Hi everyone
Several years ago I bought a Yale YRD210 deadbolt for my front door. It's one with a keypad AND a keyed lock cylinder - I told myself I wanted the key backup just in case. Now, years later, I haven't used the key a single time. The batteries on the lock last for over a year, and I've been super happy with the lock.
So I decided to get Yale z-wave locks for my other doors. They make the YRD110 (also known as B1L) model which looks the same, except it doesn't have a key cylinder. It has 9V battery terminals on the outside so you can power it up to enter a code if the batteries are dead. This one has z-wave built-in, rather than being a separate module like on the YRD210.
So I ordered three. Got them all installed, got them paired up to hubitat no issue - all 3 showed that they were securely paired. All 3 behaved properly.
But they've been burning through batteries like crazy. When I first got them installed, I used whatever AA batteries I had sitting around. After a few days, 2 of the locks were dead. Could have been my bad batteries - so I ordered the top of the line Energizer Lithium AA batteries and installed them. Now, about a month later, I noticed that they aren't responding and the last action in hubitat is from 7/29. The third YRD110 is still working.
All locks always report 100% battery to hubitat. I guess this is a Yale quirk? Even the dead ones reported 100% most recently before they died.
As for usage, the front door is really the only lock that gets locked/unlocked remotely with any regularity, and its 4xAA batteries always last over a year. The only time the other 3 new locks get used is once per day when I hit the "good night" automation and it sends a lock command to them - yet they're draining over 10x faster.
All 3 locks are within range of hubitat such that they don't go through repeaters. I COULD TRY excluding them, hard resetting them, re-including them RIGHT by the hubitat, and leaving them there for 5 minutes before reinstalling them, but I don't really see what that could do for me, especially considering one of the offending locks is on the door going into the room with the hubitat, so it's maybe 6 feet away at all times anyway.
Has anybody else experienced this? How am I supposed to keep track of it if it always shows 100% battery? Is there a different/better driver for me to use? Can I configure hubitat to ALERT me if a lock doesn't respond (so I know immediately when the batteries are dead instead of realizing a week later that the buttons don't work)?
Edit: I guess I should also point out that I am using Homebridge to expose my Hubitat devices to Apple Home - I considered that perhaps this could add excessive polling, however I can't imagine this is the issue, considering my YRD210 still gets stellar battery life.