I’ve run into a problem with 2 of my droplets that reads to me like a potential software bug involving the Find My Device functionality (and potentially interacting with maximum moisture calibration feature). Some background below:
I recently removed all 4 of my droplets as I was aerating my lawn, then replaced them two days after aerating. Reinstallation went fairly smoothly, with 3 of the 4 indicating that they had settled properly in ~4-5 days and needed to have their maximum moisture calibration performed.
I soaked the soil as part of the maximum moisture calibration several days ago (I think it was Sunday, the 21st?) and clicked the appropriate buttons in the app. Within 24 hours, I also used the “Find My Device” feature on 2 of the droplets to make sure that I had put them back in the same general location (i.e. wanted to make sure I didn’t switch units from the backyard to the front, etc.). Since I used that feature, both devices are now stuck in “Find My Device” state and are showing “Device Slow Update” warnings in the app (which makes sense if they haven’t connected to the cloud service). My network AP’s report that they haven’t connected since roughly around the time where the LED was supposed to go on for each. Both droplets are also showing a regularly flashing green led.
Are there any known bugs around the “Find My Device” functionality, potentially related to interaction with maximum moisture calibration? The two “bricked” units are 334MHW and 337RPF, whereas my other two units (1 still learning, 1 fully functional) are 337EAT and 334JTQ respectively.
Unit 337RPF came on-line this morning and is no longer flashing the green LED. If I hadn’t noticed all this odd behavior, I would say it’s behaving normally. Did you guys change something?
Unit 334MHW is now flagged as state “Offline” and is still flashing the green LED.
Thanks @homedigy-stanley - since my last note, 334MHW has come back online, although it is now flagged as “Not having sent any useful data for a white”.
In both of these cases, the battery in the misbehaving units is considerably run-down. I’m seeing a 20+% difference between the units exhibiting the odd behavior and those behaving normally, so something was definitely happening on those units during the outage window and I don’t believe flashing the LED regularly would account for such a precipitous drop.
Thanks for the note, @Scythe . The engineering team is working to get the next release out, hence would be slow in getting back to you. We haven’t forgotten about this.
Just wanted to let you know so that you’re not left in the dark.
Just to confirm with you that we do observe what you describe and this is definitely a bug. It is ticketed as part of a future FW patch. The bug will not “brick” the device per say, but some how caused the device to sleep for almost 2 days in your case. Otherwise the device is behaving normally. Thank you for reporting this and we will let everyone know when the next FW patch is available. Unfortunately at this moment we are still focusing on getting the watering control out. If there is no other issue at the moment I will let @homedigy-stanley close this issue for now.
Happy to help, Al. Any idea what caused the excessive battery drain? If my devices went to sleep, I’d expect less battery usage instead of considerably more? (impacted devices currently sit at ~35% battery while ones that were not are at ~60%).
Agreed that focusing on the watering control is the right call right now as long as the devices will eventually recover by themselves.
The battery drain is more likely than not related to the Find My Device issue. Find My Device will drain the battery more than usual due to
LED blinking at maximum brightness
The device staying on without “sleeping” in that state.
Normally the battery with the latest version of the FW should last for at least 6 months depending on the average temperature . However in additional to this bug there are already other know scenarios where the battery would drain abnormally and we will be fixing those in our later FW update. We will also be aiming to improve the battery life to at least 1 year
Sorry for any inconvenience and Thank you for bearing with us.
Gotcha, thanks Al. Definitely looking forward to improved battery life (going an entire spring to winter dormancy season would be the sweet spot for me personally).
The latest software release has seemed to smooth some of the rough spots around usage that I had noticed during the soft launch. Hope you guys keep up the good work!