31 Messages
Test signal missing a few days recently
I was looking through my timeline and noticed there was no test signal logged on the 27th and 24th. I didn't really look back too far to see if it was happening before but it seems possible.
Is there any reason that the signal wouldn't get sent? I thought I would receive some sort of alert if the test signal failed so I'm confused about this. Thanks for any input.
coltmaster1
2.8K Messages
3 years ago
At each year's end since 2018, I've gone through my account's timeline and have found many instances of this occurring, and no logical reason that I can think of. It's been asked before, and SS hasn't really provided an in-depth answer.
And, I have NEVER received any alerts, when an automatic signal has not been received, ever. (even though SS states somewhere on their product pages that you'll be notified if a signal wasn't received).
Good question for DaveyD, if he's reading...
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davey_d
Community Admin
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5.6K Messages
3 years ago
Hi folks,
It helps to know that the Automated Test is only a one-off signal; that is, the Base Station tries to send a ping, and it it doesn't make it through, it tries again the next time. This is different from a sensor trigger, or a full alarm event, where the Base Station would attempt multiple times to send the signal through, for redundancy.
The Automated Test is intended mostly for extended periods when there's no other activity on your system, e.g. when you're away on vacation. So even if nothing else is going on, there's at least one signal on the record, and we're sure that the signal is still active. Only when there's no signal at all of any kind for a while would you receive the warning that there's something wrong.
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krstrick
136 Messages
3 years ago
Interesting.
does "a while" have a more distinct definition? (a couple of days, a week, a month, two months , a year, two years, a decade, two decades)?
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carlton76
31 Messages
3 years ago
Just to follow up - I noticed one of my keypads behaving strangely and finally the display started whiting out and restarting itself - whiting out , etc. I changed the batteries out and now it's fine. I think this explains the few failed test signals I never received.
I decided to test the old batteries and found something interesting. All of the batteries showed a normal voltage except for one which was at about half voltage. These were a fresh set of Energizer lithiums which were proactively installed only about 3 months ago.
So either I got a bad battery from Energizer or the keypad somehow drained a single battery to halfway.... .? Weird.
Hopefully the new batteries last, if it happens again I'll have to return it under warranty.
Also noteworthy, I never got any low battery warning from the system.
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coltmaster1
2.8K Messages
3 years ago
I can't comment on the battery issue, but if you mean by the keypad 'whiting out', when the keypad flashes and then you see the SS symbol on the display light up and 'connecting to wifi', - that's happened to me at least once in the last couple weeks. It was during an incident where one of my window sensors was not working correctly (I'm pretty sure it was a battery issue, changing the battery corrected the problem). I have never noticed this behavior from the keypad before (and I also did not get a base station announcement for low battery, and did not get an alert on the keypad). My keypad is fine, but I'm guessing in yours and my instance with the sensor, it was simply bad batteries, or low batteries.
I use Duracell batteries, have had awful luck with Energizers.
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