Any Device in group has not change for longer than..

[Charles_cz]

Hi guys, asking here since I am using Easy Trigger extensively. I have problem with some HS motion sensors not reporting battery status properly. It might be reporting to 35% and then nothing until battery dies. I have events setup to check for LOW Battery status (under 20%) but I need backup plan for situation where sensor stops reporting battery status before it reaches 20%.

I would like to check if any motion activity and get report if any of sensors in the group has not change it's status for example for 3 days. That would most likely mean that battery is dead.

Is there any way to do it using easy trigger? If not, do you have suggestion how it can be done?

Help is very much appreciated. Thank you. Charles

[RoChess]

Lithium batteries such as the common CR123A used in Z-Wave battery devices tend to be unreliable in reporting accurate capacity levels when you get below 40-50%. There are countless of documents that go into great detail to explain the science behind this, but it is best to not allow important sensors to drop below a level you are comfortable with.

The SDJ-Health plugin might be useful for you as it allows you to build up a history on your device battery usage as per how many fraction of a % it uses per day. It requires a long history though as most sensors will take months before even dipping a single percentage.

Once you get an accurate usage from 100% to 80%, then you can verify that on 80% to 60% and extrapolate that all the way down to 0% if needed.

The important sensors I replace around 50% myself, and then use them in some less important Z-Wave battery devices to get the last bit of usage out of them, or put them in the tiny flashlight I got until they are drained. Lithium batteries hold a charge for a long time, 15-20 years is normal for a quality one.

[Charles_cz]

That is why I want to check sensors for activity as backup to find non working sensors. It would be impractical to change battery at 50% especially when I have over 80 motion sensors. I would not have use for half way used batteries anyway.

But thank you for the info and I will do some search on Lithium battery capacity reporting to educate myself.

Lithium batteries such as the common CR123A used in Z-Wave battery devices tend to be unreliable in reporting accurate capacity levels when you get below 40-50%. There are countless of documents that go into great detail to explain the science behind this, but it is best to not allow important sensors to drop below a level you are comfortable with.

[logman]

That is why I want to check sensors for activity as backup to find non working sensors. It would be impractical to change battery at 50% especially when I have over 80 motion sensors. I would not have use for half way used batteries anyway.

But thank you for the info and I will do some search on Lithium battery capacity reporting to educate myself.

Something like this would work...



Note the "AND IF" condition for battery level less than 50% is not necessary, but will cut down on the number of false alerts by only letting the event run when a battery has reported a level of less than 50%.

--Barry

[logman]

You could also use an event like this as a second catch. I haven't tested this, but it should only trigger if a battery level hasn't changed for 5 days and the last reported battery level was less than 35%.




--Barry

[SteveMSJ]

I would like to check if any motion activity and get report if any of sensors in the group has not change it's status for example for 3 days. That would most likely mean that battery is dead.

If you use SDJ-Health it will monitor your ZWave wake ups and notify you when a battery device stops waking up, i.e. the battery has died. But you might not want to run another plug-in.
Steve

[Charles_cz]

You could also use an event like this as a second catch. I haven't tested this, but it should only trigger if a battery level hasn't changed for 5 days and the last reported battery level was less than 35%.




--Barry

Perfect. Thank you.

[Charles_cz]

If you use SDJ-Health it will monitor your ZWave wake ups and notify you when a battery device stops waking up, i.e. the battery has died. But you might not want to run another plug-in.
Steve

I will check out the plug-in.. Thank you

[Charles_cz]

Hi Berry, what am I missing? I just wanted to try to setup the event but I can't find the option shown in your screen shot.
"Any device's value in this group has not changed exactly for..."

I guess that's why I did not see solution at first place. See my screen shot.

Thanks, Charles

[randy]

Hi Berry, what am I missing? I just wanted to try to setup the event but I can't find the option shown in your screen shot.
"Any device's value in this group has not changed exactly for..."

I guess that's why I did not see solution at first place. See my screen shot.

Thanks, Charles

You need to install the latest Easy Trigger beta, yours must be older than 3.0.0.69.

[Charles_cz]

Ah... I though I was on latest one.. My bad. Thanks. :-)

[Charles_cz]

Worked perfectly. Thanks to you all for help and Spud for excellent work!

[RoChess]

Spud's knowledge will be a good addition to the HomeSeer development team and HS4; around HS5 or HS6 it will do this all automatic for you with no interaction required

[ahuefner]

Almost all devices monitor battery voltage to indicate battery status. Most non Lithium type batteries show a steady almost linear voltage drop as the batteries capacity diminishes over time. Lithium batteries behave differently in that they provide an almost constant voltage output until their capacity is mostly depleted and then at the end of their capacity, they rapidly drop their voltage and go dead. This characteristic makes them hard to estimate remaining life.

[ericg]

You need to install the latest Easy Trigger beta, yours must be older than 3.0.0.69.

I am running EasyTrigger 3.0.0.67. I cannot find anything more recent on the plug-ins Manage page, including the beta section. How do I find the latest beta version?