Preventing false alarms

Your Ring Alarm system is designed to keep you safe, but as with any home security system, false alarms can occur. A false alarm is when your alarm is accidentally triggered, despite there being no actual security issue. 

When you understand the causes of false alarms and how to prevent them, you’ll be able to eliminate the risk and feel comfortable keeping your home secure.

What are the causes of false alarms?

False alarms are most often caused by human error. These mistakes often include:

• Using entry and exit delays that are too short.
• Poorly-planned device installation, such as placing a Motion Detector across from a busy window or a heat source.
• Improperly mounting Contact Sensors.
• Not testing to see if your large pet will trigger the Motion Detector.
• Arming in Away Mode instead of Home Mode when you’re at home.
• Not providing caregivers who access your home (including dog walkers and babysitters) with a Guest User Alarm code, and not teaching them how to arm and disarm correctly.

How do you prevent false alarms?

Preventing false alarms is a matter of taking a few simple steps to reduce or eliminate the chance of having them.

Easy ways to prevent false alarms:

• Make your emergency contacts Shared Users on your account so they can arm and disarm and check on your Ring Alarm.
• Make sure that everyone in your home is comfortable arming and disarming the Alarm with the Keypad, using a 4-digit access code. Many false alarms happen when someone enters the wrong Keypad code. If you can quickly disarm your alarm and answer the call from the monitoring centre, you may be able to cancel the dispatch and the false alarm.
• Make sure your guests, visitors and caregivers can also disarm your Ring Alarm using their own 4-digit guest user access code. If you have someone staying with you for a while, make sure they're comfortable arming and disarming the system. Don't forget people like the babysitter, house cleaner and dog walker too. Anyone who can enter your house when you're not around should have a code to operate the system.

 Click here to learn more about Shared Users.

The following articles can offer some examples for you to practice with:

Click here to read about arming, disarming and setting modes on your Ring Alarm, as well as setting your entry delay and exit delay. 

• Pet-proof your alarm system so they don’t trigger false alarms. Your Ring Alarm comes with pet-immune Motion Detectors that should ignore animals in your home up to about 3.5 stone, when mounted at 2.1 metres above the floor, on the lowest sensitivity setting. If you have a larger animal, you may need to make some special accommodations to make sure they don't set off your alarm.

Click here to learn more about pets and your Ring Alarm.

• Ensure elements within your home won’t accidentally set off Motion Detectors. This can include helium balloons, rotating fans, shiny objects, flickering lights, and curtains placed over an air vent. Any movement within your home can trigger the Motion Detector when your Ring Alarm is armed in Away Mode, setting off a false alarm.  
• Replace low batteries and faulty equipment immediately. If your Ring Alarm sends you a notification that a contact sensor has a low battery, we recommend that you replace it immediately. If a device breaks in some way, bypass it when you arm your home and replace the battery as soon as possible.

With a little care and attention to detail, you can make sure that false alarms never happen in your home.