Ring Alarm
contact sensors do not work: show open, trigger false alarms
We are having problems with two contact sensors, one on an exterior door and one on the door leading to our garage. A factory reset seems to have fixed the problems with the one on the door leading to the garage, but problems with the other one have continued despite a factory reset. Both of these sensors have triggered false alarms. Two of the false alarms required me to return home from driving to work. The most recent false alarm happened when we were sitting inside with our alarm armed on home, and out of nowhere the contact sensor on the exterior door triggered the alarm. We were sitting right by the door, and nothing moved to trigger the alarm. This sensor also often shows open and we have to bypass it to arm our system. Has anyone else had experience with contact sensors failing/acting like this? We purchased and installed our alarm system in August, and we are incredibly frustrated because of these contact sensor performance issues. This kind of experience makes me want to research other alarm alternatives. Any help or advice is appreciated.
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28-04-2020 04:59:57
Responses (1)
- K
This is a picture of the contact sensor that is currently only showing open and that triggered our most recent false alarm.
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28-04-2020 08:18:12
KThis is a picture of the other contact sensor we've had issues with. We factor reset this one and it has been working fine so far. Given that we're having the same issues with another sensor, we do not have high confidence that this one will keep working.
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28-04-2020 08:19:12
C@ksmc Thank you for that picture! The placement looks good, as I just wanted to make sure that the notches on the magnet were still lined up with the Contact Sensor. Are they also lined up on the other sensor you are having a concern with? In addition, have you painted over the magnet piece at all or put something on top of it? Painting over the device or restriction the magnet can have this result, as there is interference between the magnet and the Contact Sensor. The reason a device will report as open is because the magnet is pulled away from the Contact Sensor, which normally will happen when a door will open and close. If the magnet piece and the Contact Sensor are too far from each other (more than 1/2 inch apart), it can have false alarms of reporting as open as the magnet is not able to pull down on the metal bar within the Contact Sensor to register it as "closed," when the magnet is close enough to it. Although, if there isn't any interference as I mentioned, and especially since this is a concern with another device, I do recommend to give our support team a call [here](https://support.ring.com/hc/en-us/articles/360036196372-Get-in-Touch). They can take a look into what the signal looks like for the device, and find a correlation as to why the device triggers false alarms for you. Let me know if they are able to dissect this further for you!
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28-04-2020 08:36:32
ELooks like the first one has the magnet not placed correctly. It's top is facing the sensor and not it's side as soon in the instructions. The second one looks too far apart. The instructions state no more than 1/2 inch. I took a screenshot of the placement from the instructions. This is how all 10 of mine are done. Never had any issues so far for almost a year.
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28-04-2020 09:45:33
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Chelsea_Ring
Hey @ksmc. Could you take a picture of how you have both contact sensor installed in both locations? Sometimes if there is a misalignment with the contact sensor and the magnet, they can trigger false alarms. I would love to see what you have the setup like!
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28-04-2020 07:31:18
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