Interesting. Thanks for posting that. You’d think if that was such a well known issue, they would’ve tried to fix it or do something better to prevent it. At least Wyze eventually started giving low battery warnings, so it should help prevent this happening as often to other people now.
The low battery warning is only if you do not have a group of sensors, since I have more than 20 sensors I group them by sections of the house, losing the ability to see the warmings.
From time to time I delete the group to see if any sensor is running low before I lose another sensor.
Btw I lost most of my sensors before I read about the drain battery issue.
That’s not a pet door. It’s my garage door!
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Hah. Big dog. I bet the AAs solve a lot of problems.
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i find a solution if you live outside US , trow in the trash any wyze sensor thats is already dead and get some zigbee hub and sensors like sonoff zbbridge
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Do you know what the problem is? Wyze management. They are a bunch of schizophrenic people who have no clue what they want to do. They started out awesome and since has introduce me so many freaking products that they can’t support them all. They just move on to the next product or for that matter even category. WTH does Bluetooth headphones have to do with anything? Why are they even selling them in the first place? For every item you sell there are ongoing support to deal with. Not just hardware but software/firmware issues to deal with.
Subscription model was one I had advocated for them to have continued revenue stream to stay alive. But branching out to other product categories every other day is NOT.
Wyze needs to stay FOCUS and take the Ritalin as prescribed and keep their core customers happy while not scaring off new arrivals with unsupported products.
They need to focus on the home automation and security aspect of their products.
I wanted one app to control everything since I abandon Smartthings to go with Wyze to avoid too many apps. I have Ring doorbell but I am waiting for Wyze to get their act together with theirs and to weed out any issues before I jump in.
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I didn’t even know this was an issue until (sgi) alerted me. I have a spare sensor that I use as a flood alert/low temp alert, I haven’t had a battery in it for several months. I just put a battery in it, fearing the worst, and it works fine.
I think it might have something to do with the production run as you (carverofchoice) mentioned. I have a vacation motion detector too, same situation. It still works.
dont let the battery die , we dont know why, if the battery die the mac address just die , but you can change the battery early and you will be fine
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Bentley, leaving the Sensor without a battery is not a problem, its running the sensor till a low battery situation occurs which causes it to lock up. Texas instruments had issued an advisory about this issue.
if you miss 1 battery change in time, the sensor will become unresponsive - bricked to the Wyze app, but not to Home Assistant…
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Wait, really? So if we just remember to change the batteries every X months, or pull it out entirely, it should be fine? The MAC gets retained at zero power?
I missed that. Maybe if I ever open my kit I should find brand new batteries, or just test the ones provided.
Yeah, it is weird. Apparently a full voltage keeps everything working fine, and no voltage is fine without changes, but a LOW voltage triggers some kind of lock-up state (so, just before it dies, when it is low, not when it is actually dead). That’s craziness.
Seriously, what idiot engineer at Texas Instruments DESIGNED something to lock up with low voltage or at least released it like this with this known issue without fixing it, which amounts to the same thing?
I’m going to be extra paranoid about keeping all my V1 sensors out of “groups” now and making sure to replace the batteries (or pull them out) the minute they start flashing low battery or I get the low battery alert in the Wyze App.
I’m slightly confused. Why does having the sensors in groups stop the low battery alerts?
I do not know, but I think it was @sgi who mentioned that there was some kind of issue with low battery notices if they were in a group. Perhaps they can elaborate on it for you.
it was vankfire, he posted a screenshot just now
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I see the difference in the display, but do you receive any alerts from the app when a battery is low or is the visual alert the only clue?
I never received an alert, also I didn’t know about the visual note until I install an replacement and saw that the battery was already low.
I know Wyze Team meant to help with this issue recently by providing low battery notifications, but somebody overlooked a major issue and there is a big bug preventing notifications from sensors in groups. Can someone please look into fixing this (the notification bug), as well as this requested firmware update to fix bricked sensors? @WyzeJasonJ or any Mods, can one of you make sure to directly ask @UserCustomerGwen or @WyzeTeam about this bug/issue so it doesn’t get overlooked and will be forwarded on to the devs to make an update so we aren’t missing this? QA (I do QA professionally) would consider this a critical issue since the missed notification leads to completely ruined devices that currently can never be undone and can’t be fixed if missed (which is directly caused by a software bug in the app not sending the intended notice).
Today I can confirm this happens. I’ve had 3 sensors go to low battery in the last week (probably because I set them all up around the same time),
At least 1 of them was in a group, and I did not receive any notification about it at all. I only knew it was low because I saw the red flashing light:
For context, it looks that way because I use it as a light switch for my Wyze bulbs by using these cool switch brackets:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/796214025/switch-bracket-for-wyze-sense?ref=user_profile&frs=1
I did NOT receive a push notification about this sensor having a low battery.
I went and checked the home screen for this sensor group and it didn’t tell me anything:
So I clicked on the group and thought it would show me there, but it didn’t tell me there either:
So I clicked on the individual sensor and, finally, it showed me the battery was low:
It gave me no other warning the battery was low, and had I not noticed the flashing red light, I might’ve risked losing a sensor needlessly (since if the voltage gets too low, Texas Instruments says the circuit board will lock-up and the MAC address disappears and won’t allow reconnecting to Wyze anymore). Luckily I caught this one. But someone needs to know that the push notifications are NOT being sent for grouped sensors, and the battery warning doesn’t show for them on the home screen, nor the second screen (the group screen). It’s multiple clicks away.
The warning does work correctly for sensors not in a group. I just got that notice on one of my sensors today:
And it showed the Low battery notice on the home screen too:
It is obviously an app coding issue not sending a push notification. The sensor is able to tell when the battery is low, and the app knows it is low, it just doesn’t tell us or send the notification if it’s in a group.
The rest of the concerns in this Wishlist are valid too. I have a lot of these sensors and don’t want to lose them needlessly (Yes, I bought a bunch of V2 sensors too, but that doesn’t mean I want all my V1’s [which I use a lot of them as light switches] to stop working).
Thanks for your time guys.
Android Wyze Beta v2.16.24
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@carverofchoice
I will see if I can get your post to someone to look into it.
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Jason flagged me and I’m going to send this up to the team. Thanks for the detail! Great writeup. 
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