Hi
Has anyone ever had the problem of the room sensors randomly going off?
A couple of times I’ve set the alarm to Arm (Away) and randomly a motion will sense some motion. When this first happened I rushed home thinking the worse and literally nothing has moved.
Could it be a fly or something? Are the sensors that sensitive?
This happens with some frequency for me, with no apparent cause. I don’t use any alarm stuff because it’s not reliable enough. And, it’s not a fly, it’s garbage from ST.
In general, flies and spiders can trigger single-tech/PIR-only motion sensors (this happened twice on a dedicated burglar system in the last 5-6 years, not ST, with single-tech PIR sensors). It’s supposed to be rare. Any single alarm has to be verified - it’s not worth driving home in a panic. If you got 2-3 alarms in close-time then I would be more “alarmed” but unfortunately for ST,
specifically ST motion sensors do seem to suffer false-motion-reports that seem to be only caused by cloud or infrastructure, unrelated to actual motion or PIR hardware failure. I’ve had 2-3 episodes of multiple false-motion reports on separate ST motion sensors in close-time, that were unoccupied-house with no pets and some active and passive pest controls. The spaces are monitored by cameras and no-motion was confirmed. The fact that the false-motions occurred in close-time to each other, to me strongly suggests that the false-motions originated from the cloud or infrastructure. I guessed they may be extremely lagged/late motion-reports. It hasn’t happened to me in the last 4-5 months - the first time was about 12-16 months ago.
so I don’t use ST for burglar alarm horns - just notifications to followup. I do rely a bit more on a dedicated burglar alarm system. Even dedicated burglar alarms can false, most alarms are false, so any alarm should be verified by another channel (like multiple alarm reports, camera, microphone and/or a good neighbor).
This happened with motion sensors I had on the patio and porch (too touchy it seems). My indoor motion sensors do not seem to have issue. Support recommending trying Ecolink motions sensors - I installed those and have much more accuracy, but NOT perfect. I requested a sensitivity setting on the MOTION sensor. “wouldn’t that be nice” ! Good luck.
This happens to a lot of motion sensors. There is a remedy for this. One of the community developers @Mike_Maxwell has created a multi motion sensor ST app which keeps track of multiple sensors and does not trigger an alert unless all sensors are triggered in a certain time window. I use it and recommend it.
I have slowly been swapping out my ST (1st gen) motion detectors due to too many false positives. I initially bought an Ecolink detector because they were cheaper, but it died on me (permanently reading motion, all the time) after about a month. So I recommend against Ecolink.
I’ve switched to Fibaro now, and I get no false positives. The Fibaro detectors are expensive, relatively speaking, but I just can’t be bothered with all the false positives.
By the way, if anyone wants a bunch of 1st-Gen pluggable ST motion detectors, message me. (But don’t say I didn’t warn you.)
Those 1st gen motion sensors are good to detect when there is a power failure.
Thanks for your reply, the theory behind it is great!
Now I’m either being really stupid or i can’t seem to find any way of installing the program. Is it through the app or a computer?
I currently have an iPhone 6 running the smart hub program and i have a mac as well. although i do have access to a PC if thats what’s needed
1st step is to add the 2 apps and a device handler to your IDE.
There is a Zone manager, a child zone app and a virtual device handler.
You can find all of the code in the link I provided.
After you save the code and publish it to yourself, you will niid to install it from the ST app Marketplace.
Install the app from there.
When all is done, you will see Motion Zones with what ever name you give them.
I only use the Smartthings brand motion to turn lights on.
Eco links are used for my intrusion monitoring. They have somewhat adjustable sensitivity and can avoid pets for example.
For intrusion, I like to monitor for multiple active motion detectors before any notification or action is taken.