I'm not sure if it's HE or something else. My hub is Rev-C5 and running 2.3.0.124 and since day 1 (3 yrs ago) I've been using smart things contact sensor and now I have some HomeSeer and some other brands and within the month I've replaced the battery on my smart things contact sensor 3 times which is attached to a window that stays closed once it got cold outside. I even just replaced it last night with a new battery and it's already at 71%. 1 of the HomeSeer contact sensor is attached to my basement door that's used maybe once 1 day a week and I replaced that battery twice in the month already. My alerts is set to notify me when the battery level drops to 30%. I have no extra features enabled to cause battery drainage this fast. I also try to stay with good brands in battery "Duracell or energizer
Simple test: I would look at the Events for the device. See if you are getting a lot of changes from open to closed. If you are, that would explain the battery issue and also indicate a faulty sensor. If not, something else is impacting performance.
Second: Also - on a window. Sensor temperature is 62F. Coldest part of the house interior - especially if there is an air leak. Cold will reduce battery life. (Should not be this bad?) I would check the sensor location for air ingressing into house.
Third: I would enable debug and info text logging for the device and see how much traffic you are seeing. (Compare this to your other sensors for a day or so.) After testing, be sure to return logging to what YOU want.
Other users with more experience will have more ideas.
You might be replacing batteries unnecessarily. Your contact sensors mounted on outside doors and windows will be colder than normal. As the temperature drops, so will the battery voltage. The sensors use a formula to predict battery life based on battery voltage. However, that formula will be based on room temperature. When the sensor temperature is low, the predicted battery life may be less than the actual battery life.
I use an older Smartthings multi-sensor to monitor the temperature of my freezer. I can put a new battery in the sensor and it will read 100%. However, shortly after placing the sensor in the freezer, the battery life will drop to 1% indicating the battery needs replacing. However, if I bring the sensor back to room temperature, the battery life will come back to normal. Even though the battery is indicating 1% life remaining, the sensor continues to send temperature readings to Hubitat for several months. I have to check the event listing to see when the sensor is no longer working. The Last Activity column in the Device listing can help identify devices that are off line.
Thank you both for confirming my suspicion. I thought maybe it was from the cold, but since it's been running for 4 yrs at the same locations, this is the 1st time I had to change it so quickly with the same brand batteries. Next time it happens I will try bringing the battery back to room temp over a couple of hours and then test it again to see what it reports.
I have seen the same with my ST Multi sensors. So much so I opted to try to improve the situation by putting the ones I had set up to measure acceleration into garage mode (to limit the demand on the device).
But alas the cold IS a factor as others have said and I'm trying to get on a cycle where my fresh batteries go in at this time of year so that by summer the heat gives them a little boost before dying.
Are you replacing the battery because the device has stopped reporting, or because the battery % is low? If the later, stop doing that -- it's an unreliable metric (as noted above). I use Device Activity Check to tell me if any of my sensors stop reporting, and then I replace the battery. FWIW, all of the sensors I use report temperature, so they all report at least once a day.
Also, I have several of the 2016 SmartThings Multisensors that use CR2450 batteries. These have the worst battery life of nearly all my devices (next worst is the 2016 SmartThings Motion Sensor, also using CR2450 batteries). I put two of the multisensors on my garage doors in late winter and the batteries lasted under 8 weeks. I modded the devices to use a pair of AAAs (Here's a 3D printed case to use AAA batteries with the ST motion sensor (now for the multipurpose sensor too!) - #13 by jlv - Projects & Stories - SmartThings Community). With that, the batteries lasted about 9 months (but they were a pain to replace in the 3d printed case). I gave up on them for the garage doors last September and replaced them with Iris V2 Contact Sensors (since I wasn't using the tilt for my garage doors at all), which use a single CR2 battery. It's only been 4 months but both look to be going strong. I've had another one of those Contact Sensors in my garage for years and it gets well over 18 months battery.
So, if you don't need the vibration or tilt, use another contact sensor on your windows, and keep the SmartThings multisensor for some place away from the cold to help the battery life.
I had to replace the battery twice in 2 months because it just stopped reporting when the window was open or closed (that was in the summer time temp 70-80) I realized it stopped reporting once the battery was around 15% so I setup a notification to let me know when the batteries get to 30% just to make me aware, but i'm not changing the batteries just because they're at 30%.
I was thinking I have 2 bad contact sensors because the rest of them 15+ never gives me this issue. so my plan now is to replace them both
FWIW, I also have some Homeseer brand contact sensors and have found them to vary wildly from device to device in terms of their their battery consumption and performance. I have two doors within five feet of each other (stairwell and garage entry) and a Homeseer sensor on each, purchased at the same time. One ate batteries for a year (every month or so) while the other lasted for the entire year, and the doors use didn't vary by 12x or more, for sure. Configurations were identical. And then, without making any changes to anything, the one sensor just stopped eating batteries. No earthly idea what happened. In another building, the same thing happened, but battery consumption was crazy on a sensor that got only moderate use, but almost no change (no replacement) on a unit that got frequent use, again from the same shipment. And then one day the "battery eater" just stopped doing it. o firmware updates. It just stopped doing it. If the excessive battery consumption continues I'll replace those sensors, but for now, for no apparent reason, they just started performing acceptably.
Thanks for the confirmation, at least I'm not alone in this matter. I think the cold has a little part to play in my battery issue, but since I had the same sensor for 4 yrs, I would think it would have been doing the same thing each winter but it didn't so I was thinking something in the HE update could be the culprit since the drivers haven't been updated for either contact sensor.
I have been monitoring battery life for a while now, keep a spreadsheet of replacement dates, type, and brand. Here are the varying conditions that I found make a difference especially with the cr2450:
battery brand - cheap no names last 1/4 as long
distance to hub/closest repeater
device brand/zwave version
temperatures - during winter months outdoor devices or ones that get colder due to mounted surface lose capacity quicker.
Zooz Remote Switches on cr2032 do last, some are at 12 months, no issues, reporting 85%.
