Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Plugin to monitor Z-Wave battery device Health - CLOSED

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Originally posted by Tomgru View Post
    duh :-)



    here's one device. very weird.

    Entryway Vents Vent

    4/30/2017 8:56 AM: 75% 72.0% per day

    4/30/2017 7:56 AM: 78% 0.0% per day

    4/29/2017 4:56 PM: 75% 7.2% per day

    4/29/2017 6:56 AM: 78% 0.0% per day

    4/29/2017 12:56 AM: 75% 36.0% per day

    4/28/2017 10:56 PM: 78% 0.0% per day

    4/28/2017 7:56 PM: 75% 5.1% per day

    4/28/2017 5:56 AM: 78% 0.0% per day

    4/28/2017 2:56 AM: 75% 72.0% per day

    4/28/2017 1:56 AM: 78% 0.0% per day

    4/28/2017 12:56 AM: 75% 3.6% per day

    4/27/2017 4:56 AM: 78% 0.0% per day

    4/27/2017 3:56 AM: 75% 0.5% per day

    4/21/2017 9:56 AM: 78% 16.0% per day

    4/21/2017 6:56 AM: 80% 0.0% per day

    4/20/2017 4:56 PM: 78% 48.0% per day


    That explains the discharge rates. The device is reporting a battery level going up and down. The last drop was 3% in 1 hour hence 72% per day.
    It will be interesting to see if the device reports more stable battery levels with the polling interval increased to 12 hours.
    Steve

    Comment


      I installed the plugin yesterday and I have a few issues. I'm currently monitoring 4 devices. One is my phone which works great. The other three are door locks. One says "Status; Poll Missed". What does that mean. Also all three locks show battery level at 40%. As long as I can remember when I have checked the battery level under device management it has been at 40%. Even when I have had to change the batteries a few time. Also the device for one of the locks shows last updated battery level was March 2015. Since the device have always show 40% it's obviously not your plugin that is the issue but I was hoping the plugin would get the correct battery value from the device itself. Is the plugin just getting it's information from HS or the device itself. Any settings I change in the devices or your plugin to get accurate readings? And also get rid of the "Poll Missed" Status

      Comment


        Originally posted by SteveMSJ View Post
        That explains the discharge rates. The device is reporting a battery level going up and down. The last drop was 3% in 1 hour hence 72% per day.
        It will be interesting to see if the device reports more stable battery levels with the polling interval increased to 12 hours.
        Steve
        changing the interval helped with 2 vents, and seemed to stop monitoring with the other 4? any ideas there?

        also, can you provide alittle more instructions on the choices for "devices that require polling" and "devices that require activity checking". these vents show up in the drop down of both of those, and i'm not sure if they should be checked or not?

        Thanks Steve!

        Comment


          Originally posted by freeon View Post
          I installed the plugin yesterday and I have a few issues. I'm currently monitoring 4 devices. One is my phone which works great. The other three are door locks. One says "Status; Poll Missed". What does that mean. Also all three locks show battery level at 40%. As long as I can remember when I have checked the battery level under device management it has been at 40%. Even when I have had to change the batteries a few time. Also the device for one of the locks shows last updated battery level was March 2015. Since the device have always show 40% it's obviously not your plugin that is the issue but I was hoping the plugin would get the correct battery value from the device itself. Is the plugin just getting it's information from HS or the device itself. Any settings I change in the devices or your plugin to get accurate readings? And also get rid of the "Poll Missed" Status
          What method are you using to monitor the devices? I presume for the locks you are using method 3, i.e. polling. The 'Poll Missed' means that the device has not responded to being polled for the configured period of time. The device will have reported to HS that it is pollable, otherwise it wouldn't be in the list, but it would seem that it is not responding when the ZWave plugin polls the battery child. You would need to look through your log to see how the device is responding to polls. If you set the plug-in LogLevel to 2 temporarily, you will get a lot of SDJ-Health messages in the log including results of polling. Depending on what polling interval is set it might be a while before you see the device polled. Polls may be intermittently failing due to communication issues or the device may just not properly support polling. However, if you have three identical locks and only one is showing 'Poll Missed' then either the batteries are flat or it has a communications issue.

          The actual devices are owned by the HS Z-Waver plugin so no other plug-in can communicate with them directly. The battery levels come from the battery child of the device in HS3. If HS shows the battery level as 40% then that is what the plug-in will see. Reporting of Z-Wave battery levels works well for some devices and not others. You will find lots of threads in the forum about this. I suggest you start a separate thread on your locks and others might comment on whether they report battery levels correctly for them.

