I've searched and found a few threads regarding battery level reporting, but couldn't find anything specific/recent for my issue...
I have several Bali motorized z-wave shades in my home. They all work perfectly with Hubitat. I currently have the driver set to "Graber Somfy Shade Driver." Last week, I started getting low battery alerts for my bedroom shade, and the latest alert told me I was down to 12%. However, I just logged into Hubitat and it was showing my bedroom shade at 29%. I did several refreshes and got the same result back. I then decided to change the driver to the "Smartwings z-wave shade" driver. As soon as I did that, and did a refresh, the battery level came back at 49%.
So, I'm totally stumped. I'm getting alerts showing battery at 12%, Graber Somfy driver showing 29%, and Smartwings driver showing 49%. I have no clue which is correct.
Similarly, but for an entirely different device, the Hubitat interface was showing one of my Zooz 4-button remotes at 1%. I immediately took it off the wall and plugged it in. The interface immediately switched to show it was "Charging" but then the battery level jumped to 78%.
Am I doing something wrong? What is it with these wild variations in battery level reporting? Which is accurate? Are there any virtual devices I could use to accurately report battery levels on all my battery devices?
Anything Z-wave the driver is just going to pass on the battery report from the device. So I am fairly certain any value you see was reported by the device. If you have issues with the way they report the battery values you would have to take it up with the manufacturer.
They typically just report off voltage. If a Li-on battery is cold for example, the voltage will drop, so the percent may show a drop. Also many of these batteries will drop in voltage after being used a bunch but then will slowly recover the output voltage when not being stressed.
@kvtobola - it WAS Hubitat sending me the alerts on battery level (via push notifications through the app on my mobile). Hence my added confusion - those alert levels didn't align to the levels shown in the interface. One of the alerts told me my shade battery level was down to 12% and when I logged in to Hubitat to check, the battery level was at something like 29%.
I have since replaced the regular battery pack on that shade with a rechargeable battery pack. That's created its own challenges. When I first installed the re-chargeable battery pack (after initially fully charging it per the instructions), it was telling me battery level was only 39%. I thought perhaps I hadn't properly charged it. But after a few shade cycles, that battery then showed 100%. That was 24 hours ago. Now, today, the battery is showing 93%. How it drained by 7% in just 3-4 openings/closings is baffling, given my other shade batteries that have been in place for months still show 100%.
The battery level readings are all over the place and, therefore, seem entirely unreliable. I do understand that these levels are apparently being reported by the devices themselves, but this gives me very little confidence that I'll ever know an actual battery charge level.
