New Virgin Media Hub causing HKC SW1070 PIR to go off

brophs

Hi all,

Had asked this question previously in the Virgin forum, without realising there was a home security forum....

We took delivery of the new Virgin Media white hub a couple of weeks back. The hub itself is nornmally placed on top of a chest of drawers on the landing (our router was downstairs when we moved in, but was moved due to issues with signal). We have a HKC SW1070 alarm, with various window sensors etc. and two PIR sensors. One of those is on the landing, around 3 feet from the new hub.

Anyway, the first night we got the new hub, our house alarm went off in the early hours. We assumed it was a break in until I went and checked and saw that the landing PIR sensor had gone off. I assumed it was down to a door moving slightly, or one of the cables on the new hub shifting/settling and thought no more about it. A couple of days later, same issue. In all, we've had the alarm go off four times.

At that stage, I figured it was either the house alarm or the hub, so I moved the hub to the floor, where it is further from the PIR and, possibly more importantly, is 'shielded' by the side of the chest of drawers, so isn't 'visibile' to the PIR. Since then we've had no issues. Obviously, it seems that the hub and the alarm aren't working well together, but is there anything that you would advise? Have other people had this issue? Because of where the hub is currently placed, it's both slightly in the way and also doesn't look great sat on the floor. Added to that, the speed is much slower when placed there and not on the chest of drawers.

Slight update.

Spoke to my alarm guy, who has never heard of the issue before. He put me on to HKC, who told me that the alarm shouldn't be tripping from that level of light/heat. He also suggested the router might be causing some issue re frequency, which seems unlikely to me, as no one else seems to be having the issue.

Long story short, it seems we're going to try turning down the sensitivity of the PIR to see what that does for us. For anyone who knows about these things, would it be possible that changing the PIR might solve it, albeit it seems to be functioning outside of problems with the router? I'm wondering whether we should try that at the same time as they turn down the sensitivity, if only to avoid paying another call out fee, as I don't know what else we can do, other than put the router on the floor.

One thing I forgot to mention was that this only happens at night/when it's dark and usually happens within half an hour or so of setting the alarm when we're going to bed (the last two times it's happened, though, I've literally input 0#7 to set the alarm and it's gone off immediately) which might suggest it's down to light from the router? When we go out and turn on the alarm during the day there doesn't seem to be any issue.

Anyone have any other ideas for someone clueless with alarms?
Thanks a mil.

kub

Is the beam on your landing a wired or wireless one and secondly at night time when you part set your alarm, is that beam active or not?

brophs

kub wrote: »

Is the beam on your landing a wired or wireless one and secondly at night time when you part set your alarm, is that beam active or not?

Cheers for the response.

Wired. And, yes, when we arm it with 0#7 as normal, that beam is active. If we set the alarm with 0#8, which doesn't include the beams, the alarm doesn't go off.

fred funk }{

It's highly unlikely your router is causing the false alarms.

degsie

Some info from one supplier

https://www.actmeters.com/advice/five-causes-of-pir-false-alarms/

kub

There is RFI issues here, i came across this before. The only solution i can think of here is a relocation and replacement of your PIR with a Dual Tec.

brophs

Thanks for the responses, lads.

A brief update:

The alarm guy called this morning, as he was in the area and wanted to make sure we were sorted. He went through a range of tests etc., none of which set it off and then spoke to HKC, who advised trying to disable the "Gate and Pulse" elements of the PIR. The way he explained it to me, that would stop it detecting vibration and electronic pulses, neither of which is likely on an internal wall in the second floor of a domestic house. His view was that if it was a pulse, or RFI, disabling those elements of the PIR may stop it throwing up false alarms.

The Motion element of the PIR remains enabled. We'll test that over the next few days and if it doesn't solve it, he's been advised to replace the PIR with a quad PIR. Moving the PIR is tricky, as it's a long thing top floor, with two rooms on either end and a small landing in the middle, where the PIR is placed, covering the stairs etc. Anywhere you move it on the landing, it would be roughly the same distance from the router. Moving the router isn't ideal, either, as it's right in the middle of the house at present and when we had the router in its original location a few years ago, at one end of the house in the front room, we had serious signal issues.

Anyway, here's hoping he has cracked it. Either way, I'll put up whatever ends up sorting it in case it helps someone else.

kub

brophs wrote:

The alarm guy called this morning, as he was in the area and wanted to make sure we were sorted. He went through a range of tests etc., none of which set it off and then spoke to HKC, who advised trying to disable the "Gate and Pulse" elements of the PIR. The way he explained it to me, that would stop it detecting vibration and electronic pulses, neither of which is likely on an internal wall in the second floor of a domestic house. His view was that if it was a pulse, or RFI, disabling those elements of the PIR may stop it throwing up false alarms.

