Philips Hue Motion Sensor (SML003) batteries die in a few days

[Sawtaytoes]

Hello! I have over 25 of the Philips Hue Motion Sensor (model: SML003), and I’ve been using them only with Home Assistant Zigbee with ZHA for about a year now.

About a month ago, they all started dying one by one. I bought most of them around the same time, so it makes sense that they’d all start dying around the same time. But after replacing the batteries with brand new batteries (I’ve tried both Energizer from multiple stores and Kirkland Signature from Costco), the batteries die within a few weeks.

The battery life has always shown 100%, so there’s no way to know what’s going on. They just pop offline suddenly, and I only know because a room won’t turn on or off, and I find a bunch of them outta battery.

I’m currently using the ZBT-1, but I have a ZBT-2 coming. I have plenty of devices, so I don’t think it’s a signaling issue. Anything red are devices that aren’t connected:

I know that the original OEM batteries are Philips-branded. I would totally buy more of those (even though I shouldn’t have to), but they don’t sell them on their website anymore; at least, not in the US.

So at this point, I’m not sure what to do. I’m wondering if it’s a recent Home Assistant change that caused the problem. I haven’t touched the settings on these devices, so it’s something else going on.

[koying (Chris B)]

I don’t know if it’s related, but I have the same issue of battery quickly dying with the Hue remotes (2450 coin batteries).

[Sawtaytoes]

Thankfully, my Hue remotes haven’t run down the OEM batteries.

[nickh66 (Nick Harrison)]

Hi,
I can’t offer any solutions either but can say that of my 3 active Hue motion sensors (also SML003) one has recently been chewing through batteries quite quickly compared to a couple of years back. More frustratingly though, that same energy hungry sensor now won’t detect motion but still reports temp & humidity.

Planned obselencense?

[Sawtaytoes]

Thankfully, mine do still see occupancy.

Sadly, one of mine (I replaced the batteries yesterday) went offline again tonight. But this time, I was able to get it back on by holding the button on the back and starting the “Add Zigbee device” in Home Assistant.

Another went offline just now. It was showing red when I held the button. I removed and re-inserted the batteries. It’s working now again. We’ll see for how long.

I own 30 of these Philips Hue sensors, and there are a group of 7 that keep going offline since changing the batteries from OEM. They’re at opposite ends of the house, and my Zigbee mesh is very crowded, but it has a ton of routers.

I bought a ZBT-2 to replace my ZBT-1, but I’ve yet to get it in the mail. It hasn’t even shipped yet.

[Frank_Beetz]

I have a total of 15 Hue Motion running - but I use the Hue Bridge!
I use them mostly as Motion and Temperature Sensors for the last 5 years or so.
In the areas, where they get less work out - because movement is happening with low frequency - I get at least 3 years out of a set of batteries (the cheapest I can find in the supermarket ).
In my hallway (most movement) - they usually last a good 2 years.

So to me it sounds as if ZHA is the culprit?

[_Dominik]

I also have the problem that my Hue outdoor motion sensors (SML002) have recently started to regularly disconnect from the network. I recently changed the batteries in all of them; some still had the original batteries, while others had already been replaced.

I bought all five at the end of 2020 and they have been working without any problems since then. Until the trouble began a few weeks ago…

I can reconnect the motion detectors, although the process is relatively tedious. It often takes several attempts, and twice during this process Home Assistant froze completely (requiring a power cycle)!

The batteries in mine are definitely not empty after disconnecting (I measured them).

What has changed in the network recently:

• I switched from ConBee II coordinator to ZBT-1 (ZBT-2 became available a few days later… ).

• I have added a number of USB Zigbee routers.

• Of course, ZHA has also undergone updates.

A ZBT-2 is on its way. When it arrives, I will have to reconnect many Aqara devices anyway. I will remove the USB routers beforehand and observe the whole thing.

