I installed 7 ZCOMBO units in October of 2014 and (since I avoided the 1.7.1419 firmware issue) have been happy with the setup of the smoke detectors.
About a month ago one of the units was beeping indicating a low battery. I checked Vera and it said the battery level was at 75%. I slid out the battery tray on the ZCOMBO and reinserted it and Vera then reported 1% battery and alerted me (text email etc) of the low battery condition. I replaced the batteries and Vera reported 100% battery. Moving on?
Last week a different ZCOMBO unit was beeping indicating a low battery. Vera reported 76%. Slid the battery tray out and back in and now 1% and alerts were sent. Replaced the batteries in that unit and all of my other units and all are back to 99%+. All of the other units were reporting battery levels between 80% and 82% before the replacement.
The batteries lasted 1 year, 5 months so that seems normal (I should have remembed to replace the batteries every fall when the time changes!) but I was fooled into believing the Vera battery percentages were correct. The local detector low battery alert seems to work correctly and I tested a few of the detectors with real smoke and they still alert correctly. (I tested them after I replaced the batteries, I should have tried them while in low battery condition just to see if they still alerted)
SO - Anyone out there that has had the ZCOMBOs installed for over a year:
[ol][li]Change the batteries every year do you don?t have to deal with the low battery beep in the middle of the night![/li]
[li]If your battery level is in the 70?s%, what happens if you slide our the battery tray and insert it again? [/li]
[li]Does the battery level stay around 70% or does it drop to a lower level?[/li]
[li]Anyone else seen this issue of something similar?[/li][/ol]
Most of my units have a manufacture date of May 2104 and I am running them on Vera Edge UI7 1.7.1707 and they are listed in the UI as First Alert ZCombo-GEN3
Thanks.