That time a faulty motion sensor triggered a full system panic in a finished house

I was doing a final walkthrough on a new install in a big place over in the West End, everything was buttoned up and painted. I powered the panel on and suddenly every single siren in the house started blaring, and the keypad showed a dozen different zones in alarm. My heart just dropped. It turned out one motion sensor on the second floor had a short in its tamper switch wiring, making the panel think every zone was being opened at once. I had to pull the main power and battery, then isolate each zone one by one with a meter to find it. Took me almost two hours to trace it back to that single bad unit. Ever have a simple fault cascade into a total system freakout like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

caleb_ellis16d ago

Every single siren" going off at once sounds like a total nightmare.

luna7516d ago

Imagine the noise making it impossible for emergency crews to talk to each other. They would be totally deaf to their radios. That chaos would stop help from getting where it's needed most. The system is built to be heard, but that volume would break it.