I have a single Kwikset lock and a Vera Lite. I installed them both in early July. This is a rental condo. I am not aware of any other Zwave stuff in the building.
The lock batteries died yesterday. The maintenance man replaced them and the lock work.
Problem is, I cannot connect via Zwave. I need to see the codes in the lock.
How do I re-enroll/connect the lock with the Vera??
Two weeks have passed. The batteries are DEAD again!
Where do I find the settings? I really do not require any reporting. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks!
[quote=“Bric, post:22, topic:177920”]No solution here?
my battery are dead in about 2 months.
I think something is wrong.
They are configured to never poll (0 at configuration)
Any ideias?[/quote]
Dead bolt fully extending? I had one that the hole in the frame wasn’t deep enough and it said it was locked but it was really holding it back just a little bit. Lock it while closed and lock it while open noting the distance it turns or measure the hole depth and check.
[quote=“integlikewhoa, post:23, topic:177920”][quote=“Bric, post:22, topic:177920”]No solution here?
my battery are dead in about 2 months.
I think something is wrong.
They are configured to never poll (0 at configuration)
Any ideias?[/quote]
Dead bolt fully extending? I had one that the hole in the frame wasn’t deep enough and it said it was locked but it was really holding it back just a little bit. Lock it while closed and lock it while open noting the distance it turns or measure the hole depth and check.[/quote]
No , hole in the frame it’s ok for sure.
i had the same door lock , at same place before , but without zwave.
Only changed the batteries once. i thing it last about 18 / 24 months.
Now with zwave feature it last about 2 months or 3. strange.
My batteries were dying within about a month on my two deadbolts, after I included them into my new Vera3.
After turning off ZWave polling (setting the polling interval to 0), the battery drain seems to have stopped. It has been two months now since I turned off the polling, and my batteries are still at 80%.
Since the deadbolts are “instant status” devices, polling is not really needed. Everything still works without polling, and eliminating that constant radio traffic seems to have stopped the battery drain.
[quote=“aa6vh, post:25, topic:177920”]My batteries were dying within about a month on my two deadbolts, after I included them into my new Vera3.
After turning off ZWave polling (setting the polling interval to 0), the battery drain seems to have stopped. It has been two months now since I turned off the polling, and my batteries are still at 80%.
Since the deadbolts are “instant status” devices, polling is not really needed. Everything still works without polling, and eliminating that constant radio traffic seems to have stopped the battery drain.[/quote]
All–
Curious what kind of batteries everyone is using? I have 3 Kwikset locks. I replace the batteries at most every 9-12 months. This is rental property so you KNOW they get used frequently. I use the Energizer Lithium batteries, they’re more expensive but the performance is worth it…
[quote=“Don Diego, post:26, topic:177920”][quote=“aa6vh, post:25, topic:177920”]My batteries were dying within about a month on my two deadbolts, after I included them into my new Vera3.
After turning off ZWave polling (setting the polling interval to 0), the battery drain seems to have stopped. It has been two months now since I turned off the polling, and my batteries are still at 80%.
Since the deadbolts are “instant status” devices, polling is not really needed. Everything still works without polling, and eliminating that constant radio traffic seems to have stopped the battery drain.[/quote]
All–
Curious what kind of batteries everyone is using? I have 3 Kwikset locks. I replace the batteries at most every 9-12 months. This is rental property so you KNOW they get used frequently. I use the Energizer Lithium batteries, they’re more expensive but the performance is worth it…
Don[/quote]
I’m with you DON. I use Energizer Lithium (as per a thread some time ago) and get around a year of use out of my front door which gets used several times each day, just a bit more out of the rest. I have 4 total 910’s on 2 houses.
Obviously you two do not have the battery draining problem!
I expect to get 9 months+ out of my regular Duracells. I had the original batteries last 7 months, until I paired the two locks with my new Vera3. Now that I have turned off polling, they should go back to the normal duration. (2 1/2 months now and counting!)
Since I am blaming the battery drain on polling, I would expect larger networks to drain the lock’ batteries slower than smaller networks. Since Vera polls round robin, a larger network means a lot longer before Vera gets around to polling the lock again. My Vera3 only has a couple of devices on it (all of my other devices are still on my old Vera1), so polling was quite often.
