Battery-powered sensors: New hype, same problems

Back in May 2024, we broke down the many headaches that come from relying on battery-powered occupancy sensors. (See 5 reasons you shouldn’t rely on batteries to measure your spaces). 

Since then, even battery skeptics like us have to admit: battery-backed sensors have made some moves. VergeSense, for example, now claims its new Infinity sensor can last up to 10 years. Not bad, right?

With such bold promises flying around, we decided to kick the tires (or, more accurately, the batteries) and see if it was time to rethink our stance. We’re just really into things our customers also care about like accuracy and maintenance costs.

Despite the new hype, we found the same problem lurking under the shiny new wrapper. Battery-powered sensors still demand the classic Faustian bargain: short-term convenience traded for long-term decay.

In the end, we believe choosing powered sensors is making a long-term bet on the health, scalability and reliability of your entire sensor network. Check out 6 ways to measure space—and how to choose what works for you to learn more about your people-counter options. 

Here's how battery-powered systems unravel over time—and why we believe no organization planning for the future should bank their spaces on them.

Batteries sacrifice data granularity

Batteries introduce an immediate technical constraint: a limited energy budget. Whether it’s a camera-based sensor like VergeSense or a thermal sensor like Butlr, each battery-powered device sips power slowly to preserve life. Every measurement it takes drains the battery, so sensors sample sparingly—every 5 or 10 minutes—to extend their life.

The cost? Low granularity, missed events and no ability to measure in real time.

Try to sample more frequently and you accelerate battery death. If you shift from 10-minute intervals to 5-minute ones, you double the energy usage and halve the battery life. Let alone real-time availability or occupancy, which requires measurements every second. 

Some vendors attempt a workaround using ultra-low-power passive infrared (PIR) sensors to “wake” the main sensor. But this strategy backfires: the more your spaces are used, the more often sensors wake up, draining batteries even faster.

The cruel irony? The more you need to measure your space, the faster your network dies.

Your network becomes unreliable 

Battery-powered sensors create a management nightmare at scale. The moment the first battery is deployed, your network begins to decay.

Active areas—like busy conference rooms or bustling common areas—trigger more frequent wake events and drain faster, while quiet corners linger longer. This uneven degradation fractures your network health, creating dead zones that quietly spread.

In deployments of 1,000+ devices (roughly 200K to 300K square feet), this becomes a staffing problem. You'll need a dedicated person just to chase dying sensors. And since low-power devices can’t check in frequently without draining themselves, you often won't even know when a device has failed. It could be asleep or it could be dead. Either way, your visibility is compromised.

The result: an unreliable network that demands constant triage.

Your insights aren’t very insightful 

Battery systems aren’t just slower—they’re fundamentally less accurate.

Managing a battery network forces you to make intentional compromises: sampling less often, accepting delays and risking the loss of valuable insights. Vendors might promise 5- or 10-year lifespans, but reality comes back to bite. In high-traffic areas, those projections can fall short, leading to inconsistent coverage and degraded data when you need precision most.

The simple truth is this: if you need real-time data—real-time counts, availability tracking, wayfinding—your sensor needs power. Always-on infrastructure needs energy to compute, connect and remain reliable.

Battery sensors are fine for “dumb” sensing—ambient measurements like temperature or humidity—where occasional data is enough. But if you’re installing a network to truly understand human behavior in your spaces, cutting the power cord cuts the value.

Don’t bet your future on a batteries

Real-time, always-on space intelligence isn’t optional anymore—it's the backbone of the modern workplace.

Battery-powered sensors are fundamentally built for a different, lower-stakes problem. If you’re serious about understanding how your spaces are used—and making smarter decisions based on that data—you need a network designed to endure.

Don't settle for a system that starts dying from the moment it’s installed.

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