‎false fire alarm | SimpliSafe Help Center
 
castewa88's profile

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2021 1:05 PM

false fire alarm











Community Admin

 • 

4.3K Messages

2 years ago

Hi castewa88,

I can offer a couple of answers for the easier questions. First, the Smoke Detector is supposed to continue generating an alarm for as long as it detects particles in the chamber - or until you send a disarm signal from the Keypad. If particles are detected again, it can trigger another alarm.

As for the Timeline events - you should know that when a Smoke Detector is triggered, that also arms the system. That way, if there was a real fire, our monitoring agents can report the location where possible humans were last detected. And when you disabled the alarm, that should have disarmed the whole system as well.

Hopefully you're right and the original false alarm was caused by environmental dust (or maybe steam - is it placed near any bathroom doors by chance?). But if you get another mysterious false alarm, we'll need to do a bit more troubleshooting. We may even want to replace the unit altogether.

- Johnny M.
SimpliSafe Home Security

24 Messages

2 years ago

Not near any bathroom doors.  Really at a loss as to why the alarm sounded, but per your explanation perhaps the reason it only sounded for a short while is that the "particles in the chamber" were only very briefly present.  That part of your answer does help.

Something still doesn't seem right about the timeline events, though.  There is a timeline event showing where the system was disarmed 13 minutes after the alarm.  That would be expected as that was when I disarmed the system.  But, the system was never armed again after that, so I don't understand why there is a timeline event claiming the system was disarmed from the keypad with the master PIN at the time when I actually armed the system from a phone for the night.  The system was not armed at that point, and no one was at the keypad.

180 Messages

2 years ago

If I remember correctly, SS recommends cleaning your smoke/CO detectors monthly.  I also have a can of compressed air I use that seems to work well.

Advocate

 • 

113 Messages

2 years ago

@Johnny M
This is in regard to: "As for the Timeline events - you should know that when a Smoke Detector is triggered, that also arms the system. That way, if there was a real fire, our monitoring agents can report the location where possible humans were last detected."

Does that apply to 100% of SS3 systems?  I have SS2 and do not have the interactive monitoring and do not have my sensors named in the system.  Therefore, should my system go off due to a smoke detector and the subsequent alarm (does that also apply to SS2?), neither the monitoring company nor the fire department would be able to use the sensor serial number to identify location of occupants.

Community Admin

 • 

4.3K Messages

2 years ago

hondaman88,

Yes, this is specifically a Gen3 feature. If a Gen2 Smoke Detector goes off, the rest of the system will stay dormant.

castewa88,

We're now getting into territory where we'd have to discuss your specific Timeline events in detail. I think it's best if we put you in touch with one of our higher-tier specialists. We'll have them reach out for a good time to call!

- Johnny M.
SimpliSafe Home Security

10 Messages

6 months ago

@castewa88 did you ever figure out why that happened?  it happened to me twice today, each time a few hours after a false fire alarm.  i had 2 false fire alarms and 2 false timeline events saying my system had been disarmed via keypad master pin, even though the system was not armed and no one touched the keypad.  the two events seem to be related somehow.  curious if you ever found out what happened.

Community Admin

 • 

4.3K Messages

@ceglia​ our engineering team spotted your thread about this issue on Reddit! We'll be reaching out soon to get this figured out for you.

24 Messages

@ceglia 

Thankfully, I have not had any more false smoke alarms.  I do spray the alarms with compressed air every couple of months.  I never figured out an explanation for the odd entries in my timeline related to the false alarm event.

New to the Community? Get started by reading our Welcome Post.