I was in the driveway and used the mobile iPhone app to arm the system into ‘away’ mode.
About 30 seconds later, the central station calls me asking if everything is ok. I said yes, disarmed the alarm and went on my way. I had just made it out of the driveway & didn’t have time to go back in the house.
After getting home several hours later, I see it was the ‘kitchen image sensor’ that went off. I know there was no one / nothing in the house at the time.
I received notifications about new images being uploaded by the IS via email that were never uploaded or even taken. The alarm triggered one of my cameras (as it should) and I have 5 clips.
The clips should all be over 30 seconds long and total 5 minutes according to my settings.
Even if the alarm was shut off before the 5 minutes, I’d expect the later recordings to be short. But the first two are only 11s and 18s.
I don’t know what made the IS go goofy and will probably never find out. I tried unsuccessfully to recreate the alarm. Aren’t the image upload alert and video recording lengths a bit odd?
I’m thinking a magic beam of light shone in and bounced off of my shiny floor (cause I clean it all the time) at the perfect angle to flash the sensor, thus making it go crazy.
don’t know what made the IS go goofy and will probably never find out. I tried unsuccessfully to recreate the alarm
Weird, mine did the same thing yesterday. Within less than a minute of arming away. IS alarmed, but when I looked at the images, there was nothing. No indication of what triggered it (usually its the cat).
As for the video clips, I did look at them (they are set to record during alarm events regardless of VMD, and some of the durations were very short like yours.)
My IS is facing inward towards the hallway. It’s mounted correctly and has been working fine since I put it up about a month ago.
There’s no heater vent near or forward of the sensor.
I have no photos even though I received an alert saying there were new photos so I can’t say if a spider or something may have crawled over it or not.
A weird one, that’s for sure.
I was thinking about something. At the time I was driving a big uhaul box truck to bring home a new bedroom set. I parked at the very front of the driveway leaving the kitchen window open to sunlight. I set the alarm and started backing out of the driveway passing the window and probably blocking all sunlight. Once past the window the sunlight would have been suddenly let in all at once.
The sensor is mounted above and in front of the kitchen window - I forgot what they call those drops. Do you think the sudden sunlight could have done it?
Funny… While typing this I got an alert saying Gobridge failed. I can’t get the status of it.
@riven, I did what you said but there are not images from that time.
@Jason, I did enable that background capture setting after I installed it since it did pop-up, but after deciding it’s not useful in my situation I turned it off.
I did arm away and the alarm didn’t trigger again. I just did a peek in at next movement and it correctly uploaded two pics…one regular and one zoomed.
I was referring to the “Test Mode” pop up, asking if any automatic uploads are accepted (basically stating the IS is ready for use)
Can you set off an alarm and walk in front of the detector to test? You can trip any sensor then walk in front of the IS a couple times. We will see if uploads occur.
I will perform a walk test first. The site should have a chat account or something so people can do this in real time instead of posting and waiting. Especially when the integrity of an entire system is at question.
Are you referring to walk test as in the local sensor test? You’ll specifically want to test in an alarm scenario, since the rules are different. Remember to place the account on test mode with the central station to avoid calls while testing.
The way the rule is set up, the first five activations during an alarm event will be uploaded. You can trip a window/door sensor, then walk in front of the IS.
I did the walking test, results are above in pictures. The IS and Bridge are showing no signal.
I did the alarm test, even able to set off glass break sensor with stereo and sound file.
I did receive IS uploaded pics (2 sets), one set after setting the alarm off by opening the front door. One more set of pics that show nothing. I also received 3 video clips and a call from CS.
I walked in front of the IS a few times, but I think it has to have a 30 second wait time in between uploads, right?
Both of your 900mhz devices have no signal/very poor signal to panel (0/5 bars). That is probably a large cause of your issue. You may have a damaged antenna on the XCVR2.
This, coupled with the weak cellular signal (5/31) can result in packet drops, panel alarm.com and central station signaling communication failures, upload failures, remote arm/disarm command failures, etc. In a nutshell, when you have a real alarm event or emergency event, your panel may fail.
With signal strength that poor, you should be having malfunctions (loss of supervision).
I suggest you resolve the cellular/broadband, and PIR signal issues asap. (e.g., replace the XCVR2 and see if that resolves IS and bridge issues, and install proper in the wall antenna on cell/ attic antenna, or replace cell module which one that provides better coverage)
...I was seeing 5-8 [cellular signal strength] on the account
Yeah, probably was defective front the get go. Thankfully I purchased on Amazon and just processed my replacement. Should be here in a couple days and I just ship the other one back.
Most people damage it by connecting the update cable to the 4pin without moving the XCVR2 out of the way (the antenna gets pressure against it which may damage it’s connection to board I suspect). Whenever I update my panel, I lift the XCVR2 out of way so the cable pin connector clears it without touching.
I’ll keep that in mind. I updated to latest firmware a while back. Just got the XCVR2 like 20 days ago. Oh yeah, I gotta find that 4-pin extender. I plan on getting a TS-1 soon.