[quote=“aa6vh, post:28, topic:177920”]Obviously you two do not have the battery draining problem!
I expect to get 9 months+ out of my regular Duracells. I had the original batteries last 7 months, until I paired the two locks with my new Vera3. Now that I have turned off polling, they should go back to the normal duration. (2 1/2 months now and counting!)
Since I am blaming the battery drain on polling, I would expect larger networks to drain the lock’ batteries slower than smaller networks. Since Vera polls round robin, a larger network means a lot longer before Vera gets around to polling the lock again. My Vera3 only has a couple of devices on it (all of my other devices are still on my old Vera1), so polling was quite often.[/quote]
Battery devices don’t poll as often or are awake as often. Also the factory poll time is set to poll no sooner then 10,800 seconds. That is every 3 hours. I’m not sure how big of a network your talking about but no amount of devices takes 3 hours to go round robin. So if you had 3 devices or 200 devices you will still get polled once in 3 hours. It’s just other devices would have gotten polled alot more then once.
I’m thinking your size of network theory is off. Now never polling vs. some polling there is going to be a battery drain to some extent but nothing that should cut life in half.
Only time I had a drain issue was when the deadbolt was not extending fully or right in the hole, which I had to chisel out a bit more.
Must be a bug in UI6 then. My lock polling was defaulted to 2 minutes (until I changed it).[/quote]
Yea 2 minutes is a bit much and not standard. UI6 is a bit of a hole and really not much reason to be stuck there. ui7 is the latest but has the same bugs as ui6. Ui5 is the most stable. If you like all the bugs and working threw problems upgrade to ui7 or jump back to ui5 if you want to be more stable.
Until then changing your polling time for a few hours is your safest bet. If vera is in a reboot or didn’t respond when the door was locked or unlocked, no polling would never see it in it’s new position. Every hour or more would at least check in sometime to see if the door is still online, battery % and/or in the same position.
On an everyday door I guess you can argue that the next time you get home it would update. On my vacation home I don’t go for weeks at a time. To never poll or check the battery, connection or deadbolt status in-case of a missed transmit isn’t ideal.
I was chaining things in vera one time which is followed by and safe (which restarts) during this time my wife opened one of the locks on the back detached garage door and went in. Came out never locked it. We had left to dinner got back and I went to the garage and the door was unlocked. This was maybe 2 hours or more after she unlocked it. I about flipped trying to figure out what happened, I checked when we left, and I have everything geofence setup to lock and shut down when we both leave. Well vera thought the lock was locked the whole time, never tried to relock it and never told me it was unlocked when I left. It was still reading locked when I got home and opened it.
Bottom line NO POLL means you don’t really know the true state of the door. You’r only guessing or hoping.
Bottom line NO POLL means you don't really know the true state of the door. You'r only guessing or hoping.
I wont disagree with this statement at all. However, I do not need to guess or hope. If I need the door to be locked, I have Vera send out the lock command, regardless of its current state.
I have not yet found any instance where Vera will not send out a lock command if commanded to do so, even if Vera thinks the lock is already locked. Have you found an instance where Vera refuses to send out the lock command? (Does not count if you are using other programming that first tests to see if the door is already locked!)
Bottom line NO POLL means you don’t really know the true state of the door. You’r only guessing or hoping.
I wont disagree with this statement at all. However, I do not need to guess or hope. If I need the door to be locked, I have Vera send out the lock command, regardless of its current state.
I have not yet found any instance where Vera will not send out a lock command if commanded to do so, even if Vera thinks the lock is already locked. Have you found an instance where Vera refuses to send out the lock command? (Does not count if you are using other programming that first tests to see if the door is already locked!)[/quote]
Yes Vera will not lock a door that is already locked. When you hit lock on your VERA and your door is locked to you ever hear the Deadbolt move?
I haven’t ran many tests and I know that day it didn’t lock. But a starting test might be to go reboot or power down your vera unlock your locked door during this process and then hit lock when its all powered back up.
