Entry sensor reported open when it is closed

Just to follow up on my previous post. I did have several more occurrences of this issue after getting the replacement entry sensors - but all were before mid-October; none since then. There's been a few software updates since last summer and i wonder if these have addressed this "door reported open when it's not open" issue.

I'm actually having that problem today for the first time... the app verifies that all entry senors are closed (which they are) but the base station reports one as being open..Strange.

@sallymadsen​ This sensor that is reported as open, is it on a metal surface? We don't recommend putting the Entry Sensor on metal, as it can demagnetize the sensor and cause it to read an incorrect closed/open status. If the sensor is on metal, I would recommend adding an additional layer of adhesive or a piece of cardboard between the sensor and surface as a buffer. 

If the Entry Sensor isn't on metal, it may help to open/close this sensor again, or remove it from your system and add it back.

It’s happening to us the last 3 nights. It is armed just fine when we go to bed. It wakes us up in the night and I hear it counting down before alarm goes off thinking door is open when it’s not. Help Simplisafe.

Hi @pmekiss​, 

I'm sorry to hear this! I would recommend contacting our Support team. They can troubleshoot this with you live, and send a replacement Entry Sensor if needed. 

Hi @shilo4955​, 

When the Entry Sensor is shown as “open,” that means that it has lost contact with its magnet. This can commonly be due to two reasons. Either the sensor and its magnet are farther than 2” apart when your door is closed, or the Entry Sensor is placed on a metal door which can impact its function.

Since you mentioned that you just got a new Entry Sensor, I would check the distance between the magnet and the sensor and inspect the door it is placed on. If you have one of those steel fire doors, or something similar, it would be helpful to put some padding underneath both pieces of the Entry Sensor - like a piece of wood or an extra layer of adhesive.

Just installed new system, metal door was a problem. Just switched the magnet to the door. Solved the issue I had with "open" sticking on.

@rbkd60​ I'm sorry to hear this, but I'm glad to know that everyone is okay. Did you cancel the alarm very quickly? The system has a grace period, and if you cancel an alarm within it the Monitoring Center will not call. This feature is to prevent accidental dispatch, as if an alarm was cancelled within 30-60 seconds, we can assume it was a false alarm. 

Regarding your Entry Sensor, false alarms can be triggered if the sensor and magnet are farther than 2 inches apart; but since yours are not that far apart, we can rule that out. False alarms can also be triggered if either piece of the sensor are on a metal surface, as that can cause them to demagnetize and spontaneously register as open. If your Entry Sensor is currently on a metal door, I would recommend using a piece of cardboard or an extra adhesive as a buffer between the sensor and the door.

If your Entry Sensor is not on a metal door, our Support team will be able to help with more live, in-depth troubleshooting to prevent this from happening again!

If the system is working properly for years with ZERO customer complaints and only stops working properly after a software/firmware update and MULTIPLE customer complaints come in with the same problem, how can you even remotely think this is a hardware issue and not a problem caused by that software/firmware update? How about you look into what caused the problems instead of frustrating the hell out of all your customers by telling them that it's environmental or defective hardware

@ksd202​ exactly, these customer reps are just pushing new sensor replacements for peace of mind - the reality is software bug and SimpliSafe has no idea why millions of dollars of their inventory is bugged all of the sudden. Well, obviously it's because you cheaped out debugging your code at some point, idk if it's low quality hire, bad contract, or just usual laziness that's in tech these days. 

Our system is over a year old and have had zero issues - until the last 7 days. Now I had second sensor start showing "entry open" when it is closed, both sensors haven't been moved, reset, magnetized, are on wooden doors, are 1" apart if that, nothing new or different whatsoever that hasn't been the same for the last 12 months. That alone proves new sensors will not fix the problem, they are just praying that they do since Simplisafe has no idea wtf is going on. 

Lurking buyers may want to hold off purchasing and monitor these bugs on these support forums and see if SS actually wises up and stops wasting their customers time - or absorbs a few millions dollars of sales loss idk the world is crazy these days and upside down, wouldn't surprise me. 

