Electronic Alarms and Home Security Devices - ADT Simon 3 False alarms

I've recently re-activated my ADT Simon 3 alarm system that was installed when I bought my house. I also had several additional sensors added, including two Keychain Touchpads (key fobs).

I've used the alarm system twice while away on vacation, the first time the alarm triggered with the back door and keyfob panic alarm both being tripped (I had both key fobs with me at the time -- away from the house) after only 1 day. The second time the alarm triggered with the front door and keyfob panic alarm both being triggered, I had both keyfobs with me this time as well, this time it was 4 days into the vacation. This is a problem, since the police were dispatched for false alarms both times.

Sadly, I don't have the "maintenance contract" with ADT, so they want to charge $125 for the first 30 minutes, then $32 for every 15 minutes after that for a tech to come out.

I'm not sure how to begin to debug this problem. I'm fairly certain that the doors are not loose and causing the door sensors to trip, and having the keyfobs with me on vacation, I'm certain they weren't accidentally tripped. Any thoughts on were to begin?

Thanks in advance!

My guess is that your new sensors may have been programmed into the wrong group (or given the wrong name(s)). Do a sensor test to ensure that each sensor is what you think it is...

Here's the list of sensors, their respective groups, and the status from the sensor test:


sensor group name status
01 10 Patio door 8
02 13 Back door 8
03 17 Motion living room 8
04 26 smoke living room 8
05 01 touchpad 8
06 13 front door 8

-- added new after reactivation --
07 10 garage door 8
08 17 motion den 8
09 26 downstairs smoke 8
10 26 basement smoke 8
11 01 keychain touchpad 6
12 01 keychain touchpad 6


I confirmed that the sensors matched what I expected them to be.

The false alarms were:
1st time sensor 02 and sensor 11 after less than 24 hours
2nd time sensor 06 and sensor 11 after about 6 days

I can remove the keychain touchpads, but I'm not sure how best to go about catching a random false alarm trigger.

It seems unlikely that there could be an errant RF signal causing the triggers -- from what I can tell the sensors send a coded signal at 319.5MHz.

It wasn't explicitly explained to me when I bought the key fobs, but they look to be the 4-button SAW key fobs, not the the encrypted ones.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

For the door and window transmitters, fresh batteries all around to all of the older transmitters. These can get really odd behavior when the battery is hanging on the borderline. If you have the RF jam detection feature, turn it off. In some locations, that sucker can be a source of constant false trips. (True RF jamming is highly unlikely in a residential installation, B&E types just aren't that clever, and the system treats a "jam" the same as a zone trip).

The keyfob issue is a little puzzling. Those things are an unsupervised device, there is really no way for them to be causing this issue. I suspect that after each trip, your monitoring service is getting another signal (possibly a restore) that they are interpreting as a panic.

This kind of thing is _very_ hard to diagnose with secondhand info. Very often, it's some small setting or configuration that normally doesn't even get touched.

Hmmm, you mentioned something about a "restore" signal, and it jogged my memory a bit. After both false alarms, about 2 days later ADT called and said that the sensor 11 (the key fob), failed to restore. I didn't exactly know what they were talking about. Would an unsupervised device need to "restore", and would there be any reason why it wouldn't automatically do that?

Thanks!

Hmmmm, that's interesting.

No, normally a keyfob panic will not send a restore signal. Remember, to _send_ a keyfob panic means holding both of the arm and disarm buttons at the same time for more than 3 seconds. I really think that there may be something flakey about the reporting configuration/programming. The closest thing to a restore is when the system is disarmed after a panic has been sent.

I really think that you may have something mis-configured.

I have seen wireless transmitters do this once or twice in a short span of time, then not do it again.

I would insist that ADT performs an upload and download to verify that the programming is correct. If they do not wish to do this I would request that the send a tech to fix this and to waive charges as this happened soon after reactivation. Be polite and persistent, if still no luck, request the service manager in the branch and make him/her aware of your issues.