Second Gen ST Motion False Alarms

Here’s a puzzler for you.

I’ve got a new motion detector in my kitchen. I keep getting false alarms, which is causing the lights to come on and go off as they’re controlled by Rule Machine. This is happening probably 12-15 times per night (it might be happening in the day too, but as the lights aren’t responding I’m not noticing those)

When I look through the logs, the vast majority of false alarms occur at a time that ends in a 1.
Last night, for example, I was in bed from midnight until 9am (hey, it’s Sunday). When I’ve looked through the IDE this morning, the logging for that motion sensor says it came on at:
12.01AM
1:01AM
1:11AM
1:31AM
2:01AM
2:11AM
2:51AM
3:01AM
3:21AM
3:41AM
4:01AM
4:31AM
4:50.989AM (so close to being 4:51 it’s unreal)
5:21AM
5:31AM
5:41AM
5:51AM
6:01AM
6:11AM
6:19AM (different!)

and it carries on. I do have a cat, but he rarely sets the motion detector off (there’s also one on the landing which isn’t doing this) and he’s so lazy I don’t believe he’s doing 10 minute laps of the house all night.

So why do the vast majority of my motion false alarms consist of x:x1 times?

Additional: As I wrote that, I went to put the motion sensor in a cupboard with the door closed. The cupboard has nobody living in there.

At 4:41PM, the lights came on.

try resetting the thing…
Pull the battery, hold in the pairing button while re-inserting the battery, release when the led blinks.
See if it works any better after that.

1 Like

Will I need to re-add it as a new device or will it just carry on being Kitchen Motion and slot right back into all my SmartApps?

With ZigBee devices the only thing you need to do is reset the device, it will re-attach it self to the existing device in ST.
Forgot, after resetting it you need to search for new device, just like you would when initially pairing it.
However when the motion sensor stops blinking (meaning it’s paired again), just cancel out of device discovery…

1 Like

Hmmm, maybe I reset it wrong then - I removed the battery, held the button, put the battery in, the light came on orange and then went out so I let go. Didn’t go into device discovery because as I came back into the living room, someone else walked into the kitchen - and the lights came on.

Fingers crossed it seems to be working, it was 3 hours ago and I’ve not noticed the lights coming on apart from when they should.

Thanks Mike.

2 Likes