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[kyle99]

A newbie here....just installed a X10 30 piece wireless home security system a few days ago and am working the bugs out of it.....My setup so far consists of 8 door and window sensors and 2 motion sensors as well as a power horn.  After setting up a motion detector in my living room yesterday, I have had two false alarms, which are puzzling.  The motion detector is set up in a room with full drapes, so does not get direct sunlight and is not near a heat or electronic source.  Last night at 11:15PM, in a dark house,with everyone asleep, I was awakened by the alarm which turned out to be that motion sensor.  I disarmed and rearmed and went back to bed.  All was fine until 3PM today.  I was at work when my cellphone rang.  The alarm went off again and the system called my cellphone.  The system called my cellphone about 5 times (I have all 4 caller numbers set to it)  I noticed that on the initial calls, I was hearing my recorded message with the alarm siren playing in the background   On subsequent calls, the recorded message continued to play but the console siren stopped playing, as per what I was hearing via the microphone....(I have no idea if or when the separate power horn siren shut off as it is located well out of range of the console microphone)and then the machine stopped calling completely.....Is this a normal function of the system if it is triggered and not disarmed by someone and allowed to run? Is it supposed to eventually silence the siren and stop calling after a set time if nobody manually disarms it?  My next question.....Will the system automatically rearm itself or remain in an armed state in this same situation after a false alarm  where the system shuts off the siren of its own accord?  My concern here is that if a false alarm occurs while someone is away for a few days....the alarm (or at the very least..the siren.)..shuts off automatically because nobody is there to manually reset and rearm it.....Will the system then be in a vulnerable-unarmed state until someone returns? Or is it still in a fully armed state as long as the alarm was truly false and nothing was actually opened and/or left open to trigger the alarm?

[Puck]

I have 2 MS10A motion sensors and both cause false alarms. I also do not use them any more. Some claim to have better luck with them set in the 2 motion mode.

When the alarm trips and calls you, the console's siren stops during the call but the house lights still receive the ON / OFF signal; this signal will keep any external power horns active. After 4 minutes the sirens will stop and all lights will be left in the ON state.

The console will resume the normal ARMed state but the LED for the tripped zone will stay on and the ARMed LED will flash. At least that's how my version of the DS7000 acts; there are some characteristic differences in the newer versions. The best way to find out for sure is to test it and let it go for the full 4 minutes or so.

[JMac]

I replaced my motion sensors (MS10A)  with the PMS01, a more reliable version.  However, even one of these (set on sensitivity 2) was set off by unknown reasons twice during the last year.  Position, position, position...........seems to be the solution !

[kyle99]

Thanks for the responses.....I installed this system after having an intrusion recently.....Intruder(s) appeared to have jimmied my front door open, and then after casing out the inside of my home, climbed out a window, leaving the windowlock unlocked behind them...My primary line of defense is the door sensors...I have them on entry doors, garage door, cellar doors to garage and living space, along with hallway and bedroom doors....As long as an intruder attempts entry from outside these doors, they'll be detected....If they come in via smashing a window however, they can conceivably enter a room on the 'wrong side' of a door detector and simply disable the detector by snipping the wire or yanking the batteries before exiting that room into the house....Motion detection would be my next line of defense in this instance as it would trigger before they even got to the door.....I will have to play with the locations.....I have a second motion detector mounted on a wall in a different room that gets all variations of sunlight and shadows in it and have had no false alarms as of yet from it....The one that triggered in the living room is not mounted to anything as of yet....I have it placed on a shelf, so I have ability to play with angle and location......As far as the system remaining armed after a false alarm scenario, I will do a test on the alarm in the next day or two to make sure that it operates correctly and remains armed after a false alarm runs its course and the siren shuts off on its own.....