          The main purpose of this plug-in is to indicate when the device has died (missed wake-up/poll) without relying on battery levels. The battery level and discharge rate reporting and alerts are just an added extra to be used or ignored as required.

          Steve
          Last edited by SteveMSJ; May 3, 2017, 03:00 PM.

          Comment


            Originally posted by Tomgru View Post
            changing the interval helped with 2 vents, and seemed to stop monitoring with the other 4? any ideas there?

            also, can you provide alittle more instructions on the choices for "devices that require polling" and "devices that require activity checking". these vents show up in the drop down of both of those, and i'm not sure if they should be checked or not?
            Can you give more details of what you mean by 'stop monitoring'.

            I presume you have read the guide
            The best monitoring method, which is also automatically configured, is monitoring the log for wake-up messages but that only works for non-listening Z-Wave devices. Activity Checking should work for any device but is not going to be very useful unless the device shows regular activity. The plug-in checks for activity of all the child devices of the particular device. If the device includes say a temperature sensor then it will show regular activity so the plug-in will know it is alive. If it is something like an alarm siren that just sits there waiting to be turned on then the plug-in won't know it is alive by monitoring activity. Polling is better in these situations, as long as the device responds properly, as the plug-in will poll it at regular intervals to check it is alive.

            All devices with at least a parent and a battery child should show up in the list of devices available for activity checking but only devices that report to HS that they are poll-able will show up in the list of devices available for polling.

            Steve

            Comment


              I want to thank you for this plugin. I have 36 battery powered devices and all are reporting through your plugin.

              Another thread was discussing continuity if the hobbyist was to pass away. My wife now knows how to change the batteries and gets a Pushover message when they get to less than 20%.

              Again, thanks.

              Michael
              Last edited by Rvtravlr; May 3, 2017, 09:28 PM.
              Michael

              Comment


                Originally posted by Rvtravlr View Post
                I want to thank you for this plugin. I have 36 battery powered devices and all are reporting through your plugin.

                Another thread was discussing continuity if the hobbyist was to pass away. My wife now knows how to change the batteries and gets a Pushover message when they get to less than 20%.

                Again, thanks.

                Michael


                Thanks for the kind words. I'm glad I can help with your departure from this world
                Steve
                Last edited by SteveMSJ; May 4, 2017, 02:43 PM. Reason: It took time to think of a witty riposte.

                Comment


                  Originally posted by SteveMSJ View Post
                  More recorded battery history from this Aeon multisensor 6. We were away for a few days returning on the 27th and again it is noticeable that the battery levels increased slightly as the room warmed up. However, there is a steady progress downwards. Apart from the fact that it started at 50% on new batteries(!) this device appears to be reporting accurately, unlike some others.
                  For interest a further update on the battery history for this Aeon Multisensor 6.
                  Note it is waking up and reporting sensor levels every 10 minutes which is fairly short. However, it is in a bathroom so motion events aren't all that intensive.

                  New tested batteries installed on 20/01/17. This reported at 50% and stayed at that level for nearly 2 months, started dropping on 12/03/17.

                  Level dropped steadily to 22% on 30/04/17 and then 'Low Battery Level' (this is 255 which this plug-in converts to 0%) on 01/05/17.
                  Continued working for another 3 days and then the plugin alerted it had missed waking up. It had indeed stopped working but I left it for a day to make sure it was not a temporary blip.
                  So about 3.5 months. Not great, I'm glad the rest of my multisensors are USB powered.

                  Removed the batteries (2 No 3v batteries CR123A) tested with a battery tester:
                  1 reported 2.4V which probably classes as dead for the device.
                  1 reported 3.3V which is what new batteries test at.

                  Replaced with 2 brand new batteries, both tested at 3.3V.

                  Device sprung to life and reported 50% battery again!

                  As I have said before I'm not convinced this devices is using both it's batteries! Interestingly the orientation in the battery compartment is parallel whereas most 2 battery devices have the batteries opposite ways round. I realise this may mean nothing as they could still be wired in series internally.

                  I will track this set of batteries and see if they behave any differently. next time they run down I will try swapping them around and see what happens.

                  Anybody else using a Multisensor 6 on batteries?

                  Steve
                  Attached Files

                  Comment


                    Removed the batteries (2 No 3v batteries CR123A) tested with a battery tester:
                    1 reported 2.4V which probably classes as dead for the device.
                    1 reported 3.3V which is what new batteries test at.
                    I've got two on USB power for now, but I'm curious what would be reported if next time you get a battery warning, you just switch the two.

