PIR's for Cats

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Captain1

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Hi,

I am new to this forum and came here as I see excellent advice from alarm guru's and found answers from other people’s posts invaluable during the install especially from secureiam so thank you, I had a search through the forum and did see some posts with similar issues as below but they were really old threads so things may have changed since.

I have self-installed a Texecom Prem Elite 64W with a wired expander. I absolutely love the system and find it very versatile, however I have an issue with the wired Capture 15 (AKB-0001) PIR's.

We have 2 cats who have 24/7 access between indoors and outside through a cat flap in the kitchen, this then gives them access to the hallway and landing as there is no door to stop them. With the PIR in pet mode the cats are never picked up and we haven’t had any false alarms, great! however they don't pick up people very often either.

We can walk downstairs in the morning and the hallway PIR won't pick you up as you walk through and start the keypad Beeping to remind you to unset the alarm and then after you are in the kitchen for a little while the kitchen PIR will pick you up and set the alarm off. The PIR's in the rest of the house and external buildings which are not in pet mode work great and pick you up as soon as you enter the room.

As a test I removed the Hallway, landing and kitchen PIR zones off the house area and onto their own area which doesn't get set with the alarm and then set a recipe that would send my phone a notification if they were triggered when the house alarm was set with the PIR's into non pet mode to see if they would get triggered by the cats, I got no notification for 3 days and then I had a notification on both days 4 and 5 that the cats were picked up in the landing twice and hallway once, damn! They don’t tend to climb either and there isn’t anywhere really for them to climb in the hallway or landing.



Options/questions:

  • Recommendation for a wired PIR that will reliably pick up humans but not the Cats (if they exist).
  • Carry on with the 3 sensors in pet mode and hope that if someone does break in the PIR would pick them up and maybe add sensors on these windows.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
 
A neighbour was plagued by small dog false alarms, Eventually a break beam detector was fitted in place for the problematic PIR and since then no more false alarms from the room.
 
Bosch pet detectors or RX 40 ( this is been phased out ) ….please note you can’t have pet detectors facing stairs as it will false alarm
 
sparkymarka said:
Bosch pet detectors or RX 40 ( this is been phased out ) ….please note you can’t have pet detectors facing stairs as it will false alarm
Click to expand...
Thanks for the response. The PIR's can't see the stairs. I will have a look into these 2 PIR's you have recommended, would you preference one over the other?
 
More likely to get hold of the Bosch ones , both have been fine
 

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Cats are more likely to cause false alarms as the jump and climb, our two certainly do.

We always recommend that animals are limited to an area/room in the house if they are staying in or allowed outside.
Perimeter protection is essential to cover that room especially if its low down or easy access.

With PIRs facing the stairs, is the pet gets above the 1.2M threshold of the pet sensor and triggers the alarm.
Because the sensors are blocking out what it sees people can be missed. they wont miss me mind due to my size.

Are the sensors at the right height and flat to the wall.
You can attempt to adjust the pet screen in the PIRs I guess, not tried this but it may in effect allow a little more human detection and would be interested in the results.

I suspect you will find if you take off the pet side of the p15s that they will pick you up okay.
I vaguely recall some issues maybe 12 months or so back regarding the P15s as they stopped providing them for a while (think it may have been component supply issues mind) and replaced in the kits with the Q20, these also had Pet option.

You may want to ask Texecom, directly or ask on their forum for clarification on that one.
 
Thanks for the reply secureiam.

I installed the system in November 2021 so would be around the time you said there may have been an issue with them.

To be fair our cats tend to not climb except onto a bed or sofa to sleep. The younger one has the odd mad moment up and down the stairs.

The stairs are not in view of the hallway PIR but is in view of the landing one, but guessing this is OK as it is lower than the floor level.

All PIR's are flat to the wall and around 2.3m off the floor. I might have a play with the pet filter and see if it makes much difference to human movement. But will definitely give texecom a call and see what they say. I am 6ft 4 and 125kg so if it doesn't pick me up, its unlikely to pick anyone up

Cheers
 
If they are all the same detector P15 hardwired ?
You can unslide and reslide on in the other locations and see how they behave.
You can check the programming and how the system was set?

as for what your cats do, if you filmed them you may be surprised.
I was discussing the location for PIR and they swore blind the cat didn't do X,Y and Z, got them to agree to a camera PIR and pictures of the cat doing all the things they said it didn't do.

We dont recommend petwise sensors at all. Indeed many of my customers that have asked for them I have advised against it and told them why, placed normal detectors in every room and they omit the room the pets are in and have perimeter protection on.
 
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