A customer's complaint about false alarms made me rewire everything

I had this one customer in a little town outside Austin who kept getting false alarms from their motion detectors. They were about to cancel the contract, so I went out there to take a look. Turned out I was using the wrong sensitivity settings for the room layout - there was a big window that let in morning sun and the sensor was picking up the heat change. The customer was nice about it, but they said 'your system thinks my cat is a burglar' and that kind of stuck with me. I switched to dual-tech sensors with pet immunity and adjusted the placement to avoid direct window exposure. Since then I've started running a quick heat map test on every install to catch those problem spots early. Has anyone else dealt with a similar issue where a specific room layout messed with your sensor choices?

3 comments

3 Comments

faith6846h ago

That big window issue makes me wonder do you angle the sensors away from windows now or just swap to pet immune ones?

finleyh893h ago

Honestly I think people overthink this window thing way too much. Unless your sensor is literally pointing straight at a south facing window all day it's probably fine. Pet immune is overkill for most situations unless youve got a golden retriever that can reach the ceiling. Just angle it slightly away from the glass if you're really worried about it. Worst case you get one false trigger on a sunny afternoon and then you adjust it. It's not like your whole security system is gonna break because of some sunlight.

nancy_ross2h ago

My cat set off a pet immune sensor by rubbing her back on it...