So this is weird, and probably a stupid question. But I came home from work just now and the panel wasn’t “announcing” which sensors were opened. The remote panel still was just fine. So I went into the settings and made sure the voice alerts were still active, and they were, but then I checked the volume on the voice alerts and it was set all the way down to mute.
I did not do this. Do you have any idea how or why the voice volume would have been set to a much lower setting than it was when I left this morning? Is this the kind of thing that just occasionally happens and can be categorized as electronic malfunction?
Also, I’m quite sure it is entirely irrelevant, but JUST IN CASE it isn’t and can give you guys some idea that there may be an actual problem: both of my thermostats were in protect mode when I got home too.
I have a schedule set to cool the house down (or warm it) to a certain temp when I get home. The downstairs was cooling and comfortable, but the upstairs was in protect mode and it was quite warm. I waited for the allotted 5 minutes, and then it immediately went back into another protect mode. I came back downstairs and looked at the downstairs thermostat and it had gone into protect mode at that point (right after I changed the temp setting downstairs through the website.)
Any ideas on this issue? I did look and saw this thread. It doesn’t go into protect mode incredibly often, but it has happened, and that’s how I found that thread. Do you think I should go ahead and have an isolation relay installed on both thermostats to avoid seeing this message in the future? Is there any consequence to having those installed? The HVAC systems are both brand new, so I hope it’s not indicative of those systems malfunctioning.
This should probably be a separate thread, since I doubt they are related, but I guess there’s a possibility that both happening at the same time could indicate something bigger needs to be looked at, so I’m combing the issues into two comments on one thread I suppose.
This is not a normal issue, no. Very odd. And no one else was home or might have adjusted the volume? Did you apply any updates yesterday?
Did you have any storms or power fluctuations around that time?
Do you think I should go ahead and have an isolation relay installed on both thermostats to avoid seeing this message in the future? Is there any consequence to having those installed? The HVAC systems are both brand new, so I hope it’s not indicative of those systems malfunctioning.
Are you still seeing this message intermittently? If you continue to see a System Protect message come up, yes, an isolation relay should be installed.
From Alarm.com:
System Protect is intended to cover rare cases of power issues with the HVAC system. If System Protect is being seen frequently or appears on every call for heat or cool, it points to poor HVAC performance or pre-existing incompatibility. If System Protect occurs while the thermostat is in cooling mode, and the R wire is in Rh, this may be resolved by moving the R wire to Rc and reconfiguring the thermostat.
Frequent or extreme System Protect delays can be resolved by installing an isolation relay.
My girlfriend was home for about an hour after I left, but said she didn’t do anything other than arm it like she always does.
There were no updates applied yesterday.
If the volume (or other settings) continue to behave as if they’re possessed, we can look into it further. But the voice prompts were active all evening after I adjusted them and still this morning. So we will just wait and see if it continues to be wonky. (Unless you have a better suggestion to go ahead and try)
I didn’t see it again yesterday. But it has come up before, numerous times. But not every time, or every day. At least not that I’ve seen. The protect mode doesn’t show up in my activity feed so unless I actually walk by the thermostat and notice it, I guess I wouldn’t know if it was happening every day.
I had read the ADC quote you gave before, and it doesn’t appear for every call so I wasn’t sure if it qualified as “frequent” in their opinion to warrant further action on my part.
Usually when I see the protect mode message, I wait out the five minute period and it works just fine after that. I mentioned it yesterday because it was the first time that it went through an entire five minute protect mode cycle and then immediately went into another one. That worried me. And I was already wondering about the volume reset to zero so figured I would mention it.
I had read the ADC quote you gave before, and it doesn’t appear for every call so I wasn’t sure if it qualified as “frequent” in their opinion to warrant further action on my part.
If you would describe the amount of times as numerous, I would say it would be a good idea to further troubleshoot. Is it only on cool? If so you can try the suggestion from ADC: If System Protect occurs while the thermostat is in cooling mode, and the R wire is in Rh, this may be resolved by moving the R wire to Rc and reconfiguring the thermostat.
If that doesn’t work, I would have an isolation relay installed. This will make it so the thermostat is just switching a relay which in turn delivers the power to the HVAC system components.