Heat Controller drains power in less than a day

[marcwau 30]

Two days ago, one of my FGT's started to send "battery low" messages, and the power indication was red.

It surprised me, as The FGT is set to "OFF" and is not linked to any schedule, so it is supposed to do nothing.

 

Initially, I thought it might have to do with the upgrade to 4.3, which needs more power than normal operation, so I recharged the battery to full power.

But today, 16 hours later, I am getting "battery low" messages again from the same FGT.

 

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Any idea what could cause this?

 

[petergebruers 1,261]

8 minutes ago, marcwau said:

But today, 16 hours later, I am getting "battery low" messages again from the same FGT.

I do not have this issue, but it has been reported before. I ran my own "open/close pid" on an FGT (doing full strokes about once every 2 minutes) for several hours then I measured how much charge it could take. I estimated it could have run like that for more than a week. So I would say it is a firmware bug, and the drain is caused by one of the microcontrollers not entering sleep modee or a network issue, causing the Z-Wave part to stay "on"

[marcwau 30]

Maybe I should let it drain its battery completely before recharging, in the hope that, when it powers up again, it will restart whatever internal services it is running...

[petergebruers 1,261]

Possible. I would use the "cyan" menu to send it to standby, this forces it to enter low power sleep and opens the valve. It also erases the logs, so if you want to send them (I have no opinion if you should send them or not)...  Ten minutes after wake-up (click button) it will calibrate...

[tinman 1,025]

1 hour ago, marcwau said:

so I recharged the battery to full power.

 

what did you have used to recharge the heat controller?

[petergebruers 1,261]

9 minutes ago, tinman said:

what did you have used to recharge the heat controller?

 

In my case, I use a power bank + this USB power monitor (RD-UM24C)

 

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I have nothing to gain by posting this link. But I can tell you, it is very accurate.

 

I've tried a phone charger once, but that did not work. I guess they do not disable the capacitive sensor, and thus it picks up noise and starts flashing like a real disco ball...

[marcwau 30]

To recharge, I used a USB charger (powered, not a power bank). But I am quite sure that it's not the problem.

When I bought the 18 FGT's, I charged them all using the same charger, and all of them indicated a full charge in the end (flashing green ring).

The same with this specific valve. During charging yesterday, it was flashing red, ending in a green flashing ring, and an indication of full charge in the HC2.

So it's not a matter of insufficient charging or a defective charger, it must be something in the FGT that decided to continuously consume power. 

The strange thing is that the valve has been installed for weeks, and it never happened before. 

Only, during last weekend, I upgraded that (and other) FGT, and yesterday the power drain happened for the first time, but only with this specific valve.

And despite it being set to "OFF" (manual) the radiator is warm.

It's about time new firmware is released, because I have at least as many problems with v4.3 as with v4.0.

 

[marcwau 30]

Update: I was able to stop the continuous power drain by putting the valve in Standby mode for a while, and then reactivating it.

I then recharged the valve to full charge, and it has been operational for two days now without any noticeable (rapid) power drain.

 

In the mean time, I had another valve that also started to discharge rapidly (after a manual calibration).

I applied the same trick - standby mode and back - and it appears to have stopped the power drain also.

 

If only we would know what causes the valve to get stuck in some power-hungry process or loop... Fibaro?

[Tony270570 92]

Hi @marcwau

Here is a copy past of parallel discussion describing what has happened to me, I don't know if it can give you some ideas :

1st episode

Today I had a very strange behavior on one of my FGT, it starts to open and close non stop in a frenetic way, I was near of it when it suddenly stars, I observe it for few secondes/minutes expecting it to stop by itself, but it was not the case. The only way I had to stop it,  was to close it manually.

 It's really strange because the phenomenon starts when the TRV received a direct sunbeam.  I assume  it has increasing suddenly the temperature of the valve which looks to be very very sensible.

The result was also to significantly lowering the level of the battery in less then 2 minutes the battery charge was impacted. And I read some people having problems with TRV discharging very quickly, is this due to same issue??  

Several days ago I found this TRV with the battery nearly dead (red indicator) where the day just before it was fully charge. 

As usual my first reaction was, it might happen (hum) lets try charging with another charging power module, the one I have used might no be appropriate ... And in fact I never had any issue after that day, well, until today...

This TRV due to its physical position is the only one I have so much sensible to be highly exposed to the directed sunlight. I assume this is the cause, but right now it's just a supposition, hard to say. I will need to wait until the next sunny day, but none is planned on the following days 

One more thing, it might just be a detail, never know, I have switched off my heater today as it's worm today, the water in the pipe are right now around 28°C, it was around 31°/32° when the problem occurs this afternoon.  

 

2nd episode:

This morning my valve causing the problem described above didn't open, I tried to open it manually and the motor was very slow. After a quick check I can see the battery has dropped a lot. Right now I put the valve in charge and I'm going to perform a factory reset on it.

I didn't mention one thing, this TRV is one of the most farthest from the box, one again I don't know if it can have a impact or not on its behavior so I specify it.

The zone where the valve seats, is cover by a slave box but the valve itself is not link to the slave but remains on the main. The reason is quiet simple, it's not possible or I didn't found how to drive the TRV on the heating schedule defined on the main box when the module is included in a slave box.

 

 

I have sent the log to @Fibaro in case something is visible on it. I have also exclude/reset/include the module.

 

Edited April 8, 2018 by Tony270570

[marcwau 30]

Thanks @Tony270570, I had seen that post.

But the two valves that gave me this power draining problem, are never in direct sunlight. So at least in my case, it must have another cause...

At some point, I had also thought that it might be a bug in the "open window" algorithm, because one of the two was indeed below an open window that day, but the other valve is in a room where the window has not been open for weeks. So that's probably not the reason either.

[Tony270570 92]

Thank you @marcwau for your feedback, I don't know if the direct sunlight was the cause, it might be only a coincidence, what is interesting here is really the fact the TRV starts to open/close in loop for a unknown reason killing very quickly the battery level. It's the seconde time that it happen to this TRV all other are ok from that point of view. I hope that the trick you found will fixe your issue.

 

[Henne 1]

Hello,

 

I am struggeling with the power drain, as well. Have 10 thermostats. The two latest have had a duration of a couple of days at last. So I returned them. The new ones seem to work fine until now. However, now one of the older thermostats keeps loosing power. Currently, it seems to need recharging almost every day. Furhermore, once low on battery it sends an alert not only every 1/2 hour but in a frequency of a few minutes. Cannot return it because I do not know anymore, where I bought this one.

 

Is there a possiblity to exchange the rechargable battery?

 

Hi,

 

another point: why is the message center of the fibaro being dumped with noticec on charging every few seconds ... :

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