@emily_s​  Our sensors are not and have never been on metal doors. Our windows are not metal either, so the problem we encountered with one of the windows was not triggered by metal. Those sensors had been on the windows and doors for well over a year at the time without a problem. After explaining the problem to customer service, we had to pay for a new sensor for the window which solved nothing. The problem was only solved by removing the old sensor and then the new sensor after a week of being installed. Having no sensor solved the problem! That old sensor had been fine until updates, then alarms galore started. New sensor made no difference. It was a SimpliSafe new update glitch. Instead of having customers purchase new sensors, the update should have been fixed.

@emily_s​ in their reply they literally said they will wait 30 to 60 seconds assuming it's a false alarm before they begin to look into the situation at all. That's scary, because the first 60 seconds is kind of a big deal on a home invasion.

Hi @hlou12 ,

First, I'm really sorry that we missed this post. I wouldn't be so quick to attribute this to a "software issue", because otherwise we'd see a spike in cases like yours. It sounds more like you're seeing some form of interference in your house that sometimes is strong enough to block the signal.

It sounds like you've tried replacement sensors, but what other troubleshooting steps have you tried? For example, where is your Base Station located, and have we already suggested moving it to a different spot? The ideal location is somewhere more open, elevated on a shelf, but not placed on top of anything dense like metal or stone, and away from other electronics. If you like, I can put you in touch with one of our specialists, and we can go through more thorough troubleshooting.

By the way, in case you didn't know, the system does actually arm even when there's a Sensor Open warning. It's just letting you know those sensors won't be able to trigger an alarm, so you might want to check them.

Davey D .... Once again you, just like the rest of your "customer service" reps, are placing blame on the customer! Do you actually read the posts because if you did, you would see that there actually ARE and has been a spike in cases like his. How about you throw blame on your engineers instead of us customers when things start to go haywire! As hlou12 said on this post, "nothing different or reset", just like everyone else! Numerous people have complained about the exact same problems and it's no coincidence that these complaints all came in at the same time so stop blaming the customer and/or the environment and start acknowledging that these systems are failing because your company doesn't adequately test the firmware and software before you push it out to customers and instead use the customers as guinea pigs to test out the beta/prerelease software! 

I did not bother to respond to the SimpliSafe rep mainly because, as seen below, you guys are completely missing the issue. Latest post down below by Bob is a great exhibit of this software side issue, we have systems that are over a year or years old that work fine suddenly spazzing out after basic updates because SimpliSafe is not debugging older units or simply telling customers "tough s**t" and forcing them to upgrade the entire hardware they already bought.  

As for my status, I attempted to "upgrade" by base station via the app and the keypad but both failed multiple times lmao, which might actually be a blessing because if it had updated, I'd be without any security at all!


So at this rate, it looks like I'm using my hardware without updating for the next ten years, or at least until SimpliSafe does planned obsolescence like every other shekel pinching Silicon Valley corporation and forces me to repurchase the entire system. Of course when that comes I will NOT be buying SimpliSafe again, ADT probably has a more long term pipeline than this knock off tech startup scam. 

I just took mine off . Tried everything! New Sensors.. different placements . You name it I tried it.  I just said the hell with it!!!. Their not trying to and not going to do anything!!!! 

Hi @jfisher989 ,

The "Not Responding" error means that particular sensor has continuously failed to check in with the Base Station over several hours. So that could mean the battery is fully dead (though you should also get a low battery warning before that), the sensor is somehow out of range, or is otherwise out of commission (like if it had been destroyed). Or more likely, there could be some form of interference that is obstructing the signal from getting through.

So if you've worked with our Support team before, we should have taken you through steps to identify potential environmental problems. The first thing I often suggest is to move the offending sensors to the same room as the Base Station temporarily, to see if we can re-establish the connection. If we can, then obviously there was something in between the Base Station and where the sensor normally is, like a wall or a heavy appliance, that is blocking the signal.

If you would like to give us more detail about those sensors, where they're located, and what steps you've already tried, we can maybe go through more troubleshooting with you!

When I had this issue, there was a system update pending.  I processed the update and the problem went away and has not returned.

Well my system seems to still be updating!! The, said an AMBER LIGHT means it's still updating. Been updating for MONTHS 2 ECACTLY!!. 😂😂😂 At this point it's just a JOKE! Looking for something else...BETTER!!