[spam4us]

I have 3 motion sensors.  All 3 are mounted about 3 feet off the ground.  The area they are in does not receive any direct sunlight.  These are in 1 motion position and have not caused any false alarms. Look carefully for a heat source (computer monitor, mirror reflecting sunlight, animals, aquarium heater, computer CPU).  What time does you virus check run.  If 11pm, it can make your cpu heat up enough to make the housing case fan turn on.  Mice

[kyle99]

It is definitely going to require some experimenting of positioning on my part...I don't have any electronic equipment in the living room..nor mirrors...My computer is a few rooms away from there.....One thing I was testing was I have my kitchen light set up on a timered light switch to come on at random times of the day and night.....some of this light spills into the living room.....I was thinking that this might have triggered it so I turned light off and on several times while system was armed up with no results.....I was also thinking about the possibility of a mouse running around......The other issue is varying levels of detection....The detector seems to be much better at night....I just went out to the room  at 10AM and walked back and forth across the room 2 times without setting off the motion.  I went as far as to walk right up to the detector and wave my hand back and forth in front of it and.....nothing.....As of the moment, this detector appears to be the achilles heel of my setup.  It either cries wolf.....or it doesn't go off at all.

[spam4us]

Without looking at the specs on the detector, I believe they take about 30 seconds once they see motion, to see motion again. 

Is there a heat duct/baseboard/pilot light nearby?

I would set some traps.

[kyle99]

Well, I made progress today....more like one step forward and two steps backward....I did some further tests with the living room detector during daylight while set on setting 2 and it seemed to behave properly when I walked across the room....got a trigger on each test.....Now for the two steps backward part.....Each day since the installation, I have been testing the alarm upon returning home from work by unlocking and opening the garage door without disarming....Each day prior to today, the test was successful with an alarm trigger.  Today, I opened the door and.....nothing.....I went into the garage and opened the cellar door to the house and still.....nothing......The alarm appeared to be disarmed......When I arm up when leaving in the morning, I walk around to the back of the house near the room that the console is in and can hear the chimes and definitely heard the single chime that it was armed.....However, tonight when I got home, it appeared to be disarmed......I did some thinking and some footwork and came up with this scenario.....I have a gate at the end of my driveway that I keep locked.  I have to get in and out of my vehicle to manually unlock a padlock upon departure and return.....the lock is unlocked until I drive through the gate and then the lock is put back in place.  This requires me to remove my keys from the ignition as I keep all my keys together on one keyring, along with my car and house alarm keychain remotes.....To make a long story short, I pondered the possibility that perhaps in fumbling around with the keys, either my finger, or one of my keys may have bumped the disarm button....Whether it happened upon departure or returning home, I don't know....So I did a 'walk test'.....I closed the doors on the house and disarmed it before walking out to the end of my driveway.  I was at that point about 80-90 feet from the house.  I pointed my remote at the house and clicked 'arm'.......I then reached my garage and proceeded to open the door to see if it had in fact armed from that great a distance....The result:  the alarm triggered.....so the range is greater than I had expected.  I was able to arm up from 80 feet away, and on top of that, the console is located on the opposite side of the house (in the back of the house)from where I was standing at the end of the driveway.....So...I came away with two theories.....First, which is the one I am hoping for..is that I inadvertantly disarmed when I was fumbling around with the keys.....or Second...The system mysteriously disarmed itself....or was disarmed when a neighbor opened or closed a garage door opener or armed or disarmed their own security system which somehow is interfering with mine.......I will continue my daily garage door test routine, while being extra mindful of making inadvertent contact with the remote after arming up......and then will see what happens from there forward....

[kyle99]

Another update.....everything seems to be running smoothly over the past few days.....I have been extra careful when arming and disarming, so have had no surprises as far as coming back to an unarmed house....I had one false alarm at 1:30AM the other morning....a simple solution to that...On the very first door that I set up a door/window sensor on, I initially attached the sensor with the doublestick tape to make sure it would operate correctly....It did, but I never went back and double checked the bonding to the door.....so a few nights later, one of the sensor magnets fell off, which triggered an alarm.....I screwed it in this time and have had no problems with it since.

[JMac]

I have never had a door/window sensor false indication, only the motion sensors (and rarely).  Wonder if a roach running across the face of the sensor would set it off ?  Seems that my shed sensor was the only one that indicated a fase signal.  Even the professionally monitored ones have "critter" problems. i. e., my neighbor had a false alarm when a squirrrel ate through the phone line, which set off the alarm.