[_Dominik]

The ZBT-2 arrived today. I removed the USB routers and started the migration. Then I reconnected all Hue motion sensors.

I measured the batteries again: without load all are between 1.53 and 1.59V; with a load of 80mA all are between 1.49V and 1.54V. It couldn’t be better.

I am curious to see how the motion sensors will behave now.

[Sawtaytoes]

I bought my ZBT-2 from Everything Smart Home early December, and they haven’t shipped yet, so I’m still dealing whatever bug they introduced in the ZBT-1.

I pay $30 for another set of AAA batteries each week. This is getting ridiculous. I don’t like spending time repeatedly changing batteries nor do I like paying for them. What’s going on? Why is this still happening?

The recent purchase or Duracell (over Energizer and Kirkland Signature (Costco brand) still show “Good” on my battery meter.

That means this time, it’s not battery life, but Zigbee signaling. I haven’t taken out any routers or anything, I’ve only added them (Christmas tree plugs).

Was there a recent firmware update? And why only these 9? Some of the others work fine.

[_Dominik]

Since I switched to the ZBT-2 last Thursday and removed the USB routers, there have been no more connection problems with the Hue motion sensors.

I’ll wait until Thursday this week and add the USB routers again. I’m curious to see what happens. I hope the problems came from the ZBT-1, not from the USB routers, because they showed exceptionally good connectivity.

Even my countless first-generation Aqara sensors, which were always said to be non-standard compliant in that they only communicate with the device they were originally paired with. I can confirm this behavior in that these sensors no longer had a connection when the respective router (lamp) was out of power. With these pure USB routers, the Aqara sensors all reconnected on their own to these routers, and overall there was very strong networking between devices and the various routers.

[_Dominik]

Contrary to my plans, I waited another week before reactivating the USB routers.

Last night, one of the motion sensors completely lost its connection again. These are definitely fewer connection problems than in the weeks before, but it’s still annoying when I consider that these five Hue motion sensors worked for five years without a single failure.

I’m now reactivating the USB routers…

[Sawtaytoes]

Yeah, I’m still having issues. I had another just go offline even with Philips batteries. This has to have been caused by a recent firmware update to the ZBT-1 or Home Assistant.

Something’s breaking it because I even moved my Pi outta the basement and into my office where it has open-air access to everything else.

I’m tired of continually swapping out batteries too.

[Sawtaytoes]

I haven’t gotten my ZBT-2 yet as I’m waiting on Everything Smart Home to ship my order (along with those new PoE presence sensors). At this point, I’m thinking I need to use more presence detection because these motion detectors became so unreliable.

I’m 90% sure this is an issue with Home Assistant or NabuCasa. Because it only just started 2 months ago, and it affected almost all my Hue Motion sensors, all the same model and on the same firmware. Not sure how long the stock batteries last (I thought a year), but 1 week isn’t long enough.

[TylerJ (Tyler)]

Same issue here, my hue outdoor and most of my other hue sensors/buttons are going fast.

This was new batteries in the hue outdoor that lasted 1 week.

[Sawtaytoes]

Thanks for showing that data! Since none of my motion sensors are showing battery usage, there’s no way to see it graphed like that.

Are you still having the issue too? What’s your Zigbee controller?

What caused it for you? Home Assistant update? There was a recent ZBT-1 firmware update, but I haven’t yet replaced the batteries in my motion sensors again to see if that fixes it.

[Sawtaytoes]

In the last 3 weeks, I’ve only had 5 go bad. I replaced the batteries 6 times on a couple last night because they simply wouldn’t turn on. Not sure why just those had issues.

Something new though, 4 of the ones I added show battery levels below 100% for once!

I have 33 of these exact sensors total, and only those 4 show battery levels under 100%. They’re also 4 of the 5 that just got brand new batteries. The 5th one disconnected or died with no change in the battery life:

[Sawtaytoes]

Battery issue absolutely NOT fixed

Nope, it’s not fixed. I had 5 go offline, but now I’m wondering if it’s the new Philips batteries I purchased . I can never be sure because this is the first time any of these showed battery life indicators.

