Are PIR's always this sensitive?

[Beachcomber]

I installed an inexpensive, battery powered X10 PIR outside my front
door, initially thinking that if I kept it out of direct sunlight, it
would function reliably.

The problem was that it was super-sensitive and would trip as cars
drove by on the street 100 ft away, and often for no reason at all.

So I relocated the unit to face down from the entry overhang. The
false alarms were reduced but not eliminated. I would get a trip
about once or twice a day at totally random times.

Question - Is it typical for a single PIR unit to spontaneously trip
like that? Is that why they have dual PIR units?

What would be a reliable outoor model that could pre-anounce visitors
without false tripping? It does not have to be tied into the main
alarm system.

Beachcomber

 

[Crash Gordon®]

Cheap is very dear.

Inexpensive, battery powered, exterior, sunlight, heat, wind, moving trees, blowing leaves, dust, birds, cats - what more can you ask for?

There's a reason reliable exterior motion detectors are expensive - and even they will false occasionally.

Depending on your layout, maybe you can go to a small dual beam point to point detector where the visitor must pass through the dual beams.

 

[Robert L. Bass]

I installed an inexpensive, battery powered X10 PIR...

The problem was that it was super-sensitive and
would trip as cars drove by on the street 100 ft away,
and often for no reason at all.

Question - Is it typical for a single PIR unit to
spontaneously trip like that? Is that why they have
dual PIR units?

This isn't typical of all outdoor PIRs. Unfortunately, it is typical of X10
products in general and especially so with X10 motion detectors. There have
been countless thousands of posts about problems with X10 devices in other
newsgroups over the years.

What would be a reliable outoor model that could
pre-anounce visitors without false tripping? It does
not have to be tied into the main alarm system.

There's a product I carry called Voice Alert (VA6000) that works well for
this type of application. It's a wireless kit consisting of one receiver /
annunciator and up to six wireless, outdoor motion detector / transmitters.
The annunciator can play a different recorded message or sound for each
detector. It also has four relay outputs which can trigger a loud sounder,
flashing light, etc.

--

Regards,
Robert L Bass

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