Will automated blinds and lights trigger false alarms?

xboxdad

Hello,

I'm hoping someone here has experience with Phone Watch motion/camera sensors (the ones that take a photo when they sense movement).
I bought some home automation stuff to fake my presence in my absence. Essentially blinds and lights would operate automatically and I also have rotating cameras inside the house. All in the vicinity of such Phone Watch sensors.

My question is: Will any of these items trigger the Phone Watch sensors while I'm away and the house is doing its automation? (Phone Watch says balloons can trigger their alarms, so...)

Thank you.

davidconroy46

Possible the blinds are. If it is the same ones all the time ot poss is s faulty pir/camera. Your paying phonewatch for a service so they are the ones who should be looking into this problem for you.

xboxdad

davidconroy46 wrote: »

Possible the blinds are. If it is the same ones all the time ot poss is s faulty pir/camera. Your paying phonewatch for a service so they are the ones who should be looking into this problem for you.

Thank you.
I don't have this problem, I'm trying to avoid it.
So I either do everything manually while on holidays (e.g. disarm; move blinds / switch lights; arm) or I can simply set up scheduled automation leaving the house armed the whole time.

I'd trust someone's 1st hand experience more than a random PW customer service agent's thoughts on the topic.

bk

xboxdad wrote: »

I'd trust someone's 1st hand experience more than a random PW customer service agent's thoughts on the topic.

I'd suspect your likely be on the cutting edge of this and unlikely to find other people with similar experience. Even on the Home Automation * forum very few people have automated blinds and curtains! So your are pretty unique.

It will probably depend on where your PIRs are placed, are they facing the blinds/curtains and how sensitive and close to the curtains they are. You may just have to try it for yourself. I'm not familiar with the PW system but I assume it has a walk test where you can test the sensors? Check the manual. Do a walk test and then open/close the blinds/curtains remotely and see if it triggers those sensors.

BTW I've automated lights, Philips Hue and them turning on/off don't trigger my variety of PIRs for different systems I have, but again no experience of the PW ones.

* BTW You should drop by the Home Automation forum here on boards, members would love to hear your experience of automated blinds/curtains, people often ask about it, but few have taken the dive.

xboxdad

I don't know about any walk test or any sort of test that I could carry out whatsoever (apart from the did-the-gardai-come test).


I talked to their customer service and they said lights won't be an issue, but any sort of movement will cause an alarm activation.
Even a tiny 10cm tall camera with a rotating head would - they said.
I still don't get it though as their user manual says their motion sensor is based on detecting fluctuations in heat. They didn't react to this question.
I have the feeling that they just don't know and they don't want anyone mess with this.

Doop

xboxdad wrote: »

I still don't get it though as their user manual says their motion sensor is based on detecting fluctuations in heat. They didn't react to this question.
I have the feeling that they just don't know and they don't want anyone mess with this.

Its my understanding that this is how all PIR's work, eg a spider crawling on the PIR still wont set it off, the term motion sensor is more of a laymans term. But im sure someone with more expert knowledge will be along shortly.

I wouldn't invest much faith in the PW customer service people actually having technical expertise

bk

Doop wrote: »

Its my understanding that this is how all PIR's work, eg a spider crawling on the PIR still wont set it off, the term motion sensor is more of a laymans term. But im sure someone with more expert knowledge will be along shortly.

I wouldn't invest much faith in the PW customer service people actually having technical expertise

Actually different motion sensors work in different ways. Real PIR's actually detected radiated heat off a body. Other types of motion sensors, that people might call PIR's but actually aren't can detect actual motion.

I susepct PW are actual PIR's and detecting heat, but an open/closing blind might change temperature.

A walk test is part of all alarm systems. It is an option that you set and lets you see if the sensors work. Check the manual if you have it.

xboxdad

bk wrote: »

A walk test is part of all alarm systems. It is an option that you set and lets you see if the sensors work. Check the manual if you have it.

