How long do batteries last?

[Evelyn]

Your Sesame battery is designed to last for roughly 500 days with normal use. If you keep testing your Sesame within a short period of time, the battery level might go down, but once you go back to regular usage, the battery level will slowly climb back up.

If your battery is draining really quickly for no apparent reason even after you have replaced a new set of batteries, email us at sesame@candyhouse.co.

[prishelec]

Hi!
I bought my Sesame in March and have been enjoying it ever since.

However I doubt battery indicator is showing the correct values - it has always been 100% even after about 4 months of usage. Not even 99% or 98% always 100%.
Either it will last 10 years or there is something wrong with reporting of battery status

It's a known bug?
I don't want to suddenly end up with a flat battery on my lock without any warning

I'm using Android app on Android 7.1

Cheers,
Leonti

[cim]

Hi Leonti, thanks for the feedback! We understand that a lot of users are concerned about battery percentages and we appreciate the chance to clarify for everyone.

Sesame's battery percentage is currently based on voltage rather than remaining capacity, which accounts for much of the (understandable) confusion on the part of our users.

Here's an example of what the curve will look like for lithium batteries:

Since the voltage doesn't drop much for much of the battery's lifespan, it's normal for the percentage on your Sesame to show as 100% for a long time, due to your batteries' voltage being higher than the level set as max voltage. There may be fluctuations in voltage, but rather than showing the battery percentage as 102% or 105%, the maximum is capped at 100%.

Once the battery percentage on Sesame begins dropping, it means that the voltage is dropping quickly because the battery is nearing the end of its lifespan, so please be sure to change your batteries when the percentage is no longer nearing 100%. Our low-battery notifications are sent at 40%, and we recommend changing the batteries as soon as you receive the notification, as Sesame will stop working when batteries get even lower in order to protect the hardware from getting damaged due to insufficient power.

Please note that these numbers were determined using Panasonic CR123A batteries, which is why we recommend our users continue using Panasonic batteries for best results regarding battery life estimates.

If your battery percentage is dropping from 100% very quickly, this may be due to defective batteries or an issue with Sesame. In these cases, we recommend you write to us at sesame@candyhouse.co (and be sure to provide the email address associated with your Sesame account) so we can take a look.

We understand that the current battery percentage curve on Sesame is unintuitive and likely to cause confusion for our users, as most users would expect the battery percentage to be based on capacity rather than voltage. Our product development team is aware of this issue and are working on solutions, so hopefully we will be able to offer an update soon that will make the battery percentage more intuitive to our users.

Thanks again for using Sesame and for your kind words, and for the opportunity to clarify the issue with battery percentage. Please don't hesitate to let us know if you have any suggestions or further questions regarding Sesame. We'd be happy to help! - CANDY HOUSE

[prishelec]

Hi!
Thanks a lot for a very thorough explanation! I get it now.

Cheers,
Leonti

[esung]

Thanks for the clarification, but I think there shouldn't have been this confusion in the first place. When you display battery level in the smartphone age it is read as capacity rather than voltage. So current display is not only pretty much useless but also misleading, as I experienced first hand. (Caught off guard by unresponsive battery one day)

So I propose a different measure. Ditch the misleading battery level, but rather show the number of turns under current battery. I think there should be enough statistics of how many turns (open and close) one set of battery can perform during its lifetime. If on average it can do 4000 times you should be able to anticipate the the battery lifetime a little better. It'd be even better if sesame can measure the torque and take it into account but I don't think that's possible with current hardware.

[cim]

We completely understand that it's misleading and we are looking at ways to improve the battery life indicator! We appreciate your suggestion and will be sure to pass it to the product team so they can take it into consideration. According to our in-house tests the batteries should last for 5000 actions, but this can be affected by a number of variables outside our control, such as temperature changes, type of actions taken with Sesame, torque required for each specific lock, etc. Our concern would be that the number of actions may not be accurate for everyone's situation, but we will definitely see what we can do to solve the problem. Rest assured, this is something we're working to improve and we hope to have an update for you soon! - CANDY HOUSE

[esung]

I started using sesame jun 2016, and in December batteries dropped to 15% one day and became unresponsive. Now I can understand that voltage dropped low that it didn't have enough power to turn the knob. So the new set of batteries I put in December last year showed 56% recently so I just put the new set. This time it didn't drop from 100 to 15 so at least I had a chance to replace batteries before the power failure, and it lasted slightly longer (7.5mo vs less than 6mo). It's still much shorter than 1 year lifespan advertised but I can live with 6~7months. I just hope it would warn users when battery voltage drops below certain level. Thanks.

