Keen Vent Battery Drain - Root Cause Possibly Found (Nope)

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1

I know, quite a statement...but hear me out...

TL;DR - Vent mis-reporting its own open/close %, causing the motor to run without end

I just bought a Keen Smart Vent to help balance out the temps in my home. I've done a lot of reading on these forums, so I knew I might be in for a headache, but I figured I'd give it a shot anyway. I joined the vent directly to Hubitat, using the built-in driver, and it worked without issue (nice!). Next I installed the fantastic Ecobee Suite and configured the vent to open/close automatically. Worked like a treat! Then the problems started...

First issue I noticed is that the vent seemed to get jammed. I noticed that all of a sudden the room temp would get out of whack, so I took a look at the vent. The fins were not physically set where Hubitat said they were. It happened once where the fins were fully open (and Hubitat said it is closed) and once the other way around. When I tried to use the black slider to move the fins, it was completely stuck. Upon "forcing" it a bit, it finally loosened up, then immediately cycled a bit to realign itself to where it thought it should be. Weird, but alright...

By the third day after installation, the batteries completely died. Granted, I had been opening/closing the vent ~60 times/day, but still...that's not going to work...I replaced the batteries, but thinking about the vent getting stuck, made one change - I set ES to only open the vent to 90%, and only close it to 5%. Fast forward another five days, the temp in that room has been maintained perfectly ever since and the battery level hasn't dropped a bit.

My hypothesis - is it possible that the vent is losing track of its own open% every now and then and gets itself into a pattern of continuing to try and open or close when it's actually already open/closed? That would explain the resistance when trying to "force" it a couple of times (I'm actively fighting the motor) and why, after only moving it between 5% and 90%, it hasn't happened since.

Thoughts? Is anyone able to confirm this on their end? This might only be one of many reasons for draining batteries, but I'm hoping to zero in and solve this issue. I have a second vent coming in the next couple of days, and I plan to bench-test it to see if I can confirm or not.

@stevenascott @JasonJoel

2

Sounds reasonable.

I have a keen vent and only operate it in fully opened/closed positions and have never had battery issues.

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That would only apply if the vent was fully open or closed. Most of mine were usually in the 30%-70% range - not fully open or closed. And the louvers did not move/seek unexpectedly. So I'm not convinced that is the issue.

I have no way to verify anything at this point though. I literally threw them all in the trash.

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I have done over a year of tests... partial open, full open, etc... doesn't matter. Months and months of support emails. Zero luck.

I'm trying a new type of battery for fun, but I bet it does 2-4 weeks tops.

My personal vote is that is has absolutely nothing to do with the driver or your usage, and it's PURELY do to this being a POS product. I have a feeling their manufacturing standards and QC methods are total garbage. This is why they have been giving me the slip for so long that they can say my warranty is finally expired. I expect absolutely nothing from them.

The only advice I can give you is return them ASAP... even if you have to eat some of the cost. Unless you wire them to the mains, you have a paperweight on your hands.

The ones that work appear to be from certain batches/years, and the newer ones (anecdotally) are trash.

Oh and to further push toward my theory of crap manufacturing, my vents tend to drain a single pair of batteries, while the other pair is basically untouched. It seems the vents run on 3v, and sometimes the parallel circuit that connects the two is not complete, or never worked from the factory. I wouldn't be surprised to see those two slots being totally unused.

I contacted Support again to show them these results, and I got the same infuriating response. If you're still in the return period. Do it.

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I read that in a different thread and immediately tested my batteries when my vent went dead initially - voltages were all identical across the four batteries...

I guess what I'm hearing is that I may have uncovered A problem with the vents, but not THE problem, and that some people experience no problems, some one problem, and some multiple problems at once. Makes it almost impossible to hone in on the issue(s), other than it may be a crapshoot due to shoddy manufacturing/QC. That sucks. I really want these things to work.

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Well I can tell you mine don't get stuck like that, but even if they were, I have never felt any vibration, or seen any bouncing. I'd imagine you'd also see some LED activity.

It almost doesn't matter WHY these are so crappy -- just that they are. Kudos to anyone that got the old batches that actually work. The concept is really cool. I'm just out over $500 for worthless junk.

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This made my day...

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I've seen responses like that from other companies when working with their "support" in the past...I've always chocked it up to a combination of language barrier and absolute ineptitude/"following the script in front of me"-syndrome...Comcast/Xfinity comes to mind... :wink:

Ridiculous.

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