I downloaded the manual and I didn't find any documented feature related to testing in it.
The manual does recommend testing the alarm weekly and it says you'd need to call their customer care prior to testing. Which I suspect is nothing else than telling them it's going to go off possibly because you're going to try it. (as there are no technical steps documented related to testing)

bk

Yes, I just checked the manual. That is weird. I assume they have the walk test locked away behind an engineer code. The Honeywell system these are based on definitely has a walk test, it is a requirement for all professionally installed alarm systems.

So I'd say call them and ask, you can always test it this way.

- Go into a room with no PIRs
- Call them to say you are going to test it.
- Activate the alarm system via the app
- Now use the app to open/close the blinds/curtains and switch on/off lights and move the camera and see if any of these set off the alarm.

Don't worry about the Gardai turning up, they won't. After the alarm activates they contact you first to confirm it, before calling the Gardai and even then Gardai are slow to respond. In this case Phonewatch will know your testing it anyway.

BTW walk tests are important, because how else will you know if all the sensors a working properly or not.

BBTW also take a look around all the different pages of the app, check that there isn't a test somewhere hidden away there under options.

xboxdad

Another piece of info on PW testing:

https://www.phonewatch.ie/customer-support/

"Did you know, our Customer Support team can carry out a full Diagnostic Test on your alarm system over the phone? This saves you time and allows you to get on with your day!

To avail of a Diagnostic Test, please call our customer support team on 1850 753 753, 9am – 6pm Monday to Friday. This is what PhoneWatch feels like, total peace of mind. #NoWorries."

(If they did weekends and evenings, it'd be more equivalent to testing that ppl can carry out on their own - being at home in working time is an interesting requirement, especially that they recommend to do this each week)

vintagecosmos

i left a skylite open once and the wind blew my blinds which set off the alarm.

xboxdad

vintagecosmos wrote: »

i left a skylite open once and the wind blew my blinds which set off the alarm.

Pfff... That doesn't sound very advanced...
Any half serious new product in various fields can be automated and can integrate with Alexa and Google Home nowadays. It's not the future and it's not expensive anymore. Even vacuum cleaners can run around the house by themselves since many years now. What's the point of automation if one can not use scheduling due to alarm systems that can't distinguish between a moving piece of plastic and a human being?

vintagecosmos

xboxdad wrote: »

Pfff... That doesn't sound very advanced...
Any half serious new product in various fields can be automated and can integrate with Alexa and Google Home nowadays. It's not the future and it's not expensive anymore. Even vacuum cleaners can run around the house by themselves since many years now. What's the point of automation if one can not use scheduling due to alarm systems that can't distinguish between a moving piece of plastic and a human being?

That was a PIR that triggered it. The blinds can get warm and are quite large so I suspect that did it.

A lot of home security products/cameras etc, rely on cameras for alerts and movement. I have nest cameras and nest aware etc. But they still trigger for changes in light and exposure. I can always disable PIR in that room with th eblinds if needed.

I am somewhat weary of integrating my home alarm with google home.

Drifter50

xboxdad wrote: »

Pfff... That doesn't sound very advanced...
Any half serious new product in various fields can be automated and can integrate with Alexa and Google Home nowadays. It's not the future and it's not expensive anymore. Even vacuum cleaners can run around the house by themselves since many years now. What's the point of automation if one can not use scheduling due to alarm systems that can't distinguish between a moving piece of plastic and a human being?

If you have gone for a PW system, this is far from the top of the market. Its way down the list because PW seek volume and don`t like any would be customer straying away from their recommendations. The only way of checking your issue is to do a physical test to reassures yourself but as another OP says it may depend on the location of the PIR in the room. I`m surprised the walk test is`nt in the manual but you would be wasting your time ringing their customer service because you will be speaking to a call centre operator with a menu of standard answers

xboxdad

vintagecosmos wrote: »

That was a PIR that triggered it. The blinds can get warm and are quite large so I suspect that did it.

A lot of home security products/cameras etc, rely on cameras for alerts and movement. I have nest cameras and nest aware etc. But they still trigger for changes in light and exposure. I can always disable PIR in that room with th eblinds if needed.

I am somewhat weary of integrating my home alarm with google home.