                    Comment


                      Hi SteveMSJ,
                      I have two of the Aeotec Multisensor 6s running on battery and I cannot get the battery level to report properly. They are always at 100. Was there something special you had to get the level to report?

                      Comment


                        Originally posted by racerfern View Post
                        I've got two on USB power for now, but I'm curious what would be reported if next time you get a battery warning, you just switch the two.
                        Yes that was the plan but I decided to experiment a bit more now rather than wait.
                        I find it will run on one battery but only if it is one particular slot. Checked my manual and it makes no mention of this but I just downloaded the latest manual which says it has a Primary and Secondary battery hold and will run on one battery in the Primary hold.
                        https://aeotec.freshdesk.com/support...-6-user-guide-
                        I suspect my device is faulty as it is basically not using the battery in the secondary hold at all. I think I will write to Aeon about this.

                        Steve

                        Comment


                          Originally posted by mwolter View Post
                          Hi SteveMSJ,
                          I have two of the Aeotec Multisensor 6s running on battery and I cannot get the battery level to report properly. They are always at 100. Was there something special you had to get the level to report?
                          I don't think I did anything special and I turned off any polling that HS may have set up. As long as they are set to wake-up at regular intervals they should report the battery level but only when it changes by a predefined amount. Reading the latest manual the default is 10% and it may take a few months to drop from 100% to 90%. How long have yours been running?
                          I think mine is faulty and only runs on the one battery in the Primary hold, hence starting at 50%. It has been reporting changes as little as 1% so the default may have been different for earlier models. I'm pretty sure I never changed this parameter. I've just checked it (parameter 44) and it is set at 5 although it has been reporting changes as small as 1% so probably different firmware.

                          Steve

                          Comment


                            Originally posted by SteveMSJ View Post
                            What method are you using to monitor the devices? I presume for the locks you are using method 3, i.e. polling. The 'Poll Missed' means that the device has not responded to being polled for the configured period of time. The device will have reported to HS that it is pollable, otherwise it wouldn't be in the list, but it would seem that it is not responding when the ZWave plugin polls the battery child. You would need to look through your log to see how the device is responding to polls. If you set the plug-in LogLevel to 2 temporarily, you will get a lot of SDJ-Health messages in the log including results of polling. Depending on what polling interval is set it might be a while before you see the device polled. Polls may be intermittently failing due to communication issues or the device may just not properly support polling. However, if you have three identical locks and only one is showing 'Poll Missed' then either the batteries are flat or it has a communications issue.

                            The actual devices are owned by the HS Z-Waver plugin so no other plug-in can communicate with them directly. The battery levels come from the battery child of the device in HS3. If HS shows the battery level as 40% then that is what the plug-in will see. Reporting of Z-Wave battery levels works well for some devices and not others. You will find lots of threads in the forum about this. I suggest you start a separate thread on your locks and others might comment on whether they report battery levels correctly for them.

                            The main purpose of this plug-in is to indicate when the device has died (missed wake-up/poll) without relying on battery levels. The battery level and discharge rate reporting and alerts are just an added extra to be used or ignored as required.

                            Steve
                            The one that reported poll missed actually had dead batteries and was still showing 40%. Replacing the batteries fixed it. As for the inaccurate reading it appears the cause might be because I'm using rechargeable batteries. Might have to change to standard batteries.

                            Comment


                              Originally posted by freeon View Post
                              The one that reported poll missed actually had dead batteries and was still showing 40%. Replacing the batteries fixed it. As for the inaccurate reading it appears the cause might be because I'm using rechargeable batteries. Might have to change to standard batteries.


                              Glad it's working. That's the purpose of the plugin. I get a Pushover alert on my phone if the batteries die in any of my devices irrespective of any misleading level they might be reporting.

                              Steve
                              Last edited by SteveMSJ; May 8, 2017, 02:12 PM.

                              Comment


                                I've added updated version 3.0.4.9 to message #241 of this thread. The main change is a configurable limit on stored values in the SQLite database if you are logging battery values. This prevents it growing indefinitely by removing older records when new records are added beyond the limit.

                                A few other minor improvements and corrections. Release notes are in message #241 and at the end of the guide.

                                Only the main file HSPI_SDJHealth.exe in the root folder and the guide SDJ-Health Guide.pdf in the docs folder have changed.

                                Steve

                                Comment

                                Working...
                                X