IKEA Parasoll door sensors battery drain problem

I managed to get my hands on a Parasoll sensor that has shown the battery drain issue. Will include it in my Zigbee network physically next to my sensor that has not shown the drain issue with both a fresh pair of Ladda batteries and report back here in a few weeks.

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Interested to see what your results will be!

Fix!

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Great find. So it might be a hardware issue after all :frowning:

This would reflect my earlier comments around the battery being drained to 0.8v or less if you don’t jump on replacing them straight away when they go offline. Seems the hardware isn’t happy and keeps drawing power.

Wonder if you can get a cap in the factory package?

Awesome research, thanks! Disappointing firmware won’t be able to fix this one.It would be good to highlight this to Ikea somehow. In the UK they only have phone and in-person support… no email.

I have 6 installed, and have had good luck with Ikea’s return policy. Hopefully there is a v2 hardware revision that fixes this issue, as the form factor, price, use of AAA, and accuracy when it works makes it one-of-a-kind in the market (haven’t found a good replacement, if you don’t mind it being double the size this ones okay - make sure you buy the Zigbee one, not Wi-Fi :wink:)

Wow, nice find. So, this means we could fix this in hardware right.

Could you tell me how to connect it correctly and what the minimum capacity should be? The image is a bit blurry/to zoomed out to see.

Also, what is the best way to open it up? Your casing seems mostly intact.

Thanks!

Edit:
found one of your comments on your YT video’s: ā€œā€¦I just added a 10uF capacitor across VCC and GNDā€¦ā€

Now to open one up without damaging the casing to much. :slight_smile:

Edit2:
Managed to open it. It seems to be glued somehow, all along the edge. Did manage to open one up without that much damage.

Added a 10uF capacitor and closed it again. Still works, woohoo :smiley:

So it does fit. (with small force), could be resolved my removing just a tiny bit of the inner casing or choosing a different path for the GND wiring.
Might have a small SMD capacitor somewhere… not sure what to minimum capacity should be?

Now wait and see how the battery will perform.

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If possible / available, share some photos!!! I think people would want to see how exactly it is done, with some visual assistance & closed-up photos

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Further to add to being perplexed… I moved the back door parasoll right next to my Pi with the Zigbee stick - and it’s battery has been 100% for weeks now. Previously it was eating a battery per two weeks. Back door gets triggered ten times a day. I’m off to the electronics store for some caps anyway.

where did you fit the cap?


GND (battery leg connector) <> VCC
Used kapton tape to make sure it does not short anything.
Extended the cap leg with a black wire (which is low quality as it melted somewhat as you can see :stuck_out_tongue: )

I do have way smaller capacitors which could fit right on top. But I do not have the equipment to measure if the solution is working with like 1/10 of the that capacity. So figured, first try with the exact same setup.

I might try and contact GNIF (Video owner) to know what to do.

The door next to my HA setup (POE Zigbee) like 40cm away, empties out the fastest (opens maybe 50 times a day).

I have some 10uF ceramic capacitors, those might be less of a tight fit.

Have now been running the test for about 10 days, but cannot see any difference in battery capacity.

To be continued…

It does not work or at least not on all of them i have now ā€œfixedā€ over 10 devices as explained above, and the battery just… disappears… I am quite insert several german insults here…
Has anyone an alternative… I need contact sensors which are not much wider than the ikea ones. (They could be longer but not much wider…)

I took the plunge and have noticed that my older amazon rechargeables trigger issues, swapping them with my newer EBL rechargeables they’re better, but still have some issues.

Have been on vacation since reviewing the thread thoroughly, but curious if anyone on z2m have fared better; relatively ok with ZHA and some added repeater plugs and the EBL batteries.

Currently have 7 Parasolls running.

I have a solid, stable zigbee2MQTT network where everything is solid.

Except for the Parasols… the naughty boys of zigbee :slight_smile:

I have been testing over the last six months,

Ladda 750
Ladda 900
Eneloop
And now Amazon basics LR03

The maximum I have out of them is 10 weeks.

When they are all on the same battery type they all pretty much die within a week of each other.

Battery+ is helping keep a track of usage.

Looking to replace them with Agara Door/Window sensors now I have taken this off ground floor doors and windows and replaced with Eufy Door/Window sensors which run for 2-3 years on a single battery

The Aqaras are last 1-2 years on CR1632 batteries.

I really like the Parasolls they look good and use a bigger battery that should last forever.

I’ll probably keep running them to the end of the year and see how they do with the alkaline batteries.

My test is now running for 45 days. Still no significant difference between the two sensors…

This video is the precursor to the ā€œFix!ā€ video that mynameisplayer posted above, which went through the symptoms of the issue. I’m posting it here for awareness.
The prevailing theory in that video was that the voltage converter circuitry is too noisy and would keep waking up the brain of the Parasoll unexpectedly, draining the battery as a result.

Ikea Parasoll - Alkaline vs Rechargeable, does it really matter? - YouTube

… hence the proposal of soldering a small capacitor, which is what rnldnkp did.

I am hopeful that mldnkp would come back and confirm that: ā€œhey all, over last ~ 6 weeks or so the battery went from x% to y%ā€ … or something like that. :slight_smile:

Its going to come down to if the unit booted correctly, from the video they do say It’s luck of the draw if it powers up properly or not when you put the battery in. These units do start correctly at times.

Maybe you just got lucky. Try popping the battery out and in of the bad boy to restart the unit to see if it goes into the odd ball state that drains the battery.

I bought 2 of these the other day as a test since I’ve got loads of NIMH AAA batteries. 1 connected instantly and responded state to HA straight away, but the other struggled to connect and even once it was, not once did it report it’s state to HA.

That being said, after a couple of days, the one that was initally fine now only reports it’s state upon activation, and after a short while HA reports ā€˜unknown’, not even the last known state, making it useless for me to be able to quickly check if a door/window has been left open. At least the 3 SNZB-04 I’ve also got work flawlessly, just a shame they use single use 2032s :frowning: back to ebay I go!

Ok conceded defeat after trying 7 of them for 6 months.

Tried using the recommended Ladda 750 and 900 as well as eneloop and AAA alkaline batteries.

The batteries rarely last 6 weeks, and every day I am dealing with at least 2 of them showing as unresponsive for over 24 hours so constantly re-pairing them.

I like the style and I love the promise of the AAA battery life.

But alas, not to be the case.

The other 100 zigbee devices all solid and stable.

So have just taken them all down and replacing with the Eufy Door/Window Sensors.

Have been using two other for over three years and only recently had to change a battery. Added another 9 a few months ago and they are just solid and extremely low maintenance.

So adding another 7 to finish off all opening external doors and windows.

Using the Eufy Security Integration so I can access in Home Assistant.

I also have 8 security cameras on the same Eufy base station with a 1TB storage.

It fits well in with my Hub of Hubs eco system.

Hue running as much lighting as possible, about. 100 bulbs and ~20 motion sensors across two hubs that have been rock solid for 10 years, requiring little interaction by me for a decade, they just turn on and off automatically when needed.

Tado to run all the radiator and room thermostats again solid for the three years they have been installed for with minimal interaction by users keeping every room at the exact +/- .5c for each individual rooms plan, all while reducing the energy from 18,000 kWh to a consistent 10,500 kWh for heating and hot water.

All of which run autonomously without user or admin effort and are all overseen by Home Assistant that monitors their actions, adds additional smart automations and alerts if required.

Replacing has reduced the admin workload of all the home automations by 90%.

More than happy to give them to anyone who will cover postage if they want a go :slight_smile: