Fibaro motion sensor - randomly detects motion and battery life

I’ve just adjusted my Config. Had some very battery-consuming settings. I will keep an eye on battery drain.
Before I had reports send to Controller every minute and every change in 0,1C temperature and reports every 1 lux change.

Does it save measures i.e. when I set up temperature measure every 300s (62) and temperature report every 600s (64), will i get 2 values or just the last measurement?

Just the last measurement

@chris how to get battery levels periodically…?

Battery levels can be sampled periodically by configuring an item linked to the BATTERY command class. This will be sampled every hour, but it can only be requested when the device wakes up, so it depends on the configuration of the wakeup class.

Don’t know what problem you guys have but my sensors are working fine, you should have returned them.
i have got mine 4 years and had to replace the batt once till now :slight_smile:
the only thing i changed is the wakeuptime to 3600 and the temp measure to value 10
kindest regards

I only had problems with the Fibaro Motion Sensor. So in the end I send it back. Going for the Aeontec Motion Sensor now, which has a humidity sensor as well.

Watch out: sensitivity ranges from 8-255 where the lowest value (8) respresents the highest sensitivity. With sensitivity set to 8, I also noticed erroneous motion detection and consequently increased battery usage

Hi everyone,

my fibaro motion sensor battery life has dropped to 87% within 6 month.
At this rate, it would probably end up.Seems like the battery life is indeed on the short side.
The wake-up interval of motion sensor is two time in one day.At 87% of battery level, It does not detect motion.
is that normal…?

any suggestions…?

Mine is at 74% after 22 month and still working fine.

No. Did you change any config parameters?

Yes I have found the Fibaro motion sensor to be very good with battery life. I have a couple and they have been running happily for well over a year and are still reporting 100%. They are only set to wake up every 12 hours and don’t report temp/lux - just motion.

rm65453 can you say more about aeotec multi 6 sensors ? are they better than fibaro ? i want to buy a amotion sensor and can’t decide which one.

Unfortunately with batteries such as these, it’s very difficult to accurately display the correct battery level, since the voltage/current characteristics depend on the battery type, quality and on environmental factors such as it’s temperature.

These devices will often report the same percentage value for a very long time, until suddenly there’ll be a quick drop, and even though it’s higher than 50% the device won’t be able to draw enough power to operate correctly.

I’ve seen this with both the Fibaro and the Aoetec sensors (the latter I am currently not using), they would be on 100% for a long time but after a more than year they would drop to ~92% before they started faulting. This has been consistent with the batteries I have been using (since I bought a multi-pack). My advice would be to look for a sudden drop in battery %age, and raise a low battery alarm through a rule.

hi @rozpruwacz

Based on my personal experience, I prefer the aeotec sensors. Much better value for money but this battery thing is a PITA.

Some of my sensors have been working fine for months while other the battery dies every couple of months. I have 6 of these sensors all over my house. no issues with the function just the batter. Am gonna try to hook them up directly to power.

Does anyone know if some solar based power supply unit work well with these?

Thanks

yes, I have change some config parameters that is given below…

=> MOTION SENSOR’S SENSITIVITY 8
=>MOTION SENSOR’S BLIND TIME (INSENSITIVITY) 5 (3 sec)
=>MOTION ALARM CANCELLATION DELAY 10 sec
=> ILLUMINATION REPORT THRESHOLD 50 lux
=> ILLUMINATION REPORTS INTERVAL 60 sec
=>TEMPERATURE REPORT THRESHOLD 10
=>INTERVAL OF TEMPERATURE MEASURING 120 sec
=>TEMPERATURE REPORTS INTERVAL 60 sec

You’ve set the sensor to measure temperature and illumination very frequently, that will shorten battery life.
For example, default interval of temp measuring according to the manual is 900 sec, mine is set to 1800 sec, yours is at 120 sec.
Grab the manual and set everything to default, I’m pretty sure battery life will improve …

I have change those config parameters that are needed for project.Is there any another way to improve the battery life of sensors.If you Know then please suggest me.

No, not that I know of. You should switch to a mains powered sensor then.

Same issue here. Battery drained after a couple of month. After exchanging the battery twice, I’m going to move to Aeon Multisensor 6. It has the possibility to power it with a power cord.

This problem sounds very similar. I’ve struggled with this for some months. A new battery would provide the solution, according to some threads on the internet. Indeed, that has a positive effect, but did not solve my problem (constantly going from clear to detected every 15 seconds for 1 or 2 hours before eventually going to clear).

I’ve solved this problem by setting Parameter 3 from 1 → 2. That did the trick and solved this problem for me completely.