Aeotec Water Sensor 6, battery monitor/check

Hi folks.

I've searched and can't find an answer anywhere (forums, etc.).

I have mostly Insteon leak sensors, but have been frustrated by years of problems getting reliable heartbeats as part of monitoring the battery status.

For a new location I am trying out an Aeotec Z-Wave Water Sensor 6 (https://aeotec.com/z-wave-water-sensor/). I have it all set up fine (tamper, temp, water, etc.) except for checking the battery. Can anyone suggest the best way to monitor/check the battery in this device?

I can see two options, but I'm not certain about either.

1. Triggering on the "Battery Level Update": "Battery Level Update" is one of the candidate events associated with "Incoming Command Received from Device" for the leak sensor, which seems to make sense, but I don't know whether command is "pushed" from the device periodically or resulting from a query/pull. In any case, in the trigger Condition I don't know the range of the "Battery Level" state/parameter from the device, and so I don't know what battery level to test for. I'm guessing something like 10 (assuming a range of 0-100) but it would be nice to have more than a guess! I did see the 7.1 release note "Modified response to Z-Wave low battery messages to change the device's battery level to 5% (versus previous 0%)." which seems relevant but I'm not sure whether the "Battery Level" is a percent or something else (e.g., 5 or 0.5).

2. Heartbeat approach: set up a timer, trigger off of some command from the device and reset the timer. If the timer expires, trigger a battery alert. However it's not clear which command I should use as the heartbeat (to reset the timer)—candidates seem to be "Status Update," "Battery Level Update," and "Any Command."

Thanks in advance for any help/thoughts/experience.

Battery levels are reported in percent.

You can create a trigger that fires when the battery level drops below your target threshold. IIRC, Indigo will poll the battery level once per day (to cut down on unnecessary traffic which would in turn use the battery faster.)

Screen Shot 2019-11-10 at 8.55.36 AM.png (110.35 KiB) Viewed 1117 times

Perfect. Thank you. I was drilled down into z-wave commands and missed that. (Although it looks familiar...)

Glad to help.

I have many dozens of battery powered devices. Once a week I receive an email with all of their battery levels:

Code: Select all

emailAddress = "a@b.com"
emailBody="BATTERY UPDATE."

for dev in indigo.devices.itervalues():
   if dev.batteryLevel:
         emailBody = emailBody + "\n \n" + str(dev.batteryLevel) + " ... " + dev.name
indigo.server.sendEmailTo(emailAddress, subject="SIXMILE", body=emailBody)


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