I have had my ST system for a month without any issues. All of a sudden, one of my multi-purpose sensors on a door is causing false alarms in the middle of the night. I have had two false alarms in the past two nights. The battery is 100%. I don’t know what is the issue. I have not changed anything about the system.
By false alarms do you mean it says it’s open when it’s closed? Or are you getting vibrations? (Active)
My multipurpose sensors always say their “active” in other words they are sensing vibration a couple times a night even know there’s no reason for them to be doing that. I never had any problems with false readings as far as open and close.
I’ve actually had 2 issues in the past 24 hours where it said my door was open then closed within the same second. This set off my Aeon Siren in the middle of the night and while I was at work. Battery is 100% and contact magnet about a pencils thickness between that and the sensor.
Hi,
I’m having similar issues. I have two multi-purpose sensors, one on the back gate, one on the front door. Both were fine during the summer. The back gate is now regularly reporting activity during the day and night. We put this down to wind, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. Last night, the front door sensor has started incorrectly reporting activity. Both have 66% battery.
It is unnacceptable to have these false alarms trigger. If we were to hook up sirens, etc. this would be a disaster for our further participation with IoT/Smart Things - and not so good for the neighbours. Quite apart from that it is a serious knock in confidence for automating our home. I need that confidence for the family to engage and buy-in to the idea.
Why would these false alarms be happening? It would be helpful if I could turn down their sensitivity, but there is apparently no means to do that.
Any help would be appreciated. I notice a few threads mentioning this issue have not had a resolution.
Thanks
Nathan
Anyone have any luck resolving this? I’m having the same issue with one sensor. Started about 2 weeks ago. I tried to move the sensor magnet closer, it’s now practically touching but still getting false alarms.
I’ve contacted ST support asking if there has been a change in the firmware updates, that might be making these more sensitive suddenly. Apparently not. I’ve already had 2 “vibration alerts” this morning, even through it is a calm day, with nothing that should be affecting the doors in the slightest.
I too am slowly losing confidence in the whole smartthings eco-system. There are times when the away alarm does not disable when i arrive home, and other times it does not even pick up when a door is opened. And I wont even get started on the pretty crappy Smart Cam integration…
I think I’ll be investing my ‘smart’ money in a more reliable company at some stage soon.
I think this has been an issue for a long time (just search the forum for similar posts). I believe ST Support suggest resetting/re-adding (which isn’t an acceptable solution).
I have multiple false vibration alerts every day, without fail. I have learnt to live with it by building ‘checks’ into my pistons (only after repeated vibrations within a short period of time will my pistons fire to turn on lights/sound alarm, etc)
How are you managing to do this? I can’t see that functionality via the smarthings app? thanks
I do it using CoRE. I have virtual switches that turn on on first vibration and then my ‘rules’ (e.g., sound the alarm) are only triggered when this virtual switches are ON (i.e. 'The system is ‘armed’) AND there is further vibration. So it basically stops single vibrations activating anything
Should have replied to the thread … A few days after posting the sensor stopped reporting anything. Last batter update was ~70%. So I replaced the battery (bent the battery tab up, and then soldering if back on when it broke off, put in a new battery) and it’s been working fine since. Might be worth trying a new battery and/or a different brand. I know some of the ST devices are sensitive to the battery brand. I don’t think me bending the tab did anything other than cause me more work to repair the thing.
I have the same issue.
It has 89% battery and every day between 4 and 5pm it shows as open then closed in the same minute activating the alarm (sirens).
initially it happened in only 1 multipurpose sensor, now its two of them, the second one is giving a false alarm at 1am and 3am activating the armed stay alarm waking me and the neighbors up.
this is frustrating
Anyone have a fix for this? I have 2 mulit-sensors that I have on doors such as a patio door and the door going into my garage. The garage started sending false alarms about 2 months ago. I deleted the sensor and re-added it but I still get 5-10 false alarms a day. About a week ago the patio door started the same thing, now I have 2 sensors doing the same thing.
This room has 2 layers of drywall (not my doing) by I have trim around both doors and had to add a 1/2 strip of wood to match the wall so I cant use the magnet part of the sensor for the open/close. I use the motion for the alerts. They worked for 7 months without a false alarm and the battery is at 89% at both.
I also placed one of them on the counter to rule out some random vibration but Im still getting alerts.
What I have discovered with the battery percentage is don’t trust it. Both my motion sensors and multipurpose sensors needed new batteries even though they were reporting ~70% battery. Motion detection began giving false alarms. New batteries fixed the issues. In my case batteries are lasting about a year, so I am learning to recognize the false alarms as an indication of low battery.
Guess I didn’t think about that. I will try a new battery tonight and see if that fixes it.
I have the same issue but specific only 1 sensor out of my 7 sensors
It says my window open when it’s closed in the middle of the night.
3 nights consecutive, battery show 80%.
I removed and re-paired, but it’s not solved anything.
I changed a new battery, and it never shows false since then