Threw $200 at fancy lithium batteries for my wireless alarm sensors and totally regret it

I was doing a big install last month for a house out in Maplewood and thought I'd be smart buying those expensive lithium non-rechargeable cells for all the door and window contacts. Figured they'd last way longer and save me trips back to swap dead ones. Well, three weeks later I'm getting low battery signals on half of them. Turns out the sensors I use are actually designed for standard alkaline and the voltage curve on lithium doesn't play nice with the transmitter circuits. So I yanked all of them out and put in regular Duracells, now everything's fine. That's $200 down the drain on batteries sitting in my truck that I can't even return. Has anyone else run into weird issues with battery types on Honeywell or DSC wireless gear?

3 comments

3 Comments

riley_coleman11d ago

Three weeks? That's wild. I figured those lithiums would last at least a year in low draw stuff like sensors. What brand were they, Energizer Ultimate Lithium or something? I had a similar thing happen with a motion detector once, but it took like six months before it started acting up.

lilys8110d ago

Did your friend say if it was a specific sensor model? Cause my buddy had the exact same thing happen with a weather station sensor he put up in his backyard. He used those Energizer Ultimate Lithiums too, swore by them for his smoke detectors. But that weather station just ate through them in like a month, he was losing his mind trying to figure out why. Turned out the sensor had some kind of internal short or something, it was draining the battery even when nothing was happening.

grace_hunt8410d ago

Yeah I read somewhere that some of those little sensors have a constant current draw even in standby mode. It's like they never fully shut down, just sip power all the time. The lithiums have a higher voltage than regular alkaline so the sensor might actually pull more current from them over time. My buddy used to have the same problem with his outdoor temp sensor, he switched to a cheaper alkaline battery and it actually lasted longer because the voltage sag slowed the drain.