
Gen 3 SimpliSafe
So you have your system installed, and have questions about using it, or need any help with troubleshooting? You can find an answer here.
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Friday, March 6th, 2020 8:20 PM
Base to sensor distance
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1 year ago
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3 years ago
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jmparris
2 Messages
1 year ago
I have a SimpliSafe system that covers my house and a detached garage. All of the sensors work extremely well except the lock on the garage door. As it sits now, the base station is about 51’ from the lock on the garage door and the only barriers to a clear line of sight are the brick wall of the house exterior (although the base station is only 2’ from a window) and the garage door itself. Yet, I can’t even get the lock to pair and calibrate unless I either bring it inside next to the base station or take the base station outside to the garage near the lock. The really odd thing is that the lock worked like a champ for about 10 months, but then started having connection issues. SimpliSafe sent a new lock as a replacement, but I can’t even get it to pair at all.
Anyone having similar experiences or suggestions for a resolution?
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worthing
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526 Messages
1 year ago
Unfortunately there's no ethernet connection so if you want to use your home internet as a back up you'll need to connect it via WiFi and specifically the 2.4GHz band. On some mesh systems this can be challenging as they broadcast a single SSID and use band steering to to push devices to the 5.0GHz band when possible. I strongly recommend enabling the guest network on your mesh network and connecting your SimpliSafe devices (base station, cameras) to the guest network as guest networks sometimes prioritize the 2.4GHz network.
All of the sensors connect back to the base station via RF and they do not use Wi-Fi. All of the camera use Wi-Fi to talk directly to the internet (not to your base station). The Outdoor Camera, in addition to talking to the internet via Wi-Fi, also talks to your base station via the RF network the sensors use. (It's the only camera that does this.)
Distance from sensor to base station is, in some ways, less important than what's physically between the sensors and the base station. Open air? You're good to go. Brick, plaster walls over metal lath, etc? It's going to significantly shorten the max distance between sensor and base station.
The bottom line is you won't know if it will work for your set up until you test it because everyone's set up is unique.
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