Yeah.. Well, I'm not integrating automation with such assistants for now, but I'd like to go on holidays and not having to follow my regular home schedule with waking up early / staying up late necessarily just to do a complicated manual remote controlling process (disarm; automate everything one by one due to lack of scheduling because of the alarm; rearm).
That'll be quite a bit of an overhead when on vacation.
I can't even imagine doing this when the time zone difference is significant.

xboxdad

Drifter50 wrote: »

If you have gone for a PW system, this is far from the top of the market. Its way down the list because PW seek volume and don`t like any would be customer straying away from their recommendations. The only way of checking your issue is to do a physical test to reassures yourself but as another OP says it may depend on the location of the PIR in the room. I`m surprised the walk test is`nt in the manual but you would be wasting your time ringing their customer service because you will be speaking to a call centre operator with a menu of standard answers

Which company would provide a service/sensors that will reliably distinguish between overheated blinds / moving vacuum cleaners / etc... and humans?

bk

vintagecosmos wrote: »

A lot of home security products/cameras etc, rely on cameras for alerts and movement. I have nest cameras and nest aware etc. But they still trigger for changes in light and exposure. I can always disable PIR in that room with th eblinds if needed.

Actually you can adjust the sensitivity of the notifications from your Nest cameras so that it ignores changes in things like light and exposure or even pets.

You can even set it so it only triggers on detection of an actual person. It can even go as far as facial recognition using AI, though that is pretty cutting edge stuff.

The Phonewatch cameras, along with battery operated Blink and Arlo use a standard PIR to trigger their recording.

However more advanced * wired cameras like your Nest, my Logitech Circle, etc. don't use PIR's they actually use much more sophisticated method. They actually use software to detect change in pixels in the cameras view. As I mentioned above the sensitivity of this can be adjusted to exclude pets, blinds, etc.

* Advanced is maybe an unfair word here. Basically the difference comes down to battery operated cameras versus wired powered cameras. Battery cameras basically stay off most of the time, only turning on when the very low power usage PIR detects motion. To do the software style monitoring, the camera has to be running 24/7 and on a battery it would likely die after just a few hours.

bk

xboxdad wrote: »

Which company would provide a service/sensors that will reliably distinguish between overheated blinds / moving vacuum cleaners / etc... and humans?

Well the alarm systems that most independent installers use takes a different approach to PhoneWatch. PW rely exclusively on PIRs + cameras.

The HKC, etc. systems installed by others usually use shock sensors on doors and windows to detect intrusion and usually only use the PIR's as a secondary backup in the hall.

From your description it sounds like you have a PIR in your living room, right?

With a more traditional alarm system you wouldn't have a PIR in your living room, just in your hall and thus you wouldn't have this issue in your living room.

Of course you can place PIR's in a living room if you want with HKC, it is just less common and arguably less necessary.

BTW Interestingly it looks like the alarm system PW use, is made by Honeywell and Honeywell does have shock sensors for that range of products but for some reason PW don't install them!

vintagecosmos

Youre right BK. The nest person detection works pretty well. However the way I had it set up (back of house through doors) it would miss people near windows. My issue as opposed to the software.

I would be keen to see how the OP gets on with blinds. I have looked at several options. The only ones that show some promise were kickstarter campaigns but Id be looking for smth more tried and tested. I have a wand on my vertical blinds. This looked promising, but needs work. http://remotewindowblinds.com/

bk

vintagecosmos wrote: »

Youre right BK. The nest person detection works pretty well. However the way I had it set up (back of house through doors) it would miss people near windows. My issue as opposed to the software.

Right, yes, that makes sense. You could get a Nest outdoor camera and use person detection on that, but obviously more expense.

I do something similar to you with my Logitech circle cameras. They are indoors, but it can and has alerted me to a person outside on the patio (turned out just a neighbour calling over). I like this feature of these sort of cameras, as it notifies me and I can check what is going on. The odd false alarm is not a big deal, it only takes 5 seconds to check it.

The issue the OP is having is that his cameras and PIRs are tied to his actual security system, so potentially a blind opening could trigger the actual alarm, loud siren, etc. annoying the neighbours. So it would be a bigger issue for him then it is for us.

