I'm installing a bunch of Utilitech water sensors, plus, soon, I'm sure, some more battery powered sensors. What's the best way to receive warnings about battery status?
I've set Notifications to 60% level for all battery devices as a start. I understand HSM can do low battery warnings as well, but I have messed with that app yet.
I also read in a post from '19 that the Device Watchdog app was also good, but also haven't tried that.
I've read that battery levels are not really to be trusted to a great extent, but it can't hurt. What's the latest and greatest?
Specifically on the Utilitechs, apparently when the battery gets to a certain level it starts beeping and sends a message to (the late) Iris. So, it seems to know all by itself when the battery is low. I don't know how this would be implemented in Hubitat, or if it could. This is what the manual says:
5. When the battery level on the water leak detector drops to a critical level, the red LED will flash once every 30 seconds and will report to the Iris™ Smart Hub. Iris™ will notify you of the low battery.
Device Watchdog works well for this. Or just use RM and set up rule(s) to notify you when the battery of device(s) drops below a threshold. I also have a dashboard showing all my battery devices so that I can check at a glance. But yes, battery monitoring via IoT is not a precise science so keep a stack of spare batteries ready for when one fails without proper notice.
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I've had several Utilitechs running for a couple of days now, and have seen no battery status updates. I'm thinking, maybe it only very rarely reports in (to save the battery). Maybe, when it figures out that its battery is low, then it reports...somehow. So, not sure Device Watchdog will work out.
I'll have enough of these water sensors around that if I can hear one of the faint beeps, I'll replace them all. Also, write down (somewhere) when I last put in batteries.
Sounds good. Maybe there is a fault with the driver if it's not reporting battery properly. I've not noticed any of my devices take that long to report battery status, but yeah maybe it will come through eventually!
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I have half a dozen of these and they rarely report in. Don't stress it. I do every so often test mine to make sure they still work.
How long do the batteries last for you?
mine have lasted well over a year. going on two but much of that time was in smartthings.
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My experience has been the same as @kahn-hubitat right down to coming from ST in April. I've had mine about 2½ years. Bought them when lowes priced them at $7.50 each. I originally bought 7. The radio in one died after about 18 months. I still have one unopened as a spare. I don't recall changing batteries in any of them yet.
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yes they are the oposite of chatty ,, they never talk to the hub .. i think battery reports are like once a month.. Many times the hubs think the have failed, but whenever i have tested or removed/reinserted batteries they are there and working.. I wish someone would put out a zwave plus version with same characteristics.. most devices are way too chatty.
The others i've started using are ecolink zwave plus 2.5 . the batteries in these also last well over a year.. I gave up on the aeon ones.. their batteries were always going dead or too weak and give off false positives,
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I have 2 aeon multisensors that I use only for humidity readings and I do that on the dashboard. The things eat a set of batteries every 3 months. Once this batch of 100 batteries I bought from Amazon are gone, so are the aeon's. I have been using the same Zwave GoControl door/window sensors since 2015. Some of them still have the original batteries and continue to just work. They are big and ugly but the bride doesn't mind so they stay in service. She was pleased though when I swapped the big old gocontrol motion sensors (which I'm using outside with great battery life) with iris v2 motion sensors.
As for the OP original question, I have several notification rules that send me a pushover notice and verbally announce over my Google nest devices that I have a low battery. The iris stuff I notify at 16% as I've had the motion sensors go wonky with lower battery levels. My GoControl and aeon @1%. Other stuff too. I have half a dozen battery notification rules.
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i jsut got a ecowitt gw1002 weather station.. highly recommend.. it integrates over wifi to hubitat and extra temp humidity sensors are on 12,99 on amazon (wh31) i just got one to use in the basement to trigger my dehumidifier on off.. Cheaper than zwave zigbee devices and easier to set up.. i think you can have up to 8 additional on the system. the driver sees the new channel and auto adds the hubitat device when the first data starts coming in.. also very consistent i tested two next to each other.. same temp down to .1 degree and same humidity within 1%
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Looks very cool. Weather station is on my list of things I want. The list of things is pretty long. Lol
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