[cim]

Glad the information was useful! We're sorry about the 100% to 15% issue - we've been updating the firmware to better reflect the battery levels, so hopefully that won't happen again. The firmware updates should help with battery life as well, so we're glad to hear that the second set of batteries have lasted longer. Our in-house tests showed that the batteries should be good for 5000 lock/unlock actions, but this will be affected by the torque required by your lock, usage, and temperature fluctuations. Long battery life is important to us, so this is something we will seek to continue improving!

We added low-battery notifications at the end of June, so both Android and iOS devices should be receiving low battery notifications now. Currently the notifications are sent when the battery percentage reaches 40%, but we're definitely willing to tweak that number based on user experience.

Thanks again for contributing, we really appreciate hearing from Sesame users regarding their experience with Sesame so we can continue to make Sesame better and better! - CANDY HOUSE

[raphael6163]

If i think its important it is because my battery already 80% and i think the replacement will arrive sooner than i thought
so for the next version of sesame please you can do a better part for the batteries
i mean i am sure you can do something easier and simple about replacing the batteries
In the corner of the sesame you can design a part who can be slipped and ''a simple lock" instead of uncovering all the sesame because uncovering all the sesame like now can hurt or worst break it
Good luck.

[esung]

Your site advertises that battery lasts 500 days, and you say it can do up to 5000 turns - Is it still the latest stat? It assumes 10 turns per day but everybody's usage is different so I don't think it's wise to claim in in blanket number like that. Also could you verity if the comment from hsiang below is still true?

".... From your history log, I found that you've used Sesame for almost 3000 times, and that's about 60~70% usage of the battery. and as I mentioned before, when the battery is under 30%, Sesame will stop working to prevent the lock from getting stuck."

That was in the thread about my dead batteries, around January this year. Sesame not working when reaching 3000 turns is contradictory to 5000 turn lifespan, so I hope you improved the algorithm and it's not the case anymore. Or I think you should correct your claim to 300 days / 3000 turns as the expected battery life. Just my two cents.

[cim]

Yes, you are correct, the assumption of 500 days is based on 10 uses per day at 5000 turns total. And yes, Sesame will stop working when battery voltage percentage reaches 30% to avoid damage to the hardware. The 5000 turns was calculated from 100% to 30% battery voltage, but of course this number will be different for everyone depending on how much torque is required to lock and unlock your door.

It appears there was some confusion about battery capacity percentage and battery voltage percentage in hsiang's comment, but she's right that 3000 turns would not be outside the expected range for battery life. The 5000 turns is a guideline based on the best-case scenario - most users will not be using their Sesame in exactly the same conditions as the ones we used for our test, so the actual battery life for most users will be less than 5000 turns, though by how much would differ from case to case. Now that we have more usage data for Sesame, we can definitely look at updating the battery life claims based on average real-life use cases rather than the data from our simulated test.

We appreciate your feedback and suggestions! Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts on how to improve Sesame, we will be sure to take them into consideration regarding our claims about battery life! - CANDY HOUSE

[marcos.alonso]

Just installed my Sesame and after opening and closing it a few times to set it up and get it turning smoothly the battery is already at 72%.
This seems pretty bad for a new battery?

[Rika]

Hi there, apologies for the belated response. Hope this this post helps clarify your questions!

[Zelik]

I have three sesame. Three. And the battery indicator is false. I’ve had it run out of batteries and it still reported full battery. Before this happened. Please fix this.

[cim]

@Zelik sorry to hear it! Currently the battery life only updates if you open the app and connect to Sesame via Bluetooth and allow your app time to send the battery update to our server before closing it. We know this is not ideal, particularly for users who primarily rely on auto-unlock and auto-lock. Once paired with the Wi-Fi Access Point, the battery logs will automatically be updated to our servers so you should receive the low battery notification in a more timely manner. Hopefully you won't experience the same issue again! If you do, please let us know so we can check out the logs to see what went wrong. Thank you! - CANDY HOUSE

[dave.passmore]

Hi,

The battery life was fine for a long time but just recently the batteries only last about a week. Has anyone else complained of this issue? I am thinking it might be the batteries but just wanted to check if anyone else complained.

[jerming]

We apologize that your batteries last only a week. How long have you been using Sesame and how many times have you changed your batteries during that span? - Jerming

[thevictor_sesame]

I'm a Kickstarter backer and using the recommended Panasonic batteries and it also lasts a week even though I might not use the lock one some days. I've probably gone through hundreds of those batteries. 500 day battery life is dreaming. Not sure what is draining the batteries so quickly.