I’m up to seven Entry Sensor’s now… last one was installed on the front door, as I left it open last night (with a security screen door locked), but nevertheless it was time to install one of my unused Entry Sensors.
This lead me to these three questions:
-
What action(s) consumes battery capacity?.. Just opening, or closing the door? Or does the door in the open position, and thus the sensor in the open position consume battery while it remains open (such as leaving it open for multiple hours during the day for airflow)
-
What’s the average number or weeks/months that folks are seeing the factory batteries last?
-
Any issues using rechargeable AAA batteries with the sensors (I’m assuming rechargeable batteries would be OK)
SJ
1 Like
I have about 11 V2 Entry sensors (and somewhere between 15-20 v1 entry sensors).
Most of the V2 entry sensors I’ve had for a year now and still haven’t had to replace the original batteries. 
They last FOREVER (compared to the previous sensors with a pill battery).
These things are awesome, reliable, etc. I love them! I would love them even more if they also had temperature and humidity sensing built into them like some other contact do, and if they could run locally and not just be dependent on the cloud…but I still love them anyway. 
But I did put rechargeable batteries in some anyway instead of the original batteries, and I can tell you for sure that they work. Also, I know that rechargeables definitely don’t last as long because they naturally don’t hold as much power in them. To give you an idea, in my Wyze Door Lock (the original lock, not the new lock bolt), when I put NEW rechargeable batteries in it, it already tells me the batteries are low and I should replace them, even though they were just freshly charged! 
That’s a huge difference. The point is that rechargeable batteries will have to be replaced way more often than full capacity standard Duracel or Energizer batteries, but rechargeables are convenient, so I use them anyway.
As for what consumes battery, it does depend on how often the entry sentor is changing states (open and closed) since it pushes out a state change to the hub every time that happens. In addition to state changes there is a check-in interval where the sensor checks in occasionally in order to verify it is still online even if the state hasn’t changed.
I don’t think that continuous open or closed states affect it much, but it’s possible that the closed state drains the battery faster than the open state. As I recall, we determined in this thread that Wyze is using a Hall Effect Switch rather than a Reed Switch, but either way, the closed position would be the one allowing a an electric voltage to circulate when the magnetic field is present. Thus, it stands to reason that while an electrical charge is being generated, it is potentially draining the battery a little more than if the sensor was open and no electrical charge was possible. Based on that logical conjecture I would guess that a sensor left open most of the time would have batteries last longer than a sensor left closed most of the time.
That’s about the best answer I can give you.
1 Like
Most likely what’s happening involves the voltage of the rechargeables. Rechargeables are 1.2V regular throw aways are 1.5V this is why many devices won’t work with rechargeables and undoubtedly wyze calibrated their battery circuits for `1.5 not 1.2 and thus that makes it think your batteries are low because of the voltage difference.