I have a Third Reality motion detector on my mailbox. It's inside a metal mailbox inside a brick enclosure about 30 ft from the house. I was skeptical when I installed it but it has been working fine for about a year. It is necessary to replace the batteries a little more often, but other than that it's great. Now the problem.
It's stopped reporting motion. It sends the battery level every 4-5 hours with no problem. So it is communicating with the hub. I can trigger it and the light blinks but my hub never gets a motion active. I have put in new batteries twice with no luck. Batteries showing 96% at this time which is plenty. Usually don't have issues till around 60%.
I would reset and rejoin the device. DON'T remove it from HE. If you reset and rejoin it will slot right back in to your rules as long as you don't remove it. I have to occasionally do this with Zigbee devices. Not very often though.
I agree, I have had to do this with some Zigbee devices that stop reporting. I had that issue with some Zigbee valves out in the yard this summer. Just reset and get the light blinking, start Zigbee pairing, and it tells you it found and reconnected the device.
It seems to only happen to devices that are not solidly in the mesh, so I'm not surprised that a sensor outside in a mailbox would do this as well.
I have a Third Reality motion sensor in my pantry that has not had that issue, but it is in the middle of many repeaters.
I've seen that battery only reporting too. It's often caused by low batteries but since you have already tried new batteries try the reset and rejoin. You have nothing to lose but a few minutes of your time. If that doesn't fix it then jump on Amazon and order a new $20 sensor but I would bet doing the rejoin will fix it.
I just had the exact same issue with two Sonoff motion sensors. Batteries got low, replaced them, reported battery but not motion. The light also would flash when triggered. I done the same thing as recommended. I rejoined the devices without removing them from Hubitat. Took care of the issue with both.
I have to periodically rejoin a Zigbee motion detector that is powered via USB. It reports power and checks in with the hub and it even blinks red when it detects motion, it just gets to a state where it does not report that detected motion to Hubitat...so I rejoin it, and it works until the next time it doesn't...
Pulled it off the base and brought it in the house. Laid it on the desk, went for a cup of coffee. As soon as I went back into the office it reported motion. ( I knew this as I get a notification). So carrying it into the house didn't produce any motion events.
Thinking it might be temperature related, but it's about 40 degrees this morning.
Battery still says 96%, but I will replace them anyway.
Went ahead and did a reset and repair. As soon as it gets light enough I will take it back out and see what happens. (Easy to remove from base when a little dark, not so much puttting it back on... )
As a side note here, the current mail truck has a rather loud and distinctive sound so we usually hear it coming anyway. But the PO is in the process of replacing their vehicles so at some point it becomes more important....
Do you live in an area where the temperature gets cold in winter? Here in Northern Illinois, it was minus 4 F this past Sunday. Battery voltage is highly dependent on temperature, expecially if alkaline batteries are used. Lithium batteries hold their voltage better than alkaline in cold temperatures. I suspect that the circuitry needed to report battery voltage/life remaining requires less voltage than that needed to keep the IR motion scanner functional. If the motion sensor failed during cold weather, this might be the cause.
Yes and no. I live in mid Missouri. We did have a cold spell where it got down to under 20 F. But ever since I changed the battery it has been above freezing and yesterday it was in the 50's. The IR motion scanner I would think was working ok as the light blinked meaning it saw motion. Not disputing what you say or anything like that. It's quite possible some component finally gave out due to the cold and being over a year in service with last year's cold and summers heat.
By the way, keep those minus temps up there please...
Update. Sensor seems to work fine in the house. But when I take it back out to the mailbox it doesn't.
I had another one that isn't very important at this time so I decided to swap them. So far both of them are working. Thinking maybe the radio in the first one got weak???
Probably just the repeater it’s routing through changed. When you change the battery the sensor might be picking a new router to connect to when it powers back up. This is why you usually want to pair Zigbee devices in place. Having a couple strong repeaters like the Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 dongle or Sonoff USB switches (using @kkossev’s driver with turbo mode enabled) close to your home’s perimeter near your outside sensor is beneficial. It will make the sensor more reliable and make the batteries last longer.
He (kkossev) seems really high on these in Turbo mode...that's a pretty good recommendation.
Pairing in place should help ID if the connectivity in the location is iffy. A battery change (at least one that occurred at normal "old out, new in" speed) causing a re-routing seems less likely, as I'm not sure a device would calculate a new LQI and make route changes in the time it normally takes to change a battery.
Not sure how the Zigbee routing takes place, but after swapping the 2 units they both show connected to what would be the nearest powered device. Different repeaters for each one. So after switching locations they obviously re-routed themselves.
Don’t Zigbee devices calculate this with every packet received? Although unless it’s an Aqara device, it should reroute through another parent device as needed regardless.
If you want an in depth view of your Zigbee mesh, download the Zigbee Map app. It will show you what end devices are connected to each router, and the signal strength reported by each parent and child device.
I'm no expert, but a summary of the re-routing calculations and resulting changes that was posted by one of the gurus a while back made it sound like it would not be "instantaneous," especially if they are in the same spot and able to see/connect to the repeater they've been using... But I've been wrong, hmmm, I think one time before back in '04...
I've seen the same, two devices close to each other, each choosing a different route to the hub. Under the old "if it works..." paradigm.
Yeah, I'd expect that, and likely re-routing would go quickly if they find they can't see/connect to their previous repeater.
This is really puzzling. The replacement one isn't working either. At least the hub is not seeing anything. The Zigbee graph shows it connected thru a repeater that is only about 30 ft from the mailbox.
I went back and checked and that has been working in the mailbox for over a year and half. So something has changed. I haven't added any Zigbee devices for some time. So don't know what is going on.
One more update. In the middle of the night the sensor reported 200% battery. I thought that issue had been corrected a long time ago.... This is the new one I put on the mailbox. The original mailbox sensor battery is still reporting correctly from inside the house.
I notice in the Zigbee map this morning the unit has changed to a different route. The repeater it is showing on now is actually further away, but not too much. When it gets lighter outside I'll go out and see if it is working now.
EDIT: Well I'm at a total loss to understand this. Something that has been flawless for over a year thru hot and cold temps now won't work. Don't make no sense...
Wild thought here, is it possible there is a power issue causing the zigbee radio to not be up to full power? I have it set at max power level.
This is a C8 hub and the power adapter says 5v at 1000ma (1 a). I have a couple other power adapters, one says 5.3V at 2A, the other 5.2v at 1.8a. Think it's worth changing to see what happens???
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Don't make no sense...
