reboot resets low battery indicator on motion sensor

[johnnyt]

About a week ago one of my motion sensor's low battery indicator came on. In the past I've seen them happen then clear themselves only to have the device stop working about a month later and not really knowing what happened. This time I was watching more closely. The program that runs is this:

If
       Status  'MISC (Non Lighting) / Dusk and Low Bat Sensors / Laundry Room Motion-Low Bat' is On

Then
       Repeat Every  24 hours 
          Send Notification to 'me' content 'Low Battery'

Else
  - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action')

It ran fine for several days until I rebooted ISY. I did the reboot just to see what would happen and sure enough the program stopped running and the low bat node is now off. I did not query it - which is how I understand one clears these - however I believe ISY queries all at startup and it appears to include the low battery indicators.

 

Is there something I need to do to prevent a reboot from reseting low battery indicators? If not, is there something UDI can do?

 

As well is there a better way to program this event? I'd like to delay being notified for several weeks since the low battery comes on with quite a bit of life left in the battery and I want things to (efficiently) live through everything that can happen during the month or more of use left in the battery. A wait 500 hours doesn't seem like the best approach.

[LeeG]

The Motion Sensor has no Status to query. Of course it is also asleep so no command execution is possible anyway. All the battery RF only devices (except thermostat) have no actual Status. Even if the devices are put into linking mode a Query would not return the Status of a Motion Sensor, TriggerLinc, RemoteLinc2, RemoteLinc. The Status the ISY maintains is simply the last command received for a particular node.

 

The Low Batt node is set to Off during an ISY boot up because that node only ever sends a low battery condition once when the battery voltage drops. If the ISY did not prime the Low Batt node to Off the node would have a blank Status until the battery is low.

[johnnyt]

If the ISY did not prime the Low Batt node to Off the node would have a blank Status until the battery is low.

Would a blank status allow one to set the trigger to if "low battery indicator" is not Off causing the program to run again at startup?

 

Perhaps things could be set up so only a manual "pseudo" query or a user program would set it to off (not an ISY startup). That or maybe persist the state for these devices and recall it at startup?

[johnnyt]

 

Is there something I need to do to prevent a reboot from reseting low battery indicators? If not, is there something UDI can do?

 

does no answer mean there's nothing that can be done?

 

 

 

Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk

[LeeG]

There is nothing within existing capability. I cannot speak for UDI regarding future changes. If you want the Motion Sensor to report Low Batt when the battery is closer to failure point the Smarthome forum has a category for requesting product changes.

[johnnyt]

Unless its an easy tweak, I think what I might do is have the low battery event enable a program that counts the number of motion events. After a little trial and error I'll figure out a number that's close to the limit of the battery and have a program send a daily notification based on that number rather than low bat.

 

 

Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk

[bsobel]

Create a state variable and have your program set that to a value (say 1) that indicated your in low battery mode, the set the init of the variable to the same value (this will survive a reboot). Use that to trigger your reminder, not perfect but will mask the issue reasonably enough.

 

Bill