Our power budget gives us between one and two years of battery life. Your phone will give you a heads up when a change is required. It's a bit of a hassle, but we feel it's worth it to have the freedom from cables.
Hmmm, I'm not sure what battery we're talking about, but that sounds fairly impressive, if it's realistic. I agree with the other posters though, a simple plug for 12v power would probably not break the design / budget. Almost everyone I know that's tinkering with home automation is going all-out, and I know I'd prefer the option for permanent fixtures.
Also scalability. The designers would probably enjoy people with large houses buying 12 of these things for every room and level of the house, and if marketing says a battery will last 12 months you Know that means it'll really only last 6 months, maybe only 3 months, and six month battery life vs 12 gadgets means once the battery use randomizes I'll be tracking down and replacing a battery every two weeks which is too much peasant work. I don't mind capital improvement like running wires when I'm not busy but I do mind unscheduled peasant work when I'm busy.
If you "can't" put in a power jack (UL? EMI/EMC concerns? Cost?) then at least please manipulate the case design such that when I solder wires directly to the battery jacks then the case can still be closed, I don't have to drill extra cabling holes, etc. The easiest battery to convert is 9volts for obvious connector reasons, but they likely don't have the energy density you need.
I have 12 volts available thru the house so if you could uprate the on board caps and power circuitry to tolerate 12V in that would be nice. Likely your silicon will be fine, and you can't have a thermal issue if you think you're running for a year off any battery smaller than a forklift battery, so its just please solder in 25V caps on the input of the voltage reg instead of 6V caps. Then I can direct wire to the 12V rather than running thru a nice inefficient converter.
(edited to add, I have a marketing idea for the "runs off 12 volts" plan... RVs and boats have 12V and make the software smart enough to understand "animal noises" and send an alert.)
Then again if this is going to be one of those "$300" gadgets, I'm not buying one anyway. And I didn't see a price.
