ST Multi Sensor randomly opening/triggering alarm

General Discussion
1

Newbie ST user here. Have v2 hub (firmware: 000.014.00013) working with an (1) ST outlet and (3) ST multi sensors on doors for open/close alerts. Setup has been working perfectly the past 2 weeks.

Yesterday I added an Aeon Siren (Gen5) without a problem. Set it up to go off when a door multi sensor opens as part of my Good Night routine. All tests worked flawlessly.

Went to bed at 11pm, fell asleep and at 11:45pm (EST) the alarm tripped because of 1 of the sensors being opened. The feed showed it opened at 11:45 and then closed at 11:45. Obviously I checked door and it had not been opened.
It did the same thing at 5:46am, luckily I was smart enough to make alarm inactive after the first false.

Any ideas on the cause? Would like to use this siren but my wife will kill me if I scare her like that again. Thanks for your help!

2

Couple of possibilities:

  1. Low batteries

  2. Minimal detection of the magnet in the sensor

  3. Bad connection/signal to hub and/or interference

  4. Check the mobile app and see what the battery level is on the sensor. If it looks low, try swapping with a different sensor, see if that makes a difference.

  5. Check how close the magnet end of the sensor is to the other side. See if by just nudging it a bit if it’ll “break” the connection and report as open. If just fiddling with it slightly makes it report as open in the mobile app you’ll need to try and re-position to get a more solid “closed” status.

  6. Finally, If this sensor is a ways away from the hub and/or there are a lot of big things like walls or furniture or appliances in between and/or your hub is right next to your wifi router, these could all be causing communication issues. IF this is the case you might find re-positioning your hub (even by just like two or three feet) might help.

3

I just had our front door’s ST multi purpose sensor reported open and triggering our alarm. The IDE Home Location events reported:

  • 2016-03-20 12:19:21.619 AM GMT reported contact was open
  • 2016-03-20 12:19:21.771 AM GMT reported contact was closed
  • 2016-03-20 12:19:22.691 AM GMT reported contact was open

Scared the hell out of me and I investigated. Front door was closed. Phew.

Per @chrisb post above, checked. All good. So I am confused.

What other ways are there to trigger an open status? I tried banging on the door and surprisingly, nothing happened as I thought the multi sensor was also a vibration sensor too. Can running a strong magnet over the device cause a break status?