Good afternoon all. This is now the second time this has happened in the last week. We have Honeywell motion sensors and over the last week while the panel has been armed in away mode, a random sensor has appeared to trip causing the alarm company to call. When looking at the dashboard on my phone for alarm.com the sensor appears to have been tripped momentarily but then I refresh the page and the sensor is no longer active. Can someone explain if this is because the honeywell sensors aren’t working correctly or do they need batteries or is it something else? I think the sheriff’s office is prolly getting tired coming to our house again for nothing. I think the sensors are the honeywell 5890 pi but can’t be completely sure.
Set it as zone type 23 until you can troubleshoot it so as to prevent further falsing
Stand underneath it, and look at the range its lense sees.
Do you see:
A window
Shifting sunlight (on floor/walls)
Is it near a vent?
If yes, then reinstall it . Is it mounted at the correct height?
Do you have cats that move quickly? Large dog?
Test the PI
(place system on test with CS), arm system away while you wait in another room. Watch your pets in the room. Do they trigger it?
If so, options are to decrease sensitivity (which will also render the PIR less effective), keep it as zone type 23 no response (will not Initiate alarm event), or replace it with an Image Sensor (which will allow you to capture motion events and can be configured as zone type 23)
And doing that is on the 2gig panel?
And doing that is on the 2gig panel?
Yes
Ok. Thanks. I’m thinking that the sensors are just outdated. We bought the system and components a year ago and I was under the assumption the batteries were brand new and good for a few years. Maybe the sensors we chose weren’t the correct ones?
A wireless motion detector false alarming is most likely due to environmental reasons. Has it been the same sensor both times?
Put system on walk test, or place on test with CS and actually test it
Jason, it was not the same sensor both times. The first one was our family room. I assumed it was because of the dog. Today it was our upstairs hallway and the himself was all closed up and the dog wasn’t there.
The house was all closed up
Given the season, check the sensor’s line of sight for nearby vents. If your heat has been kicking on recently and a vent is nearby, it can cause false alarms.
There’s vents in every room how do you avoid those and still get a good line of sight for the walkable areas?
Is it a corner mount? Mount it adjacent to the vent
The family room was a corner mount. The upstairs covered the hallway. TheYves been fine as far as picking up thingsome all year. They didn’t act like this last winter either. I don’t think it’s the locations or the vents.
Do you notice any cob webs on or around the back of the sensor? An insect or spider crawling across the face of the detector will greatly exaggerate its size and cause false alarms.
No, we clean regularly. Like I said, the sensor appears to trip but then after refreshing the alarm.com app the sensor is inactive. I’ll try to screen shot the app.
If no pet activated them, if they did not false last year and are installed in same location, if they are clean… think I would assume malfunction, but two malfunctioning out of the blue is highly unlikely.
There is something else.
Any HVAC work? Perhaps blower speed increased? Doors opened that may have spilled Sunlight into area seen by PIR? Curtains open, blinds? Cats?
Sunlight shifting across floor, or coming out from behind clouds is enough to trigger it, a fast moving small animal will defeat the PI, an HVAC unit blowing out heat from registers will do it.
So maybe the sensors need to be replaced? A screen shot was too large to attach. The sensor activated at 3:12, alarm sounded at 3:13, sensor idle at 3:14.
I use postimg.org pics.
Take your phone or tablet go right under motion take a pic at a 45° angle or so, lets see what the motion sees
Here is an example:
Thanks. Not home right now due to the holiday but when we get home I’ll be able to take pictures.
The upstairs unit gets zero sunlight. We don’t have anything other than a dog and she’s not in the house today. No recent hvac work. The house was all closed up today when it went off. No blinds open. How high up should these things be mounted? They’re currently mounted about 8 and a half feet up.