We had a middle of the night alarm triggered by the smoke detector. After turning alarm off we went back to bed. Later, the alarm panel started endlessly chiming with a notification that the smoke detector was offline. I replaced detector batteries and did test and now all appears ok. Why was there never a low battery condition communicated by the panel as is experienced with other sensors and why would this condition cause a false trigger of the alarm? Expectation would be low battery alerts and eventual offline alerts but false alarm is unacceptable.
It looks like this is related to a 319.5Mhz smoke detector is that correct? Is that a QS5110-840 IQ Smoke?
Offline malfunctions are thrown in a handful of different circumstances for QS5110-840 IQ Smoke Detectors.
Why was there never a low battery condition communicated by the panel as is experienced
It is possible and not uncommon for signal strength to be impacted by lower battery levels before a low battery trouble would be identified, particularly if range or interference may also be at play. However, while borderline low battery may be related to true offline events related to weakened signaling, there are other causes that aren’t signaling related.
why would this condition cause a false trigger of the alarm?
Lower battery levels would not generally cause an alarm, but other situations where offline may occur could cause an alarm.
The QS5110-840 sensor will report offline malfunctions when a handful of fault conditions are present, which can only be identified via the LED flash pattern.
- Yellow flash every 12 seconds (with 1 chirp every 48 seconds): This means Low battery.
- Yellow flash every 8 seconds (with 1 chirp every 48 seconds): Dirty/contaminated sensor chamber.
- Yellow flash every 4 seconds (with 1 chirp every 48 seconds): General detector trouble or fault. If this happens I would recommend replacement.
Did you hear any beeps from the sensor when the sensor was reporting offline?
Hi Jason, I appreciate your response. Not home now so can’t ultimately deal with identifying conditions. I had alarm.com put that zone in test mode temporarily so we could leave home and arm the system without fear of another false trigger.
It is the detector you specified. Thought things were resolved after inserting new batteries and putting detector back in place but a couple hours later started to get repeated panel alerts for tampering with this detector.
That’s where things are left as we had to leave home.
There had not been any prior light flashes or chirps from the detector. That would have easily alerted us to check things but as already mentioned, we had no prior alerts of any kind from the detector or the panel.
Thanks in advance for any additional thoughts and what my approach might be when back at home.
Michael
Thanks for the update. After looking at your account, it looks like many tampers have been sent to alarm.com starting when the battery was replaced. Since the tamper alerts are continuing, please try the following when you’re home:
- Remove the smoke detector head from its mounting base.
- Remove the batteries and wait 2 minutes. This lets the detector fully discharge and reset.
- Reinsert the batteries.
- Firmly twist the detector back onto its base until it locks into place. If it isn’t fully seated on the base, the panel will report it as tampered.
After that, please let us know if you’re still seeing tamper alerts or any other issues with the detector.
Thank you
Thanks Vidail. Just followed those instructions including having used compressed air to blow out as much as I could. Have reinstalled batteries and hopefully reseated it correctly with alignment lines lined up. Have had ongoing experience in last several hours of all good condition eventually going to tamper alert. Staying hopeful.
I’m copy/pasting my latest reply since I don’t fully understand the multiple places I’ve had communications during last couple days….forum vs direct support? Just trying to get the fastest responses possible in this non-voice-call, non-live chat support system.
Well I have to assume I have a hardware problem…likely a bad detector. After a false sense of having resolved the issue, the panel was chiming throughout the night with tamper alerts. I cannot continue to be troubled by the system nor invest ongoing time to figure it out. Unless you have extreme confidence in one last effort, I’m assuming I need to replace this device.
A little online research suggests there’s a newer model (IQ Smoke Detector QS5130-840) having replaced my discontinued model. Do I need to contact sales as a possible replacement source?
Private messages and forum posts are all seen by the same technician team, but forum posts are visible to everyone, allowing other Surety users to chime in if they have experience or additional related questions/having the same issue/etc.
I replied earlier to your private message to us, yeah, if you are continuing to have repeated tamper alerts with no apparent cause, and the detector is firmly installed on its base, I would recommend replacing it. Given it is sending multiple trouble conditions simultaneously from what I can tell, that seems like a hardware fault on that particular sensor.
You can find that newer QS5130 here: