Motion Decector False Alarms

J

Jrock

Member
I have had my Omni IIe installed for almost a year now with no issues. Friday night I was asleep and the alarm went off around 4:15am. When I got to the panel it said "Basement Motion Tripped". After thoroughly checking the basement everything was fine. Last night (Sunday) the same thing happened at around 1:15am. Again, everything was fine.

I have DSC BV-300 motion sensors installed throughout the house. I have some extras laying around so I was thinking about swapping out the one in the basement, but any idea what could be causing the false alarms?

Thanks,
-Jeff
 
Jrock said:
I have had my Omni IIe installed for almost a year now with no issues. Friday night I was asleep and the alarm went off around 4:15am. When I got to the panel it said "Basement Motion Tripped". After thoroughly checking the basement everything was fine. Last night (Sunday) the same thing happened at around 1:15am. Again, everything was fine.

I have DSC BV-300 motion sensors installed throughout the house. I have some extras laying around so I was thinking about swapping out the one in the basement, but any idea what could be causing the false alarms?

Thanks,
-Jeff
Click to expand...
I haven't had it happen myself (yet) but have heard of a spider inside (or outside for that matter) the motion detector walking in front of the lens.
 
a stream of hot air, rodents, insects crawling or flying right in front of the lens.
open the motion and check for insects
 
Jrock said:
I have had my Omni IIe installed for almost a year now with no issues. Friday night I was asleep and the alarm went off around 4:15am. When I got to the panel it said "Basement Motion Tripped". After thoroughly checking the basement everything was fine. Last night (Sunday) the same thing happened at around 1:15am. Again, everything was fine.

I have DSC BV-300 motion sensors installed throughout the house. I have some extras laying around so I was thinking about swapping out the one in the basement, but any idea what could be causing the false alarms?

Thanks,
-Jeff
Click to expand...
Open the sensor housing and check inside thouroughly. Seal any openings, like where the wire enters, with caulk. I have personally witnessed critters of various kinds making a nice warm home in there. Start with that, there could be other things.
 
If you switch that malfunctioning sensor with one that isn't that will at least tell you if you have a bad sensor or not.
 
Thanks for your replies.

I opened the sensor and didn't find anything unusual. I assume the false alarms were caused by a spider or some other insect. It's just strange that there have been no issues up until now. I am going to swap out the sensor today and see if that resolves the problem. I have an extra day/night camera I may also temporarily setup to see if there are any rodents in the basement causing the false alarms.

Thanks again!
 
Jrock said:
Thanks for your replies.

I opened the sensor and didn't find anything unusual. I assume the false alarms were caused by a spider or some other insect. It's just strange that there have been no issues up until now. I am going to swap out the sensor today and see if that resolves the problem. I have an extra day/night camera I may also temporarily setup to see if there are any rodents in the basement causing the false alarms.

Thanks again!
Click to expand...
You may want to try one of those "dual tech" motion sensors. They have microwave in addition to PIR and are much less prone to false alarms.
 
I get get spiders and false alarms as well. Thats how it happens, it works fine until the day where it doesn't. What I do is use the feature on alarms now where two zones have to be tripped within a certain timeframe for an alarm. I set my motion sensors that way, and set the window sensors so they don't require this. If you have multiple motion sensors per floor, there is no way the alarm won't trip multiple motion sensors as the burglar runs around your house, and this method makes motion sensor false alarms, even from pets (or spiders), a thing of the past. Its called "Cross Zoning" and I set the time to about 3 minutes. If one motion sensor goes off and another doesn't for three minutes, you either have a spider or a VERY good burglar.
 
Dual tech is great, just make sure to adjust the microwave portion as it can "see" through walls.

I usually only use cross zoning when I have two detectors in the same area. I am not in large houses often, so most of my residential are 1 or 2 motions only. I only run into this on false alarm prone areas. I was on a false alarm call today for some rooftop cross zoned motions. Good application there, until the client decides to bypass one and a racoon runs by.
 
Dan (electron) said:
Or maybe it's spiderpig!

Is the cross zoning a HAI feature, or are you using rules to take care of this?
Click to expand...

The Cross Zoning feature was added to HAI Firmware as of ver. 2.13 It was added as a group of features called CP-01 Control Panel Standard, which was designed to reduce the growing problem of false alarms. I think this occurred around 2007.

It is pretty simple to use. Just tag which zones you want it to be enabled for, and set a Cross Zone time. When a Cross Zone enabled zone is tripped, the alarm doesn't go off but rather waits for the Cross Zone timeout. If any other zone is tripped within that timeout, the alarm goes off. I use it for all motion detectors but not window and door sensors. You obviously need to enable it on more than one sensor to be effective, and the more the better.
 
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