Magnetic Door Contact

[juwi_uk]

I love being woken up at 2:30 in the morning by one of my door contacts triggering and announcing itself as being open; it has just started doing it repeatedly!

It\'s a heavy duty sensor that supports wider gaps (up to 40mm) but I\'m running it with just a 25mm gap. Its a normally open reed switch so the magnet keeps closed.

I\'ve fired up Comfigurator and can see it triggering on/off in I/O monitor.

I unchecked the \"Announce\" checkbox and did a selective write to Comfort but it still kept announcing; so remind me what does that checkbox do?.     I then set the \"On\" response to null and did a selective write and now the sound has stopped.

Sat hear now at 3am watching I/O Monitor;  what else could I be doing at this time of the morning? hock:

I could see it triggering on/off a few times after that but now as I write this it seems to have stopped in the I/O window and I\'m left with just the Flag updates from my UCM/HM every few seconds.

Any ideas;  do you think it is the sensor or Comfort wrongly sensing. Surely there\'s not much to go wrong in the sensor apart from the magnet having enough Oomph to keep the contact closed and surely it shouldn\'t loose that over 2-3 years should it?

Confused and \"Sleepless in Newbury\"!

Julian

 

 

 

 

[slychiu]

The announce box causes the zone announcement when the zone opens so unchecking it shiuld stop it

Your Zone Response may also have the announce zone response, so thaat could have also caused the announcement

It is unlikely that Comfort would give the wrong detection of zone

It is more likely that the magnet has weakened, as permanent magnets lose their magnetism over time. It may have been 40 mm but the strength may have reduced now

try opening the door slightly andn see at what distance the contact iss detected

[palmlodge]

I\'ve had the same quite a few times. Always had to replace the door sensor.

I\'m waiting for the next one to fail, but I\'ve yet to find a source for resilient units. If you hear of anything, please do let us know.

[mikeinnc]

When I installed my contacts, back in 2001 when I was building my house, I replaced quite a few of the magnets that came with the sensors with rare-earth magnets I bought from a \'magnet supplier\' (yes, there was such a business - supplying schools and labs etc!). I\'ve never had a problem since...... 

I know quite a few of the websites, like DX.com, sell these today.

[mikeinnc]

Well, I may have spoken too soon.  Just like juwi_uk, I\'ve been woken at random - usually in the early hours of the morning - with a \"window open\" announcement. That wasn\'t too bad (I could have just turned the announce off!) but when it fired the alarm in the middle of the day yesterday, it was the last straw. The particular sensors are magnetic and there are two in series (two windows in the room). The wiring is now almost impossible to access as it was \'embedded\' in the (double brick) building during construction. I have measured the loop resistance at the panel and it is 9.5 ohms when closed. The (top hung) windows are completely and firmly closed, and it takes a good 20mm of opening for the circuit to respond (it\'s those rare earth magnets!) As a reference, another loop with four sensors in series measures 3.6 ohms, and a single door sensor loop, 2.3 ohms. So, my question is, what is the tolerance for \'digital inputs i.e what range constitutes a \"short circuit\"? For now, I have swapped the loop with another to see if the s/c tolerance on the other panel input is better, but if this doesn\'t work, could I use EOL resistance (and change the loop type accordingly) to swamp the higher-than-expected loop resistance? Many thanks!

[slychiu]

9.5 ohms will not cause the zone to be detected as open, it needs more than a few hundred ohms. As this is an intermittent issue which just started to occur they may be otther issues which cause this, perhaps strong electrical interference 
What is the sensitivity of the zone type, Increase to the maximum 800 ms so that noise may be ignored

[Swiss-Toni]

Possibility that it could be damage to the wiring causing intermitten contact (worse case scenario), have you tired doing an insulation test on the wiring, or do  buzz test from the end that is in the comfort panel with both the contact closed & open. This would also test the contact if it does not pass the test I would then be inclined to test the contact and cable run seperatley if it is possible.

[Swiss-Toni]

[user=5347]mikeinnc[/user] wrote:

Well, I may have spoken too soon.  Just like juwi_uk, I\'ve been woken at random - usually in the early hours of the morning - with a \"window open\" announcement. That wasn\'t too bad (I could have just turned the announce off!) but when it fired the alarm in the middle of the day yesterday, it was the last straw. The particular sensors are magnetic and there are two in series (two windows in the room). The wiring is now almost impossible to access as it was \'embedded\' in the (double brick) building during construction. I have measured the loop resistance at the panel and it is 9.5 ohms when closed. The (top hung) windows are completely and firmly closed, and it takes a good 20mm of opening for the circuit to respond (it\'s those rare earth magnets!) As a reference, another loop with four sensors in series measures 3.6 ohms, and a single door sensor loop, 2.3 ohms. So, my question is, what is the tolerance for \'digital inputs i.e what range constitutes a \"short circuit\"? For now, I have swapped the loop with another to see if the s/c tolerance on the other panel input is better, but if this doesn\'t work, could I use EOL resistance (and change the loop type accordingly) to swamp the higher-than-expected loop resistance? Many thanks!

You say you have it on a digital input! magnetic contacts do not use a digital imprint as they are strictly an open/closed circuit,
You should have the zone setup as Door/window input in comfort comfigurator it should not make any difference that the contacts are in series......
If it is setup as a digital input and the cables are run within 100mm of electrical cables their is a possiability of an emf field causing it to trigger a responce (unlikely but a possiability)

[Swiss-Toni]

I have noticed that my response output comands have been altered and responses that used to have names now have numbers, at first I didnt really pay attention to it until I found that some command have been altered and had to edit complete responses as the name said one thing but the comand line said another ie side lights of and comand would be output 1 off but when checked the actual comand would be Output 1 on. I think this maybe what has been happening for these random lights functions. (comfigurator V3 10.4.0)

[tech07]

If the response numbers have changed to numbers, this should have been caused by reading from Comfort using an older version of Comfigurator
Comfigurator now has 2 options when reading from Comfort

• Keep names from configuration
• autogenerate names from Action code

Th 1st option may lead to errors if response numbers changed due to adding actions