Smoke detector false alarm and additional triggers?

The exact thing happened to my system this morning.  Nobody up.  Fire alarm went off, then log shows that immediately the master bedroom motion detector detected motion.  System was in Home mode, motion detectors are supposed to be off.  I know that one was because I'm an elderly guy and had gotten up a couple of times during the night to perform a task in the 'old guys fluid exchange program'.  The two support people I spoke with had me reset the detectors and base station (dislike having to have a small screwdriver to reset the base.)  No fault was found.  Not sure I trust the system now.

My bet on a motion detector going off when an alarm does is that it is either on purpose but might be as seisiuneer said and I could see it might be helpful for the monitoring center to see motion alarm detects if there actually was a fire so they could tell the fire department there is someone in the house.  However, it could be a software bug has been pushed out.  Spent my life in software development and testing and at this point pretty sure it could be either.

Called tech support 7 times this afternoon, and kept getting hung up on while on hold, once while talking to an agent.  It would have been a nice touch if they had called me back as they had my phone info, but it didn't happen.  Figured out that when on hold, it rings like it is being transferred, then dead silence.  Wait, don't hang up!!! After a minute or so of dead silence, an agent picks up.  Likely they are working from home due to COVID and it takes that long for the system to connect you.  Kudos to the monitoring folks as they called within 30 seconds of the alarm and also later while I was testing.  Maybe they have to be at a monitoring center rather than working at home.

Not a happy camper.  My sleep cycle was only half over and hard to settle down after this, so I will be tired the rest of the day for no other reason.  Hope it does not happen again.

Actually glad to hear someone else saw the same behavior with the motion detectors after a false smoke detector alarm.

I cleaned the smoke detector (and the other smoke detectors in the house) and checked the battery.

No other false alarms this weekend so hopefully this was just a one time event due to a dusty smoke detector sensor.

Interesting. Same thing happened to me this weekend. Burned some toast and set off the smoke sensor. On my way over to reset it, I tripped two of my motion sensors, even though the alarm was off. Monitoring station called and said there was motion and fire alerts. App indicated the same thing. Seems like there's a bug in the software that arms everything when the fire alarm is going off?? I should have tried opening the front door and seeing if it records that entry sensor as well. Any input from SimpliSafe??

On August 31st, 2020 rhodesmarkv says: "Any input from SimpliSafe??"

You're joking right??????

On August 31st, 2020 rhodesmarkv says: Any input from SimpliSafe??


Surely you jest! LOL   Thanks for starting my day with a chuckle!

I had this happen to me back in January and talked to a support specialist as the simplisafe behavior didn't make sense, and I still don't agree with their answer. But essentially once the smoke alarm goes off, it puts the system in alarm mode regardless of what state it was in before the smoke alarm went off, which is why the motion sensors and entry sensors activate. You have to turn the alarm off at the keypad even if you tell monitoring it's a false alarm.

I complained about this behavior because if the smoke alarm is going off because of some cooking smoke and a window is opened, I shouldn't have to respond to monitoring with my pin in terms of the security alarm if the system was in the off state before the smoke alarm triggered. Alas, I never heard back.

Hi @cjroth

That is the normal functionality for all alarm events for the SimpliSafe system. It is useful in that it gives some additional insight into what may be happening as you can view the sequence of events from your timeline. That being said, I have gone ahead and submitted your feedback that you'd prefer that not to be the case for Smoke Detector alarms.

SimpliSafe Social Team
SimpliSafe Home Security

We had a similar situation happen this week.

On Friday night we were cooking some pizza and caused some smoke, which triggered the smoke alarm. Our alarm was in Off mode, as we typically don't have it on when visitors are over.  This is the first time it has gone off, and we put in the code and thought all was well, getting back to our pizza.  I typically don't carry my phone on me while home and unfortunately my wife and I missed about 5 calls each from SimpliSafe. This was surprising because I wasn't aware they would call if the code had been entered just as they don't when we accidentally open a door while the alarm is on then put in the passcode. Well, a few minutes later the fire department showed up. I told them all is well and they were kind and left.

Afterwards, I received another phone call from SimpliSafe saying our motion detector was tripped many times, along with our door sensors. This was confusing to me since at no point had we turned on the alarm. I told them all was well, gave them my password and went about my evening. There was also a message on our keypad saying it was disconnected, but it then quickly returned to normal. 40 minutes later I had a police officer knocking on my door saying they were responding to an alarm. After a pleasant talk with the officer that nothing was wrong, I called SimpliSafe to see what was going on and why police had been dispatched after I had spoken to the monitoring company and told them all was well.

After a few different calls and getting the call dropped on me after 15 minutes of holding, I got a call back. They said there was "a lot of activity going on" and that next time we have company over we should call them and put the system in test mode. This was confusing, since I had never even turned the alarm system on, it was off the entire time. Reading above I now see that a smoke alarm triggers the entire system to go on. While I understand the reasoning behind this, I would really prefer this not to be the case, since it caused quite a bit of confusion. Would much rather they just call us or the appropriate resources if we don't put in the code on the keypad.

Since then, we have had multiple false alarms with the same smoke detector. 3 so far since the initial incident. This is concerning since it did it's job picking up the smoke the first time, but now it is going off randomly including once at 3am yesterday morning. We talked to the monitoring company and they put it in test mode, but I'm not sure what that will do. I'm worried because my wife and I both work, and would by mortified if the fire department was dispatched for a false alarm. I looked up the issue on the website and have cleaned the smoke alarm, hopefully that does the trick.

This happened to me today.  Cooking dinner, alarm off, smoke, smoke alarm, motion detected.   Seems to me that Simplisafe is missing the opportunity to advertise this as a feature.  Had I known that motion sensors would become active upon a smoke alarm triggering, I would have put motion sensors in my kids bedrooms.  God forbid we had a fire on the second floor, I would love for the fire department to know where my family was.  

Of course, I think this functionality should be documented and optional.

I also think the central station needs to know why the are getting the extra alarm signals.  Consider it non visual confirmation.

Same thing happened to me just now.  My garage smoke detector went off and then my living room motion sensor went off because of my cat.  So let's assume they do turn on all motion sensors once a smoke alarm goes off so they can know where people are during a fire.  That's fine, but doesn't explain my garage smoke detector going off at midnight when nothing was going on in there.  

I have to say I'm not impressed and it looks like a common problem.  Blasted my ears out walking next to all these damn alarms and didn't think to silence things because the system wasn't even armed.  I do know smoke detectors are always armed though, which is good in my opinion.  But false alarms are unacceptable.

Hi, the organization I belong to has your system and one day the smoke detector went off on it's on. The environment is dusty and is used as a social club. That being said how often should the detectors be cleaned and what is the procedure to do that?

Thanks!