Motion sensor low battery

Hi all,

I installed several brand new 2GIG motion sensors this past weekend. Two of them were reporting a low battery on the panel. I took the first one down, removed the battery, tested it (it tested perfectly) and reinstalled. The low battery message went away. Did the same thing for the second one, battery was perfect, reinstalled, but it is still reporting a low battery. Any reason why it might be doing this? Could it be a defective sensor? Anything else I can try?

Thank you,
David

How are you testing the battery? Load tester? What are the metered volts and amp hours? What is the date code

Rated:
Panasonic lithium CR123A nominal 3v 1.54Ah 1400mAh

The batteries/ detectors has probably been sitting somewhere for years. I suggest you go to store, and replace the batteries with a new 123/CR123/CR123A/CR17345, and see if the issues resolves. (Or deal with the low battery alerts when they start again)

I had got an image sensor 6 months or so ago, the energizer lithium’s were date coded and were 5 years old.

When I went to store to get new ones, I saw some energizer lithiums that were package dated 2008

Don’t assume just because you bought the device new, that the batteries are brand new. Batteries age even if not installed/in use.

At 1.8v the battery is dead (cutoff). I suspect low battery is probably around nominal voltage (2.4v-3.0v)…

The lithium 1.5v AA x2 used in the image sensor has an actual voltage of 3.6v-3.4v, and according to Amanda, goes into low battery alert when it hits nominal voltage 3.0v

Hi Rive,

Yes, testing on my load tester shows 100% charge. The battery is dated 2021 and shows a voltage of 3.075v on my multimeter.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!
-David

This is a long shot, but have you tried rebooting your panel to see if that clears the trouble?

An easy way to reboot the panel is to just go into system configuration and then exit out of it.

As I suggested previously, replace your lithium battery

3.075v is almost nominal voltage for lithium batteries.

The PIR is probably set to go into low battery trouble at nominal lithium voltage

Have SuretyCAM verfiy at what v the PIR gives low battery on lithium

I’m looking into that now.

After speaking with 2GIG, it doesn’t matter if the battery is lithium or not. The PIR should stop registering as low battery once a new battery is put in. His suggestion was replacing the PIR as they see this happen with PIRs once every couple months or so. Did you purchase the motion detector from us?

Hi Jay,

I am going to try to remove the new battery from the PIR and then reboot the panel. Once it comes back up, I will see if the low battery notice is gone. If so, I will replace the battery and see what it does.

My system from SuretyCam came with one PIR - not sure if this is the one or not…do I need to speak directly with 2GIG about that, or are you able to do the exchange?

Thank you!
-David

Jay…

What does 2GIG say the threshold for low battery is for the pir1?

The 2GIG rep I spoke with said he didn’t have that information. He said he could ask someone that did but I probably wouldn’t get a response very quickly.

David, I took a look into your system today and noticed that none of your sensors was reporting a low battery. Has the issue been resolved or did you simply remove the problem motion detector from the system?

Hi Jay,

I removed the battery and restarted the panel. The low battery notice went away - just to save time, I replaced it with a new battery anyway.

Thank you Rive and Jay for all the help!!

-David