From jkv at vossen.org  Thu Sep 30 17:47:10 2010
From: jkv at vossen.org (Joseph Vossen)
Date: Thu Sep 30 17:47:50 2010
Subject: [Hai-users] can anyone explain this?
Message-ID: <27877997-189D-4959-88E9-E817561D409D@vossen.org>

I have an OmniPro, s/w version is 1.9


When my wife headed out to work this morning, she managed to cause the alarm system to trip (that is *a* solvable problem with my wonderful wife but it is not *the* problem).  I got the call from the monitoring service that there was a burglary in progress and that the police were on their way to the house.  I called my wife and she was right down the street and she turned around to go back home and wait for the police to show up.

When she arrived at the house (it was fine), she noted that the external horn was not sounding.  When the police entered, the alarm keypads (we have 2) were making the continuous sound (when the entry delay is active) but the alarm never "tripped" again.  When she finally entered the house and went to the keypads (same conditions on both) she noticed that the keys were not lit, the LCD screen was off and the LED in the top right corner was off.  She also noticed that as she walked through the house, she could hear *all* of the motion sensors "ticking" (sounds like a relay opening/closing).

Since the keypads were not responsive and she had to get to work, I had her disconnect the battery and power off the panel.  Before she did that, she did notice that the A/C LED on the board was on solid and that the Status LED was blinking, as it should.

When I arrived home this evening, I powered the system back up and it appears to be OK; since it was powered down and no battery connected, the log entries are no longer present.

so....

	1.  why did the central monitoring service get notified but no external horn sounded?
	2.  why did the system not "trip" again after the police entered?   I thought it would "reset"
	3.  why were both keypads not responsive?  no back light, no status LED, no LCD, yet the sounder was active
	4.  why the rapid "clicking" from the motion sensors

thanks for any insight you may provide

From dharper08 at sbcglobal.net  Thu Sep 30 18:28:42 2010
From: dharper08 at sbcglobal.net (Dave Harper)
Date: Thu Sep 30 18:28:59 2010
Subject: [Hai-users] can anyone explain this?
In-Reply-To: <27877997-189D-4959-88E9-E817561D409D@vossen.org>
References: <27877997-189D-4959-88E9-E817561D409D@vossen.org>
Message-ID: <4CA51D2A.3080509@sbcglobal.net>

  Joseph,

While I cannot comment on the specifics of your problem, there are a 
couple of comments I would like to make.

First, monitoring services - while generally good - are not perfect.  I 
once had a case where I was called to inform me that my alarm had gone 
off.  However, I was home at the time and had not armed the system at 
all that day.  Checking the event log afterwards did not give any hint 
of a problem.  While the monitoring service would not comment further on 
it, I suspect it was someone who had made a simple mistake.

Secondly, I have had a number of "legitimate" false alarms in the past.  
One of the more interesting occurred while I was visiting my parents in 
Florida over the Christmas holidays several years ago.  I got a call on 
my cell phone in the middle of the night that the alarm had gone off.  
Fortunately, my brother-in-law lives across the street and he was able 
to meet the police when they responded.  As he recounted it later, he 
and the cop stood on the upstairs balcony and watched while a moth, 
which had gotten into the house, circled around a ceiling motion 
detector and periodically set it off!  That one ended up costing me a 
really nice dinner at their favorite restaurant 8-).

I finally decided to try and make the burglar trigger more robust.  
Today I have things set up so that it takes a breach of a perimeter zone 
(door, window, glass break, etc.) followed within a five minute window 
by a trigger from one of the interior sensors (motion detector, door 
which is supposed to be closed, etc.) before the actual alarm is 
triggered.  Since I switched to this scheme, I have yet to have a false 
alarm.

Regard,
Dave

