Two possibly related issues with some door sensors. I have three; one is working fine (possibly coincidentally the one closest to the panel). One, the furthest away, started abruptly reporting the door open all the time a few days ago, even when it was closed; today, both it and another, in between the other two, went offline. All three are very new so there should be little chance that it’s a battery issue.
For the middle door, while fiddling with the two parts it came back online for some reason. However, now it has the following strange and undesirable property: it does not detect when the door is open … as long as it’s mounted on the door. If I take either of the two parts off the door, and move them away (even along the path the door itself travels), the door is reported open. But as soon as I affix them both and then open the door—nothing. (In fact, trying to duplicate this with the other one: they’re both like this. Moving either part off of the door and it reports the door open; moving with them on the door, nothing.) These both used to work fine!
The back sensor was reporting open continuously again. If I delete and remove it, it senses the door as closed. When I open the door, it is detected as having opened. When I close the door, it is detected as still open, even though it’s in the position from which it moved when it was detected as going from closed to open. Again, a few days ago this all worked fine.
Ok, having experimented a bit with the furthest-away sensor (this is about 35 feet away, btw), I have determined that it just no longer is detectable at that monumental distance. Fortunately I am open to receiving a free replacement.
So that we’re on the same page, can you list which sensor is closest, middle, and furthest away? Also, could you post a pic of each sensor having problems while mounted on the door in the closed position?
Sure. The nearest is the front door. The middle is the basement door. The furthest is the back door. I seem to have resolved the issue (for now) with the basement door by moving the sensors to the middle of the door, above the handle, which is ugly but whatever: the door is badly bowed, and the middle is where the door and frame are most closely aligned—but again, it seemed to be working fine initially and the front door also has a bit of a front-back gap between the components:
And if the problem had been that the pieces were mounted too far apart, then I would have expected the issue to have manifested as the door always registering as open, rather than never registering as open.
Now, you might observe that it is not mounted on a door or window at all. That’s because after it stopped seeming to work and I started wondering about its success reaching the panel, I took it off, and started walking toward the panel with the components together, moving them apart at each step. It started registering as open (and then again as closed) when I was, I would guess, about 20 feet away. It kept doing that as I got closer (duh) and then stopped, when I was walking away doing the same thing, at about the point it had started when I was walking toward it. It currently registers as closed even though the sensor components are pretty far apart. I haven’t replaced it on the door because doing so seems pretty pointless, and because having removed it I no longer have the cute little 3M tape guys that fit so nicely.
If the top picture is the basement door, from to picture it looks like they’re still too far apart to me. It’s tough when the door molding is recessed like that. But I think you might still run into trouble with it like that.
When I deal with those door frames, I usually put the sensor (the larger piece) on the door and the magnet (the smaller piece) on the frame. That lets me fit the magnet closer and the sensor can be right at the edge of the door.
So you’re saying the sensor doesn’t work properly when you’re only 20 feet away from the panel? If so, that sounds like a bad sensor and we would need to replace it.
To confirm, the sensor that needs to be replaced is currently programmed into the panel as Zone 6 Back Door with the sensor ID AE3EA5, is that correct?