ZBT-2 installed

I got my ZBT-2 today, and I’ve done the migration. I’m gonna set up the old ZBT-1 for Thread. I have no border routers other than Home Assistant, so we’ll see how that goes.

Limit on Zigbee devices

I did some research, and all the Nabu Casa docs (like this one) point to there being no effective limit to the number of Zigbee devices you can have with 32 max on the coordinator itself including the old ZBT-1.

Mine (new ZBT-2) has 24 devices connected directly, but since it’s in the basement (near the middle of the house), it’s 2 floors below some devices and in the network closet. I dunno which devices choose to connect to the coordinator, but it seems completely random.

5-device limit the issue?

I did more reading, and Nabu Casa said routers only support up to 5 devices. That’s HUGE news to me.

Does that mean a device meshing to another device use a slot? That means the more meshing I have, the more slots get taken.

I have 145 devices right now, so I need quite a few routers to support all my end devices: at least 25 routers if there’s no meshing:

I have 52 routers currently connected. That should support up to 260 devices, but like I said, any meshed devices take one of those slots. It’s perceivable that so many meshes are occurring that I’m actually running out of available slots for end devices.

Number of router connections

Looking at the number of connections, I was right, routers are connected to each other in a big mesh. Each individual router is connected to just about every other router. I count 20 connected devices on many routers and at least one of them with a full 32 connections! A few had less than 20.

If 20 or 32 is the max for those routers, and routers are meshing with each other, it would make sense that I’m maxing out the available slots for end devices. While none of my IKEA buttons or motion sensors have this battery issue, just these Philips Hue Motion Sensors, I’m wondering if it’s somehow related to the way they connect to the mesh.

Other notes

The vast majority of routers have no end device connections; only other routers.

It’s surprising how routers all mesh with each other in this weird loop, but end devices only have a single connection to a single router.

Here’s one example of a router with 6 end devices and 10 routers where most have no end devices:

It’s very possible the failing Philips Hue devices are connecting to a router that’s not favorable to the way they manage battery life, but it’s also weird this only suddenly started after a ZBT-1 firmware or Home Assistant upgrade. Something was upgraded when I started noticing these battery-life issues.

[Sawtaytoes]

I might’ve been wrong about the recent firmware update to the ZBT-1 in Zigbee mode.

Using old batteries?

In a previous post some of my devices showed battery life under 100% when putting in new batteries. Like I said, it’s the first time I ever saw them under 100%.

That’s actually because I accidentally didn’t use new batteries (whoops). Instead, I used batteries that were in devices having connection issues in the past. I think at least since they weren’t in the original packaging like the rest.

If that’s the case, then that means the newer firmware might have done something because previously, those devices didn’t connect.

ZBT-2 so far

Either way, I’m on the ZBT-2 now, so I won’t be testing the ZBT-1 anymore. We’ll see if it’s fixed now. Thankfully, no other devices went offline other than those 5, and I made sure to change out all “below 100% battery” devices with new batteries that weren’t formerly used.

I did verify that all motion detectors show 100% now in Home Assistant. Hopefully, I can start saving money rather than paying out $30/week for a new set. Also, not one motion sensor has gone offline since those 5 last week, so that’s good.

[rnldnkp]

I’m having similar battery drain issues on the SML003 (not on SML001 as far as I can see). I guess this started after I changed from and (old) USB Zigbee stick to a SLZB-06.

Measuring the voltage actually shows the new (Amazon Basics) AAA’s drain to like 0.8V in a couple of weeks. This used to be more like a year (or longer).

[Sawtaytoes]

2 of my motion sensors went offline again, so I believe the recent firmware update nor the ZBT-2 are a fix.

I agree, something is up with these Philips Hue Motion Sensors .