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Saturday, June 13th, 2020 8:27 PM

Auxillary Siren going through batteries every monthy

Anyone else have issues with Siren needing new batteries every month.  Have only had 3 months and gone through 12 AA batteries. Any help is appreciated.

Captain

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6K Messages

4 years ago

@ scott.brandt, this is very unusual for SS2 or SS3, especially SS3.  A weak connection could be one cause, but more likely its defective. I suggest you call SS support and request nc replacement under the 3 year warranty.

6 Messages

2 years ago

Turn off exit/entrance chirps and entry chime modes, and if in a cold weather area move siren to a sheltered spot.

3 Messages

2 years ago

I have the same exact issue, mine is in a sheltered warm area and all chime modes are off. My batteries no matter what brand etc make it maybe 3-4 weeks before they are dead.

Community Admin

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5.6K Messages

@wazzuno1,

 

The biggest impact to the battery life of the WIreless Sensor (apart from extreme temperatures) would be interference, which forces the unit to work harder to maintain a connection with the Base Station. Interference can be caused by other wireless signals competing for the same airspace, but more likely it's dense physical objects (like multiple walls, brick or stucco, heavy appliances) that are impeding or even stopping the signal. So it might help to move the Wireless Sensor or the Base Station around to different spots, so that the signal has an easier time passing between them.

8 Messages

5 months ago

I have the same issue - I even bought a brand new siren last month thinking the first remote siren may have stopped working.  The new one also keeps draining batteries after two weeks and stops communicating.   I have the first siren's batteries for over a year, likely longer, and it worked just fine.   What's up?   Am I now stuck with two remote sirens that drain batteries after two weeks?  

My remote siren is not far from the main hub, inside, warm temp.

Something at SimpliSafe must have changed to cause this battery draining issue.  Or do I have two duds and out the $$?

3 Messages

5 months ago

Mine is just a paperweight now. I am sure they know that they are junk, we can't be the only ones with the issue.

All brands of batteries tried, its in a shop with no other signals of any kind and its heated. This is an ideal arrangement and environment for it.

2 Messages

5 months ago

I've got 4 sirens (front porch, back porch, side of house, upstairs hallway), with the base station dead center of first floor and even elevated to provider less interference. Home is modest at 2100 sq feet. 

I have finally started tracking these because I'm blowing through batteries like crazy. I'm averaging 10-25 days before they die and the siren goes offline. 

I have a substantial SmartHome setup, and commercial grade Wi-Fi network setup (career). 

There is 100% a massive issue with these devices. I don't care how much interference there might be between walls, other IoT devices, or Wi-Fi access points - SimpliSafe just has weak radios or sloppy code for device handling. 

With all my other devices, several battery and leveraging multiple protocols (zwave, zigbee, Wi-Fi), there is literally not a single device that sucks like these. 

Since a siren is kinda core to an alarm system 🤦 I will likely have to switch to another system because I'm spending as much on batteries as I am for monitoring. Utterly ridiculous this problem is so widespread, critical, and unsolved. 

Note: yes they are all installed within acceptable range. All 4 are within 30 feet of base station, which is incredibly closer than many of my other devices they have solid connections and little baby 2032 batteries, etc that last YEARS. I also have disabled chime, entry countdown, exit countdown on every one except the upstairs hallway. 

(edited)

8 Messages

May go to Threads/IG to post and see if this issue can gather more folks having the same problem.  Maybe then SS will tackle this problem - or lose customers going forward.   It's SimpliUnacceptable. 

2 Messages

5 months ago

Same issue here. Come on SimpliSafe! How about a hard wired solution?

2 Messages

5 months ago

Updated post just to squash any aspects whatsoever of 'interference' as cause:
I replaced the 4 batteries with brand new, tested, full batteries - placed the siren about 3 feet from the base station. I disabled all chimes, countdowns for entry/exit.  

"Siren offline" in exactly 6 days.

@jlsilvestrini I don't disagree with this as an option, but a battery option opens tremendous flexibility for placement, and to me placement of such device is pretty paramount.  For what it's worth, you can probably find some plug-battery solution on amazon like this: AC Power Supply Adapter for 4 AA Battery

3 Messages

5 months ago

As consumers it is not our job to fix or troubleshot defective or poorly engineered equipment.

It is not convenient to pull down my siren and replace the batteries once a week, twice a month, once a month, once a quarter or whatever. Its really unfortunate because everything else works well but the siren to me is huge and worth changing systems over.

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