FortrezZ WWA-02 leak false positive - reset remotely?

Other Devices & Integrations Climate Control & Temperature Sensors
1

Hi,

Yesterday morning my WWA-02 leak detector reported a leak in my basement and it continues to report there is a leak. After considerable inconvenience, it was determined that there is (thankfully) no leak or any atypical moisture in my basement at all. It repeatedly caused notifications to be sent until my quota was hit for the day.

I have not seen this device issue false positives before, so now I’m interested in learning if others have seen this as well, and if there is a way for resetting the device remotely via Z-Wave so it can regain its sanity. Any thoughts or similar experiences?

Thanks!
watou

2

I’ve not seen issues with mine (which is basically used as a temperature sensor in the garage). Could the battery be suspect?

3

Thanks for the reply.

Sorry; I should have mentioned that I recently replaced the “1/2 AA” battery (a couple months ago), it reports 87%, and I believe it. I have it sitting on a dry paper towel on the floor between the water heater and boiler, so the odds of conductivity between the metal pads seems very unlikely. I sent it a “reconfigure now” command last night, but it still shows Tripped = 1. I don’t know how to interpret most of the device variables, but there might be a clue in there somewhere.

watou

4

Does [tt]LastTrip[/tt] indicate the time when this first started, or something more recent? Perhaps set [tt]Tripped[/tt] to [tt]0[/tt] and see if it re-occurs?

5

[tt]LastTrip[/tt] was just a few minutes ago. I set [tt]Tripped[/tt] to [tt]0[/tt] and will see what happens after the “Waiting for wakeup to configure device” has passed. Thanks for the suggestions.

6

Well my WWA02 has fully lost its mind, telling me it’s flooding all the time, or it’s 5 degrees Fahrenheit (or maybe 127), and now it won’t communicate. Before it disappeared it reported a healthy battery, well above 80% left. Any idea what such a failure mode means, if anything?

7

What was the outcome? Any luck?

I just had a wwa-02 act up… started getting low temp alarms from it, was like 30 degrees wrong. I had other temp sensors nearby and knew it was wrong.
Tried to exclude, no luck, just deleted it. Tried to exclude/include again… would not include. Its now in my box of things to look at in my spare time.
(Yes, tried a fresh battery too)

8

The device is remote from me, but I had someone near it try to wake it up and include again to no avail. Even with a fairly fresh battery, it’s still sitting there incommunicado. When I can get to it myself, I will try everything I can to get it talking again, but I suspect it’s failed permanently. There were no extreme environmental factors that led to the failure – it just decided to die.

9

Did you ever get yours resolved? My Fortrezz was sending me notifications as well all day today. There’s no water in site though. It is raining out though so the humidity in the basement could be high. I don’t have it set up though to alert me of humidity (just water)…

10

[quote=“watou, post:1, topic:176420”]Hi,

Yesterday morning my WWA-02 leak detector reported a leak in my basement and it continues to report there is a leak. After considerable inconvenience, it was determined that there is (thankfully) no leak or any atypical moisture in my basement at all. It repeatedly caused notifications to be sent until my quota was hit for the day.

I have not seen this device issue false positives before, so now I’m interested in learning if others have seen this as well, and if there is a way for resetting the device remotely via Z-Wave so it can regain its sanity. Any thoughts or similar experiences?

Thanks!
watou[/quote]

I have this problem often, with both the older (single 1/2AA battery) and newer (two AA batteries) models. The problem seems MOST likely when, in my case, the sensor is in an environment of 40degF or below, but it has occurred in warmer temps.

Typically, when these events occur, I receive notifications every 30min until they clear. I assume this 30min recurrence is a function of the Vera2 I’m using and not the Fortrezz devices.

I do not believe the above problem is, in my case, a function of weak RF signal conditions and consequent message loss or corruption.

I’ve noted other oddities when the devices ARE in poor RF signal conditions, i.e., (1) the Vera will report low battery (I think this is an indication that the Wakeup interval messages are being lost; watch the LuaUPnP.log file for the presence or omission of “batterylevel” logs which evidently occur at every Wakeup interval) and/or (2) off-the-scale temperature readings are being reported. I might add that (3) bizarre or repeated alarms, as are the subject of this thread, might also be precipitated by poor RF signal conditions.

Cheers!

(what follows is additional information since I posted the above)

It’s cold here today (IL) and my sensor in the attic is registering 39deg. Coincidentally, it’s starting to report erroneous leak alarms, as it has done before (as I noted above). This has to be more than just “coincidence”; maybe the folks at Fortrezz could tell us why this happens, but I won’t hold my breath waiting to them to deliver.

11

My WWA-02 came back to life with a fresh “1/2 AA”. I never figured out why it went crazy and then fully depleted the otherwise fresh battery.

12

To answer your OP, I’m not aware of a way to “untrip” a Z-Wave device. I would like to do this with my motion sensors for example so I can demo the motion activated lights, and not waiting for them to reset to the untripped.

You can however untrip them in Vera using LUUP code to overide the sensor as untripped in Vera…but the actual device will still be tripped.

The problem with the Fortrezz, is it sends a tripped signal every few seconds even if it was tripped in the past. Unlike a motion sensor that sends one tripped, then one untripped z-wave command once no motion is detected for the defined timeout period for the device…the Fortrezz device is more like tripped, tripped, tripped, …, tripped, untripped. This means you would need to override it every 4 seconds.

The only thing I could suggest is a removing the battery, and having a LUUP code scene ready to overide the tripped status once the node is unpowered.

13

300 plus Fortrezz sensors on 13 Vera Lite controllers
All installed over 6mos ago some 2 years ago
Temperatures have dropped well below freezing in the last 48 hours.
About 400 false notifications in the last 24 hours
It seems random across the sensors
It has not been happening in the past
Vera support has no idea
I am continuing to get 1 new false notification every 3 mins

14

Well I was considering ordering 2 Fortrezz Water & Temperature Sensors to use with two Veralite Home Controllers next to install on floor next to the water heaters of two properties I wish to monitor remotely. However after reading about problems here and elsewhere, perhaps there is a better alternative?