I use rechargeable 2300 mAh nickel metal hydride batteries in my lock because I hate throwing away batteries and want to try to be as “green” as possible. Given the battery level sensor in the Lock is based on Alkaline batteries, the sensed battery level almost immediately drops below 20%, even though the batteries are full and the Lock will continue to function for weeks/months. As a result, auto-unlock stops functioning. It would be great if you could specify the type of batteries you are using so the Lock could adjust the sensed battery life appropriately. If this is unpossible (or maybe in the interim), it would be great if you could override the “low battery” mode of the Lock. Please UPVOTE! Thanks!
NiMh batteries has tendency to drop voltage quickly as it is being drained. I will be testing new rechargeable LiIo batteries and let you know how it performs. It is reported to perform like Alkaline which will maintain same voltage throughout the life of each charged cycle.
Maybe you can pass this on to engineering. It would be nice if the lock recognized Ni-MH batteries. It always shows low even with new charged batteries.
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Not exactly true. NiMH batteries actually have a discharge curve that’s more flat. It stays at the 1.2V range much longer than an alkaline before the voltage drops off quickly from 1.5V
Especially under higher load, it performs better than alkaline at staying at the same output until it runs out.
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I think similarly as you do, I don’t want to throw away alkaline batteries over and over. I use 2300 mAh NiMH batteries in my lock and keypad. I can’t calibrate the lock and therefore use the auto-lock functions because it always thinks it’s near empty.
4 * 1.5V = 6V expected on alkaline.
4 * 1.2V = 4.8V with NiMH.
It’s basically like running on 3 alkaline batteries, which really sucks. Could probably jury-rig an adapter to fit 5 batteries in there to get 6V but that kinda sucks. All that’s required is a small little toggle that remaps the voltage to battery life % estimate. Or hell just a toggle to disable the battery level estimate completely.
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My ghetto macguyver solution is to tape an external battery to it, connected in series.
I might instead get a single battery tray and tape it to that instead and tape the tray to the top of the lock.
something like this:
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I’ve always thought the same thing. Very wasteful to throw away 4 batteries so often. If there is any possible way to use rechargeable batteries and the lock still function as intended, that would be great.
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Same problem.
I’m going to try these out
https://www.amazon.com/Pack-2500mWh-Rechargeable-Battery-Cameras/dp/B00W1DASO2/ref=sr_1_42?dchild=1&keywords=1.5v+rechargeable&qid=1617160568&sr=8-42
Well that battery is fairly low capacity and says for high drain applications only. The low drain like the lock would damage the battery life.
I would recommend against it.
Yeah, they aren’t ideal themselves, but they won’t harm the wyze device. They just wont have as long capacity under low drain.
But get this, I figured out the Wyze lock is actually the problem here…
Once the batteries go low, even replacing with new fully charged 1.5V batteries it STILL says low.
The wyze just isn’t updating the voltage.
@UserCustomerGwen this is actually a mean Wyze lock bug.
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I think it just takes a bit of time for the device to update the Wyze app gui. I’ve had a similar situation happen when I added a new battery to the lock, it took a little bit of tinkering to get the app to register the new battery level.
I can’t remember the exact steps I did, but I think I tried a couple of things including force closing the app, refreshing, eventually it updated.
You can tell immediately if the device thinks it is low power by the LED colour. If it is green or has no light when you lock/close/open then it has sufficient power. If it is red then it thinks it is low on power.
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I actually had to remove the device within the app, then add it again as if it were new.
Any possibility of this happening with an update in the future? Would love to use rechargeable batteries to cut down on waste.
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Can you add a selectable option in the settings for the door locks which allows the user to indicate they are using rechargeable batteries. Standard AA batteries are 1.5V but typically NiMH and NiCd batteries are 1.2V meaning the lock constantly reports low voltage
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Yes please. Seems simple to address for the community and environment.
I left my lock unpowered for a few minutes while changing batteries and now I need to recalibrate, but it refuses to without ‘full charge’. While I understand they want to ensure the lock functions properly, the low battery and locking out of certain functions like recalibration without any workaround except to use alkaline batteries is a bit ridiculous.
I’m not buying non-rechargeable batteries for this lock, or moreover just to resuscitate it, so currently I have an unpowered lock on my door that get me angry every time I look at it.
I’d call this more combability issue than a bug. And it seem like quite a simple simple fw change. Would love to hear some feedback from wyze on this.
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Wyze Lock and Keypad are constantly saying rechargeable batteries are “low” on power, even though it’s a fresh charge on all the cells.
Also, the Wyze Lock will not calibrate on “Low Power”, so you have to buy a pack of alkaline batteries to have on standby when you need to calibrate.
——I was hoping for some possible firmware update to help the hardware recognize the power that is coming through, is in fact, from rechargeable lithium ion cells. The data provided would be calibrated for such a power source, and in turn, show proper power status.——
I change my batteries out across the hardware every 3months with freshly charged cells but it would be nice just to look at the app and know how much power is left. A ‘quality of life’ feature, for sure.
Other than that, loving all my Wyze hardware!
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I am having all the same problems here that everyone else has talked about. In addition the cloud with line through it shows on my lock and it takes a long time to connect to the lock, although it does do it eventually. What do we need to do to get attention of Qyze for the battery issue?
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@UserCustomerGwen Reaching out to you specifically on this question from a year ago. I’m not the only one to experience this issue, and it seems like an incredibly easy issue to solve. Can you please advise and potentially help prioritize this issue for the Wyze Lock team?
I haven’t used my Wyze Lock more than a dumb lock for almost a year because of this. I am a huge proponent of Wyze, but your unresponsiveness to this since issue while you continue to develop more and more random products makes me question your commitment to each of your products in the long term.
Please advise.
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I stopped buying Wyze products due to this and the difficulty of contacting support. Going to try Reolink next.
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