in the run up to that decision.
Several of the Iris devices were produced by Centralite, who filed for bankruptcy in 2019. The company also produced devices for Smartthings. They are still around now owned by the Ezlo/Vera group. I have a few Centralite water leak sensors. They use the older HA 1.2 Zigbee protocol. I try to purchase Zigbee 3.0 devices whenever they are available for future proofing. Hubitat still uses HA 1.2.
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