Is there any way to control how often Aqura zigbee temperature sensors update?

Configuration Zigbee
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I decided to replace my shelly wifi sensors with a zigbee one (Aqura) as I try to switch away from wifi. A consideration I took when making this change was battery life, as wifi is more expensive than zigbee on the battery field.

However, something I realized after installing them is how often these aqura sensors update. They update for every little change (for any 0.1C or 0.1% humidity change). In the shelly one, you can set it to update only on large enough changes, massively saving on battery. The first Aqura sensor I set up (3 days ago), already went down from 100% battery to 77%.

Is there any way to change that? I don’t need to know of every 0.1 change. I’m using the ZHA integration.

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I have battery life of one to two years with my Aqara and other zigbee sensors with ‘out of box’ configurations. Getting good battery life on a wifi sensor is a real art that few have mastered.

Do some reading on the Aqara zigbee sensors on the forums, while I do not think you will have battery life issues, there are some other ‘gotchas’ with Aqara devices.

The reporting of battery life on sensors is another one of those ‘arts’ that is very difficult and again if you read various forums full of debate about what is the right way. However, again, I have had no battery longevity issues to date with zigbee devices.

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I wouldn’t worry much about the battery percentage yet.

With Aqara I generally see a sharp battery percentage drop off in the first few days, then it levels off to a trickle.

I don’t know if it’s the nature of the batteries themselves or how they measure, but it’s pretty consistent.

Give it another 3 or 4 days to level out, then look at the week over week measurements.

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Ok, thank you both. I guess I’ll give it a chance and stop looking at the battery meter :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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I am also thinking about the Aqara sensor… how is battery life so far for you @pjrt ?

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Have a look in this thread

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After the initial drop when I connected them, they got stuck at 77%. It has been months and no change, even though they record temperature changes more often than the Shelly ones I had (which drank batteries like water).

So, so far, I recommend them. Maybe the 77% is a lie or not, but no way of knowing unless it starts to move again or they stop working altogether.

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Interesting, a few of my zigbee devices seem to also have dropped to 77% and sat there… only had most a few days mind.

I suspect it must be some kind of dodgy way of measuring battery life perhaps limiting how refined it can be causing larger ‘steps’ in battery life readings.