I have a Ring alarm motion sensor that is located far away from the alarm base station. So I installed the Ring z-wave extender about halfway between the motion sensor and the the base station, and everything worked for about 2 years.   However, within the last year (3rd year of operation) the motion sensor would intermittently fall offline.   Sometimes simply triggering it would bring it online, other times it would come back online on its own, and other times I had to unplug and re-plug the z-wave extender box to get it to come back online.

The ring app showed that its battery was still good (fully charged), but after trying a lot of other things with ring technical support, I eventually decided to try a new battery (they had recommended that I add a 2nd z-wave extender even closer to the motion sensor…but seeing as how it had worked fine for the 2 years previously…..).

So far, the sensor has remained online for the last month, so it appears that the new battery fixed my issue.

The sensor uses CR123A batteries, and I picked up a six pack of the Amazon Basics version. (I assume at some point all the other motion sensors will need new batteries as well, although all the others are still going strong. It may be that those close to the base station use less battery power in operation, I don’t know if the z-wave standard allows for different levels of transmit power or not.)

The old battery was at 2.84 volts, and the new one was at 3.25 volts, so there was definitely a difference in charge there. I don’t know what voltage the sensors consider to be “low” but it appears that at least for long range transmission, the battery voltage needs to be higher than 2.84 volts for reliable operation.

Update: I have no proof, but a low battery (after 2 years of use) may be causing false alarms. I’ve been replacing the battery on any motion sensor that gives me an unexplained false alarm, and so far the sensors with the replaced batteries have not caused another false alarm…