Latest update yesterday got my patio door sensor.   Fine for 8+ years and 2 systems. (Updated all sensors last year)  Stuck on "open" and none of the stated fixes work.  Of course it's NOT the software update.  DUH!

@bobs258​ What happens if you remove this Entry Sensor from your system in the SimpliSafe mobile app and then add it back in? Does it show the correct open and closed states?

You can remove the sensor in the SimpliSafe mobile app by going to My System > Device Settings > select [your Entry Sensor] > x Remove Device. To add the Entry Sensor back to your system, follow these steps in our Help Center article.

Yes Emily_s, removing the sensor and reinstalling it worked.  So far, no more glitches from yesterday's update.  That's the 1st time that I "lost" a sensor in over 8 years.  I don't know the reason, but I have my suspicions along with other owners.

@susanbie​ If an Entry Sensor is on a metal surface, that can cause the sensor to demagnetize over time, causing it to read an incorrect open/closed state. That has been true for all generations of our systems - we have always recommended putting them on a non-metallic surface. 

A Not Responding error message means that the sensor has not checked in with the Base Station in the past few hours; this shouldn't happen because the Entry Sensor is placed on metal. Instead, it could be that the sensor's battery is completely dead, the sensor is out of range, or there is interference that is disrupting its communication with the Base Station.

If you check out this article in our Help Center, we go over the steps to take to troubleshoot the Entry Sensor and resolve the Not Responding error.

@mark_wirges​ How far away are the sensor and magnet pieces of that Entry Sensor? If they are farther than 2 inches apart, the system will read the sensor as being open. If the door shifts a little bit during the night and causes both pieces of the sensor to be 2 or more inches apart, it could cause this.

But if both pieces of the Entry Sensor are quite close together, that could indicate an issue with the sensor itself. In that case, I would recommend contacting our Support team so they can take a deeper look into your system.

@barbarabateman​ I've got a recommendation, return your system and go to another alarm system! Simplisafe is great at blaming you/your home/work environment for any and everything that goes wrong with their system. They push out updates that cause problems and when you complain about it, they say their update had nothing to do with it and instead say there is interference coming from other devices and appliances in your house, even when NOTHING, and I mean literally NOTHING has changed. When the system works, it works pretty good bit when it didn't, it's a nightmare. Also, for years they sold us on the idea that the monitoring company has the ability to view your camera when an alarm is triggered to see what's going on in the residence but on two occasions, when they called me about a triggered alarm, they told me they have no ability to see my cameras so they can't tell me what's going on. False advertising and very poor support keeps me from recommending them to friends and family. 

@barbarabateman​ As indicated in another post, you have a 60 day return window.

It's either batteries in the sensor which age on the shelf, albeit slowly.

Distance from base station, the base should be centrally located.

The sensors communicate with the base, via RF, Radio Frequency, signal penetration of thick walls, having a sensor blocked by metal, ie; leak sensor behind a washer etc. will possibly drop the signal.

You can try removing the sensor from the app, and reinstall, put a new battery in it and test each step, move the base centrally or closer to suspect sensors, as long as other sensors don't drop.

If all that fails, and it's mounted per specifications, it could just be a bad sensor or the system is just not suitable for your home construction.

I can say, personally after two years, all sensors continue function in an all brick rancher, cameras have become useless to me, a $1,000 worth too, same RF issues.

Playing musical base station once, I had a leak sensor as mentioned that did drop moving base around. Cold window entry sensor in the garage has dropped twice, comes back when it warms up. Is what it is.

I have other DIY sensors that actually work all the time.

@barbarabateman what surface material is the Entry Sensor mounted on? We don't recommend placing the Entry Sensor directly on metal or steel, as that can cause the sensor to demagnetize - resulting in the system reading an incorrect open state. 

If the sensor is on a metal surface, we recommend putting some type of buffer between them. This can be anything like another layer of adhesive, thin cardboard, or plastic.

If the Entry Sensor is not placed on metal, look at how far away the pieces of the sensor are from one another. Once > 2 inches apart, the system will register the sensor as open. If the sensor is mounted in a way where the two pieces fall along that line, that could be why the system says it is open.