Are you referring to Gross and Pulse? I cannot believe a guy left these active on a zone with a beam.
Beams do not detect vibrations.
It is good practice to switch Gross and Pulse to 0 when programming Systems.

Let us know please if this sorts it out.

brophs

kub wrote: »

Are you referring to Gross and Pulse? I cannot believe a guy left these active on a zone with a beam.
Beams do not detect vibrations.
It is good practice to switch Gross and Pulse to 0 when programming Systems.

Let us know please if this sorts it out.

Sorry, yeah, gross rather than gate. And, yeah, they were still active, from what he said.

Tbf, I may well have picked him up wrong re vibrations etc. I was in and out of the room and I may well be rehashing what he said incorrectly.

I will of course. Thanks again for the responses.

brophs

Well, that didn't last long. Alarm immediately tripped after setting it this evening before bed.

I guess we're down to replacing the PIR.

fred funk }{

brophs wrote: »

Well, that didn't last long. Alarm immediately tripped after setting it this evening before bed.

I guess we're down to replacing the PIR.

Has a problem with the cable been ruled out? Is the wiring duel end of line resistors? I ask because it will he identify what the problem is. I suspect it's a cabling issue.

brophs

fred funk }{ wrote: »

Has a problem with the cable been ruled out? Is the wiring duel end of line resistors? I ask because it will he identify what the problem is. I suspect it's a cabling issue.

I don't think so. He didn't do anything to the PIR itself that I'm aware of.

Tbh I don't know what duel end of line is, or whether that's what our wiring is. I can ask him when he's next back. If it is duel end of line, what does that tell us? In terms of cabling, what should we be looking out for?

Apologies for the questions. As you can tell, this is far from my area of expertise.

Cheers.

kub

If this was me I would replace that beam with a dual tec unit, as in a unit that utilises both Infrared and microwave technologies and once both detect something simultaneously the detector will activate.

brophs

So I'm back. A couple of weeks on, we've had the PIR replaced with a quad tech PIR. For a week we thought we'd cracked it until it went off again last night within 15 mins of setting it. Same zone. No discernible reason for it to go off.

Won't be chatting to our alarm guy until Monday. Any suggestions where we could go from here? I guess we could ask Virgin for a replacement hub in the vain hope that would make a difference. I suspect folks will suggest moving the router, which would probably work, but will require getting Virgin around and possibly affecting the wireless signal. It also seems like it could be avoided, considering we didn't have any issues in its current location for 2 years with the old router, which Virgin have told us we can't go back to.

An awful pain in the balls, all of this!

Thanks

KoolKid

I'd be very surprised if the router is an issue.
Have you other PiRs in the house you could switch locations with?
If not take it down & put it in a different location to test.

brophs

KoolKid wrote: »

I'd be very surprised if the router is an issue.
Have you other PiRs in the house you could switch locations with?
If not take it down & put it in a different location to test.

Cheers for the response.

I'm on my second PIR. First was a standard. Second a quad tech. Unless two completely different PIRs have precisely the same issue, I doubt that's it. Can ask the alarm guy to try it, if needs be, but given that the trouble started within hours of the router arriving and can be gotten rid of by simply plugging out the router, I'm fairly certain it's involved alright. Whether by something it's doing wrong, or some issue it's highlighting in the alarm system itself (e.g. being susceptible, for whatever reason, to RFI).

fred funk }{

brophs wrote: »

Cheers for the response.

I'm on my second PIR. First was a standard. Second a quad tech. Unless two completely different PIRs have precisely the same issue, I doubt that's it. Can ask the alarm guy to try it, if needs be, but given that the trouble started within hours of the router arriving and can be gotten rid of by simply plugging out the router, I'm fairly certain it's involved alright. Whether by something it's doing wrong, or some issue it's highlighting in the alarm system itself (e.g. being susceptible, for whatever reason, to RFI).

Has a problem with the cable been ruled out?

brophs

fred funk }{ wrote: »

Has a problem with the cable been ruled out?

The cable to the PIR? I'm not sure. I think, from what he said, that he didn't remove the PIR mounting/rear plate itself, but rather replaced the front piece. I guess that could mean that the wiring, which is connected to the rear of the PIR, could be an issue. Would that be more likely to be a physical breakage, or something to do with the quality/type of the cable, do you think? Would a wireless PIR be a better option?

Cheers.

KoolKid

brophs wrote: »

Cheers for the response.

I'm on my second PIR. First was a standard. Second a quad tech. Unless two completely different PIRs have precisely the same issue, I doubt that's it. Can ask the alarm guy to try it, if needs be, but given that the trouble started within hours of the router arriving and can be gotten rid of by simply plugging out the router, I'm fairly certain it's involved alright. Whether by something it's doing wrong, or some issue it's highlighting in the alarm system itself (e.g. being susceptible, for whatever reason, to RFI).

