I have numerous devices that is battery supported.
So I am very aware that every now and again i need to swap batteries. That is not a problem.
But what is genuinely missleading is battery alarm setting from (any) device in homey.
I have a wide range of devices and never have i had a timely alarm regarding battery limit.
The sensor just stops working and I have to search why a flow is behaving weirdly. Not a problem for 1 sensor but when u have complex advanced flows its a bit harder to diagnose via a phone.
So as solution I tried using the card “Device has not reported in x.x.x Hours”. But the problem is for example door contacts, If i have not gone through a door this will report evey now and again that this device is unreachable.
So anyone has a better sollution than mine or had a similar experience?
Some of my battery devices never changes from 100%, like most Aqara, my Phillips Hue, and Nimly. You can look to see the batteries that actually do decrease in Menu->Batteries.
I use the Timeline “a notification has been sent” card to get a push notification to my phone for the batteries thats low on power. But do expect some false ones from Aqara.
True what Arnt says, but it’s an issue of those devices combined with Homey.
It is not always a flaw of the device:
I have Aqara contact sensors which batteries stay at 100% forever @ Homey
But, @ zigbee2mqtt, it shows something different (it even shows the voltage);
It’s good to realize it’s just an indicator, not a measure instrument.
And not all devices stop working at X% as well:
One dies with 50% left, another could function with 10% left.
When batteries have less than 20% juice left, Homey automatically creates a timeline notification. If that isn’t true, you’d contact support.
.
You can create a daily report yourself, with this (import-able) script + flow:
.
Next to the timeline-to-push flow trick of Arnt, you can use this