Contact sensor battery life

Just wanted to share my experience. I’ve been using Wyze sense since early access in may. Over the last week I had a contact sensor on my garage door repeatedly going offline. Restarting the camera with the bridge seemed to fix it and the offending sensor always says battery level normal. Today it was offline again. Restarting the bridge camera didn’t work. I tried deleting and adding the sensor again with out luck. I put in a new battery and everything seems good now.

So I got about 7 months of use on the sensor with the door probably opening and closing an average of 5 times a day. The Sensor was about 20ft from the bridge with a fairly clear line of sight. Temperatures of - 4C to 23C. My 2nd contact sensor is inside on the front door and is opened less often and has had no issues.

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I have found you can’t really rely on the battery level indicators on these types of devices

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Its also very difficult to purchase good button batteries that hasn’t been sitting in storage for an unknown long amount of time.

I wish the packaging would say when the batteries were manufactured instead of saying the end date of how long does battery should be effective until used.

These do say when the batteries were manufactured
https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B06XQF1578/?coliid=I3NRZN9IYZK3MQ&colid=D8WLUP7IO98W&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B01MY6ER49/?coliid=I1V74HGFAJ009K&colid=D8WLUP7IO98W&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

If you were in a store, that would be helpful. Ordering online, not so much. I suppose if they were 2 or 3 years old you could return them.

I put a sense switch on my mailbox about a month ago. Last week I noticed every 5-6 seconds it does 3 flashes. Checked on the app and sure enough the battery shows low. I’ve been letting it go to see how long it lasts. But it’s only been 3-4 weeks. I’m hoping it was a bad battery cause i don’t want to replace it every month!
The rapid flash every 5 secs isn’t documented anywhere I could find. But doing that on a low battery seems counter-productive. Maybe it’s indicating something else. Anyone have ideas?

Nice!
Thank you!

Any thoughts about having that knowledge at the time of purchase?

I’m one of those people that reads the dates on the milk carton before selecting which one to pick from the shelf at the Market.

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I too dig in the back of the shelf to get the longest date.
I’d love to have the battery manufacture date online, but dont see how any merchant could do it practically. They would have to inventory by lot and update continually. And nobody would buy the old batteries!

I know , you can’t pick the package you want but at least the information is there

Thanks, its great to know others dig for the milk too.

Just sharing. There is a well-established business practice for commercial lighting called “group relamping.” At the end of a certain time interval all the lamps in a building are changed whether it needs it or not, to ensure the best performance from each of light fixtures, while having better labor cost management and reduced safety concerns from changing seemingly random onesies and twoies lamp failures.

Maybe this could apply for changing batteries in sensors too.

My six Sense contact switches pretty much ran out of batteries before I ever used them. Set them up in Oct before an extended trip, but they all fell down because of bad glue. Getting back to this project now, but waiting on new batteries to arrive because most are dead or nearly so. Inside, so cold isn’t the issue here. I tried to store them “closed” in case they used more battery “open” (doubt it). These two problems are a surprise, given the excellent experience with Wyze’s cameras.

My experience with the contact sensor battery in my garage is also not good. On cold Colorado days, my garage get to near 34deg, as probably does the contact sensor battery. The battery basically fails and shows disconnected in the app.

Is there a better, low temp battery anyone knows of?

Just my two cents. I have a sense switch on my mailbox. Indiana temps get below freezing so mine quit after about 5-6 weeks. However, when I removed the battery and tested it, it was fine. I put it back in the sensor and it worked for a while then the same thing. Either low battery or offline.
In my case, it’s a bad switch, which Wyze graciously replaced. I’m still using the battery. I don’t know if the original switch was bad or froze to death. I’ll have to see how long the new one lasts.

I also feel range from bridge is decreased in cold weather. I had a motions sensor with a new battery that kept going offline or get stuck detecting motion. I moved the bridge closer and problems disappeared.

I also noticed soon as the temp dropped below freezing the batteries on both of my sensors died. I have one on my front and back door.

I’m betting batteries are ok. Take them out and test them. Or just take them out, then put them back. My experience is the circuit is sending low voltage because it’s cold.

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