[kyle99]

This afternoon, I am installing a door/window sensor out in my shed.....I am also considering putting a power horn out there too.....Including the shed, this will have me set up with 12 zones out of the 16 maximum allowed with my setup....So, I am probably going to buy another 2 powerhorns and then will use the remaining two zones for flashing lights, or else divide up among motion and door and window sensors.....In order to expand my system beyond 16 zones, I would need to buy another console and then add zones onto that...so I would then have two consoles and remotes to arm up.....and two keyring remotes.....and perhaps two consoles connected to the phone line if I wanted both to allow for backup phone notification.

[spam4us]

     Powerhorns do not take up a zone. They are activated by the All light On/All units Off when the alarm get tripped.  They just need to be on the same house code as the alarm. The only thing that takes up a zone is a door/window sensor. You can also have up to 8 remotes installed into the console.  The remotes do not take up a zone either.

     As far as having 2 consoles, you can operate both from one keyring remote.  Just install the keyring remote into both consoles.  They will arm/disarm at the same time.  You can have just one console connected to the phone and have the 2nd console trigger the first one.  I would isolate the 2nd console from your powerline by plugging it into a filter.  That way, the consoles will not step over each other when the alarm is tripped.

[Puck]

The only thing that takes up a zone is a door/window sensor. 

And each MS10A Motion Sensor.

   As far as having 2 consoles, you can operate both from one keyring remote.  Just install the keyring remote into both consoles.  They will arm/disarm at the same time.  You can have just one console connected to the phone and have the 2nd console trigger the first one.  I would isolate the 2nd console from your powerline by plugging it into a filter.  That way, the consoles will not step over each other when the alarm is tripped.

It would be best to direct the OP to the recent full thread discussing this topic since it's not a trivial process: Topic: 2 DS7000/PS561

[kyle99]

Well, my system passed its first major 'test' as I was away for a couple of days so the system was without a 'babysitter' and had to stand on its own.....everything worked fine....No false alarms and system was still armed up properly when I returned(likely verifying my keychain bumping disarm theory from the other day)..so I will continue to add to my system  astime goes on...additional motion sensors, door/window sensors and power horns.....

[spam4us]

If this jpg gets attached properly, here's an image of how to configure a second ds7000 console that triggers a master ds7000.  Here's an explanation of what happens.
The Master DS7000 console (F) is not shown.  It is plugged in at another location. 
The X10 Noise Filter prevents any X10 signals from entering into and leaving the Power Strip. This isolates all units on the power strip from communicating to/from modules throughout the rest of the house.  When the DS7000(G4) alarm is tripped, the DS7000(G4) sends an All Lights On/All Units Off over house code G.  Since all units on the power strip are isolated from the rest of the house, the All Lights On/All Units Off only gets heard by the UM506(G1). The UM506(G1) responds to the All Units Off and turns itself off thereby opening it’s contact and causing the DS10A, which is registered with the Main DS7000(F) console,  to send it’s Tripped code to the main DS7000(F) console via the DS10A RF signal.  The PF284 doesn’t respond to X10 signals. It can only send them.

After an alarm, the UM506 (G1) needs to have its’ contacts closed again in order to re-arm the DS7000(G).  This can be done in a number of ways.
1.   Using any RF remote controller (i.e. the Security Remote with the house code set to G), you can press light 1 On. The RF will be received by the DS7000(G) and then turn the UM506(G1) back on.
2.   Using Active Home Pro to send an RF G1 On.
3.   Using ActiveHome Pro to send a powerline D10 On.  This will cause the UM506(D10) to close it’s contact, which will trigger the PF284(G1) to send a G1 On to the UM506(G1).

After you have done one of the above, you can then arm the system.  You can have one security remote control registered with both the Main(F) and Secondary(G) DS7000. Just make sure to have the house code set to G so that you can reset the UM506(G1) using the security remote and then rearm both system using just one remote.

By using this setup, you can trigger the alarms to go off thru ActiveHome Pro.  Just send a D10 Off.  This will open the contacts on the UM506(D10) which will open the contact on the PF284(G1) which will open the contacts on the UM506(G1) which will activate the DS10A to send a signal to the Main DS7000(F).