Count reset + battery percent

Hardware
1

Hi,
It seems the counter is resetting by itself for a weird reason.
We use Node-Red to get the sensor data (one-channel counter) and write it into a text file every 5 seconds. I just added a log file to Node-Red to see what can be the problem and for a weird reason the battery percent received from the counter seems to decrease until 0.01 and right after the count and counter are reset, as you can see in the log file attached (starting at line 8):
Logs_Sensor_2.txt (6.7 KB)

2

The counter value is the number of transmissions the sensor has sent since boot. If the sensor is reset this will reset back to 1 on the first transmission after reboot. This will also reset the built in contact counter.

I’m assuming this is a production counter device. How are you powering it? From Batteries or internally? Also when was this device purchased?

3

Hi Travis,
We are not sending a reset command to the counter…
The counter is powering by battery (4 X AA) and the unit have been purchased on May 23 2023 (order # 520910). We did replaced the board with the ones received few months ago. The problem is not new, but it causing issues since the count is reset for no reason. Is there a way to fix it ?

4

Hi Frederic,

What is the delay value configured into this sensor through Node-Red? Seems like you’re getting multiple packets without incrementing the sensor_data.counts value

5

Hi Jacob,
The delay is set to 5 seconds!

6

Understood. I am not the hardware engineer on these devices, but based off the data in the .txt file you sent over the device has a low battery. This can cause power interruptions and a restart.

The primary use case of these sensors is to act as an interrupt driven sensor so you shouldn’t need anything less than 5 minutes on the delay/interval as that is primarily to detect if the sensor is still sending data. The interrupt driven portion will just broadcast when the interrupt is triggered at the counter threshold value.

7

Hi Jacob,
When we purchased the sensors I asked to your sales departement and they suggested me this model…
They are used to count the number of time a saw cuts and the counter threshold have been set to 1.
So what can we do to fix this problem ?
Any idea???

8

Hi Frederic,

I believe simply setting the delay value to 300 or 600 to reduce the number of duplicate counter reading packets and prolong battery life and then replacing the batteries of the sensor would resolve the issue. If not definitely let us know as a power cycle with a new battery would be very unusual.

9

I’ll try and let you know!

10

Hi guys,
It seems to work. We did change the delay to 60 seconds and since that, no count reset have been done!

Thanks for your help!

11

Good to hear. Let us know if you have any other questions.

In my experience the interval on these contact closure devices can be pretty long as its primary purpose is to act as a heartbeat where a server can tell that it hasn’t detected a reading in the allotted interval and sends out a notification that comms are down between the sensor and the gateway.

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