Motion sensors on stairs, I called it gimmick until a 3am false alarm proved me wrong

Had a job in a split level in Omaha where the homeowner wanted sensors on every step landing. I thought it was overkill, told him a single unit at the top would do. He insisted, so we put three in. Last week a raccoon somehow got in through a pet door and triggered all three in sequence. The panel read it as a person moving up, not one blip. Cop showed up in 8 minutes, caught the thing cornered in the kitchen. That sequencing trick changed how I quote multi level jobs now. Anyone else using zone chaining for stairwells or is it just me?

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wendy39117d ago

Three sensors on one staircase is just asking for trouble when the batteries die at different times, that's the real math nobody talks about. I had a client in Papillion with a similar setup and the middle unit failed silently for two weeks before we caught it, so that raccoon trick is worthless when one link in the chain is dead. Plus, you're tripling the cost of zones and the panel memory for something a single motion at the top catches 95% of the time. The cop showing up fast is luck, not the sensors, because Omaha dispatch is hit or miss depending on the night. You're basically paying for a party trick that only works if every single unit is perfect all the time, and they never are.