One of the reasons I'm actually happy to have my cameras separate from my alarm system.

xboxdad

bk wrote: »

Well the alarm systems that most independent installers use takes a different approach to PhoneWatch. PW rely exclusively on PIRs + cameras.

The HKC, etc. systems installed by others usually use shock sensors on doors and windows to detect intrusion and usually only use the PIR's as a secondary backup in the hall.

From your description it sounds like you have a PIR in your living room, right?

With a more traditional alarm system you wouldn't have a PIR in your living room, just in your hall and thus you wouldn't have this issue in your living room.

Of course you can place PIR's in a living room if you want with HKC, it is just less common and arguably less necessary.

BTW Interestingly it looks like the alarm system PW use, is made by Honeywell and Honeywell does have shock sensors for that range of products but for some reason PW don't install them!

No, I have the shock sensors as well. Still, two PIRs are overlooking areas that will have doors open (for cameras) and have auto-blinds and auto-lights.
I don't want to close the doors as I want my cameras (360 degree) be able to see the whole area including the hall and the rooms. (the blinds smart-hub doesn't have great coverage, I'll want to see if the blinds actually closed)
I'd have to buy a lot more cameras if I were to place one into each room and hall. (they're not that cheap)
For my next holiday I might though and then I can keep all internal doors closed to keep the PIRs happy... ...but not this year.

davidconroy46

Using the Honey well panel , PW their a law of their own. When eircom they used GE panels. At lease the sensor could be reused on any panel with a quickbridge. PW people are conned by them think you own the system. I ssen it myself a couple of weeks ago with a premotion in woodie blanchardtown. Your man didnt even twll me i was renting the system. The price was €299.00.

bk

xboxdad wrote: »

No, I have the shock sensors as well. Still, two PIRs are overlooking areas that will have doors open (for cameras) and have auto-blinds and auto-lights.

Really! That is interesting, can you tell us which PhoneWatch panel you are using?

Did you specify and have to pay more for shock sensors?

BTW just in case you are mixing them up. There is a difference between simple door/window magnetic sensors, that only detect an open window and a shock sensor that does that, but also someone smashing the window or otherwise tampering with it.

If not too much trouble any chance of a picture of both your panel and shock sensors. I'm just curios. Thanks

xboxdad wrote: »

I don't want to close the doors as I want my cameras (360 degree) be able to see the whole area including the hall and the rooms. (the blinds smart-hub doesn't have great coverage, I'll want to see if the blinds actually closed)
I'd have to buy a lot more cameras if I were to place one into each room and hall. (they're not that cheap)
For my next holiday I might though and then I can keep all internal doors closed to keep the PIRs happy... ...but not this year.

Easiest solution is probably just to close those doors and buy two new cameras to put in those rooms. Certainly MUCH cheaper then getting a whole new security system.

Amazon currently has a sale on Yi IP cameras. The cheapest is just £17, I just bought one myself. Surely one or two of those wouldn't break the bank compared to the cost of automated blinds/windows and expensive PW sub?

davidconroy46 wrote: »

Using the Honey well panel , PW their a law of their own. When eircom they used GE panels. At lease the sensor could be reused on any panel with a quickbridge. PW people are conned by them think you own the system. I ssen it myself a couple of weeks ago with a premotion in woodie blanchardtown. Your man didnt even twll me i was renting the system. The price was €299.00.

Well as encryption gets added to wireless sensors to make them more secure from tampering, it kind of ends up leading you down the path to sensors being tied to a particular panel. So that is a trade off.

If they were to use the the new Z-Wave secure protocol it would give you the best of both worlds.

That isn't to defend PW, more Honeywell or any panel manufacturer. PW could of course allow you to continue to use that Honeywell panel without monitoring or by buying out the contract, so that is just a highly questionable business decision on their part.

xboxdad

bk wrote: »

Really! That is interesting, can you tell us which PhoneWatch panel you are using?

Did you specify and have to pay more for shock sensors?

BTW just in case you are mixing them up. There is a difference between simple door/window magnetic sensors, that only detect an open window and a shock sensor that does that, but also someone smashing the window or otherwise tampering with it.

