ZWave Battery Device Status Reporting in Admin Console

[gviliunas]

The weak link (pun intended) for battery-powered devices is the battery itself. My experience with the Insteon devices is that I can usually rely on the lack of heartbeat to call for a battery replacement. On the other hand and in general, I find that "tossing a coin" to be a better predictor of ZWave device battery status.

 When I include battery-powered ZWave devices several nodes are created in the Admin Console. One of these nodes contains a Battery Status field. After inclusion, the battery status is shown but, for most devices, is never updated again unless I do something like removing and reinstalling the device's battery.

I have noticed this with the Aeotec WallMote Quads, Aeotec Door Sensor 5 and 6, and the Dome Door/Window sensors. I also receive regular communication errors from ONLY the battery status NODE of my Aeotec Door Sensor 6's. The door position reporting is 100% How can we communicate with one node of this device but be unable to communicate with another node of the same device???  My dome window sensors work 100% for window status reporting but never for battery status. I have over 35 wired and wireless ZWave devices in 1000 sq ft so think my network is good.

On the other hand, the battery status reporting for the Aeotec Multisensor 6,  seems to work most of the time. Why does this type of device usually (but not always) correctly supply battery status?

It seems that either something is missing in the way ISY handles battery status communication or problems with ZWave battery status reporting in general. If the ZWave devices / ISY cannot be made to speak properly, it would be nice to be able to turn off those annoying "Can't communicate with battery status node of xyzzy sensor" pop-up messages.

Has anyone experienced this? How do you deal with battery-powered devices?  Do you replace the battery on a schedule or just wait until something stops working?

[simplextech]

4 minutes ago, gviliunas said:

It seems that either something is missing in the way ISY handles battery status communication or problems with ZWave battery status reporting in general.

This is a general issue across the board with all z-wave controllers I have used/tested.  None of them accurately/correctly report battery status reliably across devices.  I think this comes from how diverse z-wave devices are and the quality of battery monitoring implemented by each manufacturer.  I don't think there's anything UDI can do in regards to this.

6 minutes ago, gviliunas said:

If the ZWave devices / ISY cannot be made to speak properly, it would be nice to be able to turn off those annoying "Can't communicate with battery status node of xyzzy sensor" pop-up messages.

+1000 to this as battery devices can't be polled/queried and those pop-ups are annoying.  To further this battery devices should be auto excluded from the z-wave heal as well.  The battery devices are not awake for the heal and the multiple attempts to communicate to get neighbors and update routes for them does nothing but slow the whole process down.