Troubleshooting false fire alarm

We had our first false fire alarm tonight.

It was with a Honeywell 5808W3 in an upstairs bedroom. No smoke, no fire, no excessive heat, and no indication of why it gave the false alarm. The 5808W3 is approximately 4 to 5 years old and is nowhere near a combustion source. It had never been a problem until tonight and it had not been touched at any point prior to the alarm.

Thankfully I was home at the time of the alarm and spoke with the monitoring service before they dispatched the fire department.

I have two questions:

  1. Is there anything specific I should be looking for when troubleshooting the 5808W3? I may just replace it with a new one to be safe but am fairly comfortable troubleshooting if anyone has a suggestion.

  2. I repeatedly entered the disarm code at my GC3 main panel as the alarm was sounding but it never did turn off the sirens at the detector or at the panel. I was under the impression that entering my disarm code at the panel would silence and clear the fire alarm/siren? I eventually had to pull the GC3 off the wall and remove the power source to disable the siren. Obviously not a great solution.

Looking at the history, it appears that the 5808W3 sent repeated alarm signals to the panel over the course of a few seconds. This doesn’t appear to be normal false activation, but more of an error with the unit.

Have the batteries ever been changed in that device?

Was anyone in the room with the device at the time? Might it have been interacted with/impacted by something?

I repeatedly entered the disarm code at my GC3 main panel as the alarm was sounding but it never did turn off the sirens at the detector or at the panel. I was under the impression that entering my disarm code at the panel would silence and clear the fire alarm/siren? I eventually had to pull the GC3 off the wall and remove the power source to disable the siren. Obviously not a great solution.

I would typically advise replacement of the smoke detector if there was no interaction based on what I see in history. However, it is possible that the GC3 itself is what froze and caused the repeated signals.

Did the GC3 indicate the wrong code was being entered? Or did it just not respond to input at all as though buttons weren’t being pressed? Was the screen completely frozen?

Thanks Jason.

The battery may in fact be the original one that came with the smoke detector. It is the Panasonic Lithium 3v that comes with the 5808W3 when it is new and I don’t recall ever replacing it. The battery has a date of 11/2025 on it and, with a ten year shelf life, that would tend to indicate a manufacture date of 11/2015. I tested the battery on a multimeter and got 3.080 volts. I thought that the 5808W3’s were supposed to send a low battery alert to the panel and I have never received that type of alert. I have some new CR123A’s on order and will give that a try before I purchase a new smoke detector.

The keypad on my panel did respond when I entered my disarm code and it was definitely the correct code. It just wouldn’t shut off the siren. After putting some more thought into it I wonder if the fact that I have two extra smart areas programmed into the GC3 makes a difference? I was using the disarm code for the main panel but did I also need to enter the disarm codes for the two extra smart areas?

In answer to your question, the room was unoccupied at the time of the alarm.

Some additional information:

I just checked the programming at the panel.

The smoke detector in question is assigned to S1 in the Smart Area Assignment on the panel.

Interestingly my panel just started giving me a Loss of Smoke Supervision Alert. This is because I pulled the battery from the problem detector. The interesting part to me is that the Loss of Smoke Supervision Alert was received at each of the three smart areas. When I cleared the alert from S1 it was still there at S2 and S3 and remained there until I acknowledged the alert in those smart areas as well.

So this makes me wonder even more… will I need to enter the disarm codes for each of my smart areas if the smoke detector alerts?

If so, is there a way to resolve this?

When I cleared the alert from S1 it was still there at S2 and S3 and remained there until I acknowledged the alert in those smart areas as well.

Ok, that is strange, and shouldn’t be the case unless that sensor was learned into multiple partitions somehow.

If you had to disarm 3 times, that would make sense, and it would partially explain why I see so many reports in history.

However, that device is set to use partition 1. It shouldn’t report on any other partition (“smart area”).

Would you mind testing another alarm from that device? The test button on the detector, when held for a couple cadences of the temporal pattern, should send a signal to the panel.

Does it send 3? Do you have to disarm 3 times again?

Ok, I ran the test.

I did have to use all three codes (each one is different) for each smart area/partition in order to silence the siren on the panel.

That is definitely not what I was trying to do when programming the partitions/smart areas.

The panel says the smoke detector is only assigned to partition/smart area 1.

I can’t make sense of the emails I got regarding the test alarm. I got four all at the same time. Three were related to the fire alarm and one was related to a flood/extreme temperature alarm. I assume the flood/extreme temperature alarm was for the different loop I programmed when I first programmed the detector. Not sure why I would get three emails for the fire alarm unless each partition/smart area is resulting in an alarm?

Yeah that other alarm notification is because when you press the test button, all loops will signal to the panel.

It is very interesting and weird that one loop reports 3 times and the other doesn’t.

I can clearly see 3 reports for the fire alarm.

I am talking to 2GIG about this now, as it is clearly not supposed to happen. This is pretty certainly a firmware bug in the panel.

Could you try deleting one of those smoke detector zones, save and exit, then go back into programming and add the smoke detector again.

Afterward, try setting off that zone you just re-added. Any change?

I deleted the zone(s), saved, and then added them back into the panel. Zone 15 for this detector is the Fire Zone and Zone 16 is the freeze zone. I deleted both zones and then added them back with the same programming. Both were only listed as being part of Smart Area/Partition 1.

Ran another test of the smoke detector by pushing the test button on the detector and got similar results. Three fire alarms and one Flood/Extreme Temperature alarm.

Alright, can you try updating to the newest firmware version 3.2.5 and see if you have the same result then?

I updated the panel firmware to 3.2.5 and a new test was completed with the same results. Three fire alarms. One flood/extreme temperature alarm.

I just received an unrelated message indicating the panel is ready to update firmware from update package provided by backend service provider. Am in the process of doing that update as well.

Out of curiosity I also tested a different smoke detector and got the same results.

Thank you for the follow up. We are doing some testing today to see if we can reproduce this issue and identify when it started if we can.

I’ll report here after testing with any troubleshooting steps or info!

Thanks Jason!

In a few hours I am also going to experiment by setting off my door and window sensors to see if they have a similar issue.

So it looks like we were pretty easily able to recreate this issue.

This is very odd, and clearly a bug.

We confirmed on the first firmware to support smart areas, 3.2.0. Looks like it likely affects all versions since.

FYI it looks like it affects CO detectors too.

I’ve sent a description and a video of this happening to 2GIG’s product team. I’ll follow up here with any reply, and we will let you know if there are any work-around we find.

Thanks Jason!

I appreciate you looking into this and I’m happy to hear it probably wasn’t a panel programming issue on my part.

I was definitely confused when the first false fire alarm came through and I wasn’t able to get the siren shut off at the panel. It was my first fire alarm and I thought maybe I had misunderstood the process. While I’m waiting on a fix from 2GIG I will just remember to disarm all smart areas at the panel in the event of another alarm.