Battery percentage seems to be 70% to -30% instead of 100% to 0% for Motion Blinds

[pascalkrielen]

The problem

I installed the Motion_Blinds integration and at that point my 2 blinds showed 23% and 31% on the battery percentage. After charging the blinds during the night, the next day they were both "stuck" at 70%. Now after a few weeks they list -1% and -2%. This make me assume that they will drop to -30% before they actually stop working. Meaning the integration does read the battery percentage and sees it dropping after use and increasing when charged, but the "scale" is not as you would expect from 0-100%, but -30 to 70%. Is there any way to have this corrected ?

What version of Home Assistant Core has the issue?

2022.8.1

What was the last working version of Home Assistant Core?

No response

What type of installation are you running?

Home Assistant OS

Integration causing the issue

motion_blinds

Link to integration documentation on our website

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/motion_blinds

Diagnostics information

No response

Example YAML snippet

No response

Anything in the logs that might be useful for us?

No response

Additional information

No response

[probot-home-assistant[bot]]

motion_blinds documentation motion_blinds source _{^{(message by IssueLinks)}}

[probot-home-assistant[bot]]

Hey there @starkillerog, mind taking a look at this issue as it has been labeled with an integration (motion_blinds) you are listed as a code owner for? Thanks! _{^{(message by CodeOwnersMention)}}

[starkillerOG]

@pascalkrielen the battery level is actually not directly provided by the blind but is rather calculated from the battery_voltage and known battery_voltage packs.

What exact brand and model/type of blind is having this issue? Do you know what kind of battery pack is in it (what is the minimum operating voltage and what is the fully charged voltage)? I am in contact with the manufacturers, so if you know the exact brand and model/type I can ask them about the battery pack.

[pascalkrielen]

@pascalkrielen the battery level is actually not directly provided by the blind but is rather calculated from the battery_voltage and known battery_voltage packs.

What exact brand and model/type of blind is having this issue? Do you know what kind of battery pack is in it (what is the minimum operating voltage and what is the fully charged voltage)? I am in contact with the manufacturers, so if you know the exact brand and model/type I can ask them about the battery pack.

@starkillerOG, The motor seems to be a Motion CM-07 and it is powered by the Motion CM-38 "battery tube USB-C short". In that manual I see these details:

The original App shows only 2 icons for both the battery percentage and the wifi-strength, so there it is not possible to get a good reading out of the exact numbers. The integration does nicely show the wifi strength in dBm and indeed the voltage.

Another (seperate) issue I seem to face now is that the first time I charged the batteries, they lasted about 3 weeks. Now both of them were already empty after 3 days and besides updating Home Assistant with a minor update I don't think anything has changed.

So I am wondering if there is something wrong with the batteries or that it is caused due to Home Assistant polling the blinds too much. (I read that polling them in a high rate obviously drains the battery). If the batteries again drain fast I will disconnect them from the Home Assistant to test if that is indeed the case, but then I would like to know it there is any way I can "prove" this fact by some sort of logging in Home Assistant.

[starkillerOG]

It does seem strange that the blinds started to drop battery level much faster. Did you use them more often in a automation or something? Unless you see al kind of errors in the log the blinds schould only be polled once every 15 minutes, so that schould not do much for the battery (I think). Of course it is smart to test by removing the HomeAssistant integration and then seeing if the battery live is diffrent.

The battery level in HomeAssistant is calculated using 12.6 V as 100% and 10.4 V as 0% (it just calculates linear). Your battery shows 12.6V as max and 8.4V as minimum.

I will discuss with my contacts at Coullise if the minimum level schould be dropped to 8.4 V.

However there is always some small diffrence between batteries so not reaching 100% is not strange, but it schould reach something close to at least 85% or so.

[pascalkrielen]

It does seem strange that the blinds started to drop battery level much faster. Did you use them more often in a automation or something? Unless you see al kind of errors in the log the blinds schould only be polled once every 15 minutes, so that schould not do much for the battery (I think). Of course it is smart to test by removing the HomeAssistant integration and then seeing if the battery live is diffrent.

The battery level in HomeAssistant is calculated using 12.6 V as 100% and 10.4 V as 0% (it just calculates linear). Your battery shows 12.6V as max and 8.4V as minimum.

I will discuss with my contacts at Coullise if the minimum level schould be dropped to 8.4 V.

However there is always some small diffrence between batteries so not reaching 100% is not strange, but it schould reach something close to at least 85% or so.

@starkillerOG , Is it an option to make the minimum and maximum values user-configurable in the integration ? Then we would be able to "play" with the values and see when we get a setting that (nearly) shows us 0% to 100%

With regards to the battery dropping fast, as far as I now I was playing more with the curtains the first 3 weeks than the last 3 days, so it should even last longer I would assume. But I will disconnect them to see what happens then.

[starkillerOG]

@pascalkrielen this can not be made user-configurable because that is against the HomeAssistant develpment guide lines. Only the bare nessesaties can be configurable.

The manufacturere will be checking the battery voltages in the coming week.

[sygys]

i must say that with my brel motors i have a similar problem with batterylevels. My BTE50's never go under 40% in fact at around 40 to 50% the motors start beeping to let me know that they are emty. but the integration reports there is still 40% - 50% charge left. Its not a big deal but i guess its not vey usefull other then when you know that 40% is emty :)

by the way minus values should be coded out. its strange to have values of -3 %

[starkillerOG]

@sygys could you look if your manual states the minimum voltage (0%) and maximum voltage (100%) of your BTE50's?

[pascalkrielen]

@pascalkrielen this can not be made user-configurable because that is against the HomeAssistant develpment guide lines. Only the bare nessesaties can be configurable.

The manufacturere will be checking the battery voltages in the coming week.

@starkillerOG , any news from the manufacturer ?

[sygys]

Brel motors don't have very good documentations of their motors. I don't think there is any way of finding this out

[starkillerOG]

Brel motors don't have very good documentations of their motors. I don't think there is any way of finding this out

You could send an email to Brel and ask for the values.

[starkillerOG]

@pascalkrielen not yet, I will ask for the progress.

[pascalkrielen]

@pascalkrielen not yet, I will ask for the progress.

@starkillerOG, Any update ?

[pascalkrielen]

@pascalkrielen not yet, I will ask for the progress.

@starkillerOG, Any update ?

@starkillerOG ,

No update yet ?

[issue-triage-workflows[bot]]

There hasn't been any activity on this issue recently. Due to the high number of incoming GitHub notifications, we have to clean some of the old issues, as many of them have already been resolved with the latest updates. Please make sure to update to the latest Home Assistant version and check if that solves the issue. Let us know if that works for you by adding a comment 👍 This issue has now been marked as stale and will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.