I am using a Shelly BLU Button 1 via BTHome in Home Assistant, and it is working OK.
But there is one issue that I have with it: the battery level status indication is very unstable.
The value jumps from approximately 40 % to 95 % all the time.
This are two screen grabs just a few seconds apart:
It could be that the true value is the mean value as shown in the history graph.
If so, the current value could be roughly 70%.
But I am wondering how reliable this is?
Is anybody else seeing this as well?
What are your thoughts on this?
Thanks Bieniu,
Yes, I did upgrade firmware of few weeks ago using the Shelly app, but that didn’t change this battery status problem.
Are you seeing something else?
Currently I have only one device in BTHome: this Shelly BLU Button 1.
This is what is shown:
Do you think this is the latest available firmware?
Bad or cheap battery can also cause this type of behviour. Always buy and install only good quality batteries in these devices, not cheap no-name chinese ones.
I replaced the battery a few weeks ago.
The new one was from a set of “Boltze Gruppe GmbH” CR2032 batteries that I bought some time ago.
This is a German supplier, so is this good quality?
Isn’t almost everything coming from China nowadays?
But I will try it with another brand to see if this makes a difference.
Oh yes, I just remember that I enabled the beacon mode on the BLU Button 1 as well a few weeks ago.
Could that have something to do with it?
Any set of these batteries is … well, “chinese”…
i’d recommend a “real” battery, individually packed, well known brand (duracell, varta, GP…) i found out “hard way” why these batteries are so more expensive than no-name ones - an example: two CR2016’s from a set, similar as yours placed into 433MHz door remote control can’t drive such a remote (led just briefly lights and goes off because voltage of the cells drops below usable voltage)…
OK, so I replaced the battery by a Duracell branded one, and indeed it looks like the problem is gone for now.
The battery status has been a rock-solid 100% for 2 hours since replacement:
So good news, but let’s see how this progresses in the coming time.
One remark though: it appeared that I had it wrong with the battery that was causing this problem: it wasn’t a Chinese “Boltze Gruppe GmbH” branded battery but a Sony battery (made in Japan?). Probably I have been mixing up two battery replacements that I did some weeks ago.
And another remark that I have to make: the new Duracell battery, so a “well known good quality” brand appears to be…. Made in China…
There are pretty much all “made in China”, that’s not the deciding factor. But, the difference between well known brand and no-name can be huge, from poorer materials, less clean workspace, less active material in a battery, using lithium which remained as “garbage” when making high-quality cells…
That’s hard to say… could be number of things: could be just bad battery (bad luck…), could be fake Sony (they do exist), and at the end couldn’t be any of this, since only time will tell if you solved your problem with quality battery… then… perhaps this button behaves so strangely that when battery is (almost) empty starts to report “funny” numbers…
When I started this post I was convinced that I did put a new battery in some weeks ago, but now that I saw it was a Sony I am not sure anymore. I don’t remember ever to buy Sony CR2032 batteries.
But measuring the unloaded voltage of the Sony still gives a nice 3.0 Volt, so it can’t be that empty I suppose. It might just have been a CR2032 that I had lying around somewhere.
But OK, let’s wait and see then what happens with this new Duracell.
well…
you surely know 433MHz garage door remote control, right? Many of them have two pcs of CR2016 inside. I have quite a few of these remotes. Once i changed batteries in one with no-name cheap Chinese ones. When i pressed a button on remote not even LED on the remote lit - nothing. Measuring voltage gave 3.1V on unloaded battery, but under 2V on loaded one. And battery was new.
So, voltage on unloaded battery can tell only so much. For real test you should connect a appr.1kohm (or a bit less) resistor parallel to a battery to draw, say, around 1-5 mA when measuring and voltage should stay well above 2.5V.
I did now measure the Sony battery loaded: with a 1kohm resistor the voltage drops to 2.65 V and with a 680 ohm resistor it drops to 2.55 V.
So it looks like this battery is indeed reaching end-of-live, and this then might be the cause of the problem.
I will send an e-mail to Shelly support to ask their opinion about this.
To be continued…
I got an answer from Shelly support, and they confirm that this is a known issue with certain Shelly Bluetooth devices like the BLU Button 1, and that this is caused by running low or bad batteries.
This is their exact response:
This issue usually occurs when the battery isn’t in good condition, and certain Bluetooth devices tend to consume more energy, leading to quicker battery drain. We recommend always using reliable brands and high-quality batteries for our battery-powered devices to ensure better performance and longevity.
So in the end the problem is not solved, but the cause of this battery status instability has become clear.
And if the battery status indication becomes unstable it is best not to wait too long with installing a fresh battery.