In my case this also goes deeper then maybe yours is. I also have PLEG conditions that look at the current door lock status for different things. So even if the above test works, it still would cause havoc on PLEG if it thought the door was locked and it wasn’t or vise versa.
You can search the forums but I don’t think anyone recommends to turn polling off for some of these reasons. If you were polling every 3 min and you change it to every three hours your gonna be much happier. To change it out to never poll I think will cause more problems in the long rung then an extra month you may or may not get in the batteries.
I have two Vision ZM1702 door locks installed and have the same problem with batteries draining very quickly (in just a couple of weeks).
I have been thinking about replacing the 4 AA batteries with AC power. Have anyone managed to do a hack like this successfully? I can?t solder for my life, are there ready-made battery packs you could buy that plugs into a wall socket?
Of course the deadbolt will not move if you attempt to lock an already locked door. What did you expect? I am talking about Vera refusing to send out the lock command (which I have not found any instance that it would refuse to do so).
All zwave devices are programmed to ignore state change requests if the device is already in that state.
I still do not see much reason to poll the lock, except for special needs (such as yours). Most places just have lights turn on/off when the door is unlocked or locked. Having “ghost lights” turn on unexpectadly three hours after you came in the door can be disconcerting to folks. :o So most sites really do not need to poll the locks.
The only advantage I see by polling a lock is if you have it programmed to relock the door after a set duration of time. If Vera fails to receive the unlock notification on the actual unlock, at least the poll could catch it. Other than that, sorry, do not see it.
Of course the deadbolt will not move if you attempt to lock an already locked door. What did you expect? I am talking about Vera refusing to send out the lock command (which I have not found any instance that it would refuse to do so).
All zwave devices are programmed to ignore state change requests if the device is already in that state.[/quote]
So then you understand that it’s important to poll and make sure the door is really locked and not really unlocked showing locked. Yes door shouldn’t lock if its already locked. But again if vera was restarted, or down while the door was unlocked. It thinks it’s still locked and will not send the command even if its really unlocked. It needs to be polled. And that’s double true when you have home and away and PLEG locking the doors for you. It’s based on inputs and if the inputs don’t read right things don’t work right.
Never Polling is not recommend no matter if you have PLEG or not. I guess you can argue you have nothing tied to it but a icon thats fine. But when most people look at the icon on you phone and it says locked you want to make sure its locked. Never polling means never checking, means may or may not be right.
I guess I do not understand why you think Vera will do anything different based on what Vera thinks the lock state is. Unless you have programmed it differently, Vera (by default) will not do anything to the lock regardless of the state it is in. Or thinks it is in. Or discovers that it is in.
The instant status capability of the lock should indicate to Vera when the lock changes state. If the instant status message is not getting to Vera, then that is another problem that should be dealt with.
Polling can be used to catch lost status changes, which should never occur anyway. Otherwise, polling instant status devices is a waste of time, in my opinion. Now the non intant status devices (like most of my switches and lights) polling makes more sense, if only to show what status they are in. But if I need something to trigger off of a device status change, I will replace that something with an instant status device, as that is considerably more reliable and accurate (polling can take too long to react).
I do not expose my HA to the outside internet, so checking on the status while away is not possible for me anyway. I do not have anything that displays devices status’s (unless I get into the Vera interface). When I am home and wonder if the door is unlocked or a light is on, I just wander over and look. Or just (re)send the command to put it into the state I want it to be in.
What I am trying to say here is that for most folks, polling is not necessary for the locks, and you can disable it, to extend your lock’s battery time. If you have situations like above, then by all means keep polling the locks, but set the timer interval to 3 hours or something, otherwise the battery will run down too fast (which is the original topic of this thread).
How do you make vera not acessible outside home internet?[/quote]
Don’t plug it into a router is the easiest why. You can have it plugged into a computer or a LAN network just don’t put it on a WAN network or hook to router.
Actually, you have to do something to get it visible to the outside network.
As I recall, there are settings (I am using UI6) that enable access through/from the Micasaverde web site (which I do not set).
The other way is to “port forward” port 3480 from your router to Vera. Don’t port forward.
(Unfortunately, not connecting Vera to your router would prevent Vera from being able to be connected from your local network (LAN), and also prevents Vera from accessing the external time server.)