I have a number of Zigbee devices from different manufacturers connected via Zigbee2MQTT that are battery operated. All of them report the battery level as 100% and never seem to drop below this. I usually don’t find out their battery is dead until the device stops reporting the temperature. The battery status is visible in Z2M and the battery entity within HA, it just never changes.
I searched and there are others who have reported the same issue but none of the threads have a resolution. Can anyone suggest a solution?
Unless either of you provide specific models of your affected devices, no one will be able to help.
Battery reporting issues might be specific to your devices and need a custom fix, so please start with that. If there’s a common pattern between both posts, you might want to write up an issue on the Z2MQTT GitHub instead of posting here.
I have 3 Graywind Cellular covers that are not reporting battery status to my ZHA with a Sonoff USB 3.0 dongle. Under Device Info it says TS0301 by _TZE200_jhhskent. Fortunately, the manufacturer is pretty responsive so hopefully, it is something that they can resolve on their end but if someone above my pay grade can figure it out would be wonderful.
I have multiple Aqara devices (motion, temperature, door sensors, smoke detectors) and Tuya smart plugs. All are reporting their battery, power level as 100%.
In the past I’ve been able to recognise that the battery is dead for temp sensors, because the reading would stop changing, it wouldnt error, it would just be stuck at the same temp indefinitely. More recently, I found the Z2M availability option, which is turned off by default. I enable that and half a dozen of my zigbee devices started reporting as offline.
I’ve got a bunch of Aqara devices and have always had availability enabled. In the past, I have seen battery levels go down steadily in Z2M on the WSDCGQ11LM Temp sensor. However, my other sensors ( a MCCGQ11LM door sensor and a RTCGQ11LM motion sensor) do still report 100%, despite the fact that they’ve been up and running for more than a couple of years.
What you are seeing could be one of 2 options:
Either there is indeed an issue with battery reporting in Z2M. The only way you would be able to confirm it is if you check the battery voltage with a multimeter when this happens.
OR
There’s something else going on with your zigbee network and the devices are dropping off. The act of replacing the battery presumably includes re-pairing, so that might have been all you needed in the first place.
End devices who can’t maintain a stable connection with the closest router(s) would explain this, especially for the older Aqara models who had a reputation for sticking to one router instead of roaming.
How often do you see this happen for each device? More than once every couple of years?