If not too much trouble any chance of a picture of both your panel and shock sensors. I'm just curios. Thanks

I got the exact same panel that's on their homepage, right on the landing page.

I'm not mixing up the sensors, the installer was very nice and showed me everything as he was calibrating it.
There are simple magnetic sensors as well, but most of them are vibration sensors. (you can see them flash if you bang on the window/door frame)

I did go for an extended package though, got more sensors to cover more windows, but no other sensor types, just the same vibration ones and PIR.

In any case, I did the test just now....

I did this in the evening, it was fairly dark outside:
- Arm
- Leave, tank the car
- Return to the house and - still from the street - operate the blinds
Result: No alarm

- Enter the house, disarm for a moment
- Go into the living room, leave door open, hide from the PIR
- Arm alarm via app
- Operate the blinds again up and down then leave it closed
- Switch the lights on and off in the room a couple of times
Result: No alarm

- Switch the lights off, then leave the room for a positive test
- Flash into my face, photo taken, alarm went off
- Disarmed with fob
Result: Got a call from PW in the matter of minutes

I think their system is more promising than what they think/tell ppl.
Hopefully I get the same results from the blinds/lights every time while on holidays

bk

xboxdad wrote: »

There are simple magnetic sensors as well, but most of them are vibration sensors. (you can see them flash if you bang on the window/door frame)

Thanks. The reason I asked is because an often repeated complaint from some on this forum about PhoneWatch is that their system didn't have shock sensors and that they relied just on PIRs + Camera.

But now it seems they are installed shock sensors too, which is a big step up. Actually the combination of shock sensors + PIR + cameras is quiet a step up from the typical HKC install, though of course HKC have cameras too as an option.

Thing is it looks like PW are using the Honeywell Le Sucre+ kit, which seems to be a nice step up from their similar Evohome kit, but for professional installs with support for shock sensors, acoustic glass break sensors, dual tech motion sensors, etc.

Not far off my ideal system!

Of course the fact that you don't own the kit and are now tied to PW's high subs isn't great, but at least they seem to be using decent kit.

xboxdad wrote: »

I did this in the evening, it was fairly dark outside:

You may want to repeat this test during daytime, in particular when the sun is shinning through those windows. Remember PIRs work based on detecting heat. So curtains/blinds opening/closing during daytime may change the temperature.

Though ideally PIR's are supposed to be placed far enough away from windows that they aren't effected by light through the window. Sounds like that maybe the case for you, but best to test it.

xboxdad wrote: »

I think their system is more promising than what they think/tell ppl.
Hopefully I get the same results from the blinds/lights every time while on holidays

BTW What are your automated blinds? I'm thinking of getting something like those myself.

xboxdad

bk wrote: »

Thanks. The reason I asked is because an often repeated complaint from some on this forum about PhoneWatch is that their system didn't have shock sensors and that they relied just on PIRs + Camera.

But now it seems they are installed shock sensors too, which is a big step up. Actually the combination of shock sensors + PIR + cameras is quiet a step up from the typical HKC install, though of course HKC have cameras too as an option.

Thing is it looks like PW are using the Honeywell Le Sucre+ kit, which seems to be a nice step up from their similar Evohome kit, but for professional installs with support for shock sensors, acoustic glass break sensors, dual tech motion sensors, etc.

Not far off my ideal system!

Of course the fact that you don't own the kit and are now tied to PW's high subs isn't great, but at least they seem to be using decent kit.



You may want to repeat this test during daytime, in particular when the sun is shinning through those windows. Remember PIRs work based on detecting heat. So curtains/blinds opening/closing during daytime may change the temperature.

Though ideally PIR's are supposed to be placed far enough away from windows that they aren't effected by light through the window. Sounds like that maybe the case for you, but best to test it.



BTW What are your automated blinds? I'm thinking of getting something like those myself.

I'm not sure what brand the blinds are, but you can look up Bargain Blinds on the internet. They installed it for me a long time ago. I guess they still do it.


Thanks for pointing out the need for a daytime test. I'll certainly do it.