I replaced them in April. Should have had another 6 months or more but instead the charge is now at 1%… previous batteries lasted almost 18 months.
No particularly interesting history. Automations locked or unlocked it about 6 times over that 2 day period.
Not a question, just a frustration.
Have you always been tracking it? The act of tracking it could be keeping it from sleeping (and the wifi/btle on) and draining the battery.
Yeah I’ve been tracking it almost as long as I’ve had it. The previous batteries lasted about 15 months (and I replaced them with 20% remaining):
Looks like a graph of nvidia stock
OP, did you have an affair with a different doorbell? Or two?
You shoulda seen the knockers on that door. You’d ring that bell too. Third… door pun.
Is it still your turn? I feel like it’s shutting.
I have a google doorbell cam and when it has wifi issues, it will eat through the battery in a couple of days (normal charge lasts 3-5 weeks at least).
The doorbell connects via Bluetooth to a gateway about 2m away through a wall, but I did wonder if it’s using more power to maintain the connection for some reason.
This would 100% be my guess. Wifi and Bluetooth with poor connection can easily eat up the batteries. There could be some nearby devices causing interference.
The gateway is next to a stack of electronics haha. Most are not wireless though. Dream machine gateway/switch. Couple raspberry pis (connected via Ethernet) with zigbee reciever. Shitload of Ethernet cables. I moved my other switch to the ceiling as it was getting crowded there 😅.
Possibly the Zigbee receiver as Zigbee, Bluetooth and 2.4Ghz wifi all use similar frequencies. It could also be a neighbor’s device if you live in a dense area.
Yeah could be. Nothing has changed recently though 🤷
Well Venus is currently in retrograde, so I wouldn’t say “nothing has changed.” 😆
😆
I just changed the batteries. Turns out I was using a bulk pack of alkaline batteries, which I have used for the replacements, so will be interesting to see if they are dead in a couple of days or if them exhibit the same result in 6 months.
Two questions, what battery chemistry, and what’s the temperature outside?
All batteries struggle in the cold, but NiMH have it really bad because they start at 1.2v charged instead of an alkaline 1.5v. So most devices think they are half dead to begin with. And the cold is going to make that worse.
My lock was never this bad but I now own an ostation charger with their lithium AAs and the battery life is great. The only downside is they are obviously using a buck converter to get 1.5v so there’s no voltage curve to indicate when they get low, they just cut off when dead. If you rely purely on the smart features and don’t carry a key as backup you’ll want to set a reminder to change and charge them on a schedule so you’re never locked out.
I never even realised they make lion battery in aa size. Its pretty cheap too, gonna buy a bunch of them soon.
just be careful what you use them with
Some brands have unusual voltage graphs over the battery life, which can confuse devices that rely on the alkaline/NiMH voltage drop to detect if they are low on power
Some of the lithium ones set their voltage to a fixed value and abruptly die when they run out. This is especially problematic for devices like smoke detectors, as they can’t notify you if they are running low
I did some research comparing them but I think I am gonna stick with usual nimh batteries for my use case. Unless the device is very picky about voltage level, NiMh seems to be recommended over Li ion, for battery life and cost ig. Maybe I will get 1 just to test it out, some claim to have a proper voltage drop but I am sceptical. Quite annoying how hard it is to find good ones outside of Amazon -_-
They are great for stuff that you’d regularly recharge with NIMH. Things like game controllers etc
Longer lasting use cases don’t benefit much (see the latest technology connections video on the topic)
I haven’t taken it apart to replace them yet so not sure what batteries are in it. I used to use rechargeables but haven’t the last couple of times as they don’t last very long in comparison. Is there a type of battery I should be looking to replace them with?
We are heading into summer here. The last couple of days have probably been only 20C but some days they may have 30C temps when the door is in the sun.
Is this your charger? I didn’t even realise such a thing existed, I might ask Santa for one for Christmas!
Yes! That is what I have and I absolutely love it least fiddly charger experience ever. Just drop them in any old way and there’s always charged batteries in the bottom tray. And also I used a Christmas gift card to buy it.
But if that’s overkill they make a regular sized more traditional 4 battery charger that also works with their lithium batteries. But I really am a fan of the full ostaton.
Be warned they don’t make lithium AAAs so the ones bundled are just NiMH. Only the AAs are lithium. I got the one without the screen that you linked and the freaking thing has WiFi and Bluetooth so it’s now integrated into my Home Assistant instance. 😆 A battery charger.
You can find the integration on HACS/Marketplace
Haha that’s awesome! I am totally going to investigate this a bit more, maybe I’ll buy it for myself for Christmas! Unfortunately I am pretty sure the door lock takes AAA so it might not help my immediate problem if they don’t do lithium AAAs.
Oh wow, i saw a guy DIY something like that charger, but i didn’t know it existed as a proper product, now i want one too
I think I know the exact project you’re talking about, I was actually considering building one when I heard about the original ostation. So glad I didn’t DIY one.
Either your current batteries are a worse brand the last one, or your hardware has developed a problem. The strong loss within a few days points into that direction. Condensate, maybe?
I’ll probably replace the batteries and see if it happens again. It’s a bit humid but not cold here as we head into summer, so maybe?
Depending on how the batteries are mounted you could probably make a usb battery shim with a long enough cable, some planning and then never ever having to think about it again
I don’t think there’s a way to do that without making it look odd! I have a home assistant notification when the batteries get low, and they normally last over a year, so I’m happy to just change them as needed 🙂
Something is going on. I would remove and re-add the integration.
The lock itself is also complaining about low batteries, so they are definitely flat if you’re thinking it’s reporting wrong. But if you mean that something is causing it to poll a lot and drain the battery or something like that, then yeah maybe. I’ll do what you suggest and readd the integration.
Jesus, that’s bad. I just installed an Ultraloq Bolt SE and it’s still reporting 100% charge after 2 weeks of daily use. I bought mine explicitly for battery life, I hope I don’t have the same thing happen…
I’ve been researching smart locks lately and it seems like the radio technology used is what determines battery life with z-wave being the best and wifi being the worst.
Thread is great too. Z-wave and thread are quite similar in terms of power consumption.
Last set of batteries got me almost 18 months. Really not sure what happened here!
Dang, what lock is it?
It’s an Elok, which I think might be an NZ specific brand, but the hardware inside is the Chinese TTLock. It’s probably not the locks fault, it’s been fine up to now. This might be an issue with the batteries or it might be to do with the bluetooth connection to the gateway 🤷
Does it have WiFi fallback if the Bluetooth signal is bad? WiFi would obliterate batteries if it’s maintaining a connection.
Nah the lock doesn’t have wifi, only bluetooth. They sell a gateway that does the bluetooth to wifi translation. I did buy a TTLock gateway off Ali express instead of the branded one for 3x the price, but it’s been working fine for years.