It would be a very strange one indeed . Where exactly is the router in relation to the PiR?

fred funk }{

brophs wrote: »

The cable to the PIR? I'm not sure. I think, from what he said, that he didn't remove the PIR mounting/rear plate itself, but rather replaced the front piece. I guess that could mean that the wiring, which is connected to the rear of the PIR, could be an issue. Would that be more likely to be a physical breakage, or something to do with the quality/type of the cable, do you think? Would a wireless PIR be a better option?

Cheers.

When these type of scenarios happen, then it's down to a process of elimination. The beam has been replaced and there's still a problem. I'd now replace the cable to the beam.

kub

So a PIR was replaced with a Quad PIR, therefore a duplication of the same detection technology.

That was why I suggested replacing it with a dual tech detector.

brophs

kub wrote: »

So a PIR was replaced with a Quad PIR, therefore a duplication of the same detection technology.

That was why I suggested replacing it with a dual tech detector.

Hi kub.

After I got your message orIginally I asked him to replace the PIR with a dualtech, as you suggested. He came back and said, having spoken to HKC, that he was advised to fit a quad.

My understanding at the time - and going on your post I obviously misunderstood - was that a quad was just the next one up the scale from a dual i.e. a standard PIR has one 'basis' for detection, a dualtech two and a quad four. So his suggestion to fit more bases for detection seems like a good belt and braces approach.

But based on your post I spent the last while online reading a bit about this stuff and it seems like the difference is that a dualtech incorporates microwave technology (which from what I can tell, would require actual movement in the room) whereas a quad is just more than one standard PIR element in the same housing. Is that correct?

So if I'm right, if our issue is RFI, the quad was always going to be susceptible to the same false alarms as the original PIR, as it's just increasing the number of the same types of elements that have to be interfered with to set the alarm off. And if they were the same type then there was no reason multiple elements wouldn't be tripped and cause the alarm to go off?

So, logically, if the dualtech requires both the basic PIR element AND the microwave element to be tripped then is it more unlikely that we'd get false alarms as it'd require movement in the room to go with the RFI from the router before it'd trip?

One other question. Someone mentioned that the RFI can be picked up in the wiring for the PIR itself. Would I be better off getting him to disconnect the wiring and to fit a wireless unit while he's at it, just to reduce the potential RFI risks even further. E.g. http://www.hkcsecurity.com/uk/product/rf-pir-dual-tech/intrusion-detectors--wireless/#.WKB1ujy6CEc

Thanks to everyone who has replied so far. As you can tell I'm a novice and wouldn't have a clue what I'm doing with this stuff.

kub

Yes that is correct a dual tec is employing other technology to confirm a presence before activating.

I am concerned also about the experience of your installer if he has to go running to HKC technical assistance for such issues. I would have assumed such fault finding was common sense.

So a dual tec or a wireless beam? I have never had RFI issues with alarm cable. I think a dual tec beam is the solution here.

brophs

kub wrote: »

Yes that is correct a dual tec is employing other technology to confirm a presence before activating.

I am concerned also about the experience of your installer if he has to go running to HKC technical assistance for such issues. I would have assumed such fault finding was common sense.

So a dual tec or a wireless beam? I have never had RFI issues with alarm cable. I think a dual tec beam is the solution here.

Thanks kub. I'll tell him to replace it with a wired dualtech sensor so. I'll let ye know how it turns out either way.

Cheers.

brophs

KoolKid wrote: »

It would be a very strange one indeed . Where exactly is the router in relation to the PiR?

Apologies. Somehow completely missed this post. It's around 4 feet from it. Slightly below and off to the right. Becuase it's a converted attic it's further in towards the wall, as the roof starts to curve.

KoolKid

No Problem. I'd agree with Kubs recommendations here.

altor

brophs wrote: »

Thanks kub. I'll tell him to replace it with a wired dualtech sensor so. I'll let ye know how it turns out either way.

Cheers.

I would also recommend using a dual tech.
The quad is not a dual tech motion.

If worse comes to worse you may need a wire free PIR installed away from the unit. HKC also do a wire free Dual tech.

brophs

Hi,

I promised to respond when this was sorted and, fingers crossed, it is.

There was a bit of a rigmarole, where he was given a HKC wireless dualtech sensor and, sod's law, it didn't work (the box was quite battered, so I suspect it may have been opened previously). Anyway, I was up the walls in work and then a couple of his young fellas were out sick, so it took a few weeks to get around to getting him back, at which time he upgraded my panel software and then paired the new dualtech sensor. We haven't had any false alarms since then (last Thurs, from memory) so hopefully that's it sorted.

Really appreciate all the advice from all who posted.