so I have pretty standard window sensors ... a magnet on the window, and a little plastic panel with screw-in connectors for holding the wires.

when I open a window in the house, my alarm panel beeps once and says "upstairs window". fine.

but when I open this one window in my bedroom, the panel beeps and says upstairs window over and over again, until I either tell it to bypass the window sensors or close the window.

I pulled the sensor off. it turns out this window has another set of wires going to the other window in the room, but that window works fine. very strange.

I can reproduce the behavior by connecting and disconnecting the wires directly. I can't figure out why it would tell me multiple times, but only this one window?

this window has two wires going to it. the black line from one wire is connected to the red line from the other wire. then the red line from the first wire and the black line from the second wire went into the screw connecters on the plastic window sensor.

 

Welcome to the forums.

A magnetic switch is a set of contacts that shorts when you close the window. It sounds like the contacts may be bouncing,

If the circuit responds normally by opening and closing the wiring manually.... then you'll need to change the switch.

 

System brand ?
Wired or wireless?

 

wired.

the problem is reproducible with the switch completely removed; if I leave all wires at the window disconnected, the panel alerts about an open window over and over instead of just once. if i touch the correct two wires together, it stops and thinks the window is closed. I can't get it to think the window is open yet only alert me once, like it does with all the other windows. (this is when the system is disarmed of course)

 

Ok.....wired system and the brand of the alarm is ................ ??

When you work with this equipment all the time you get to see all kinds of strange problems and this is one of them.

Just to clarify..... you have several windows on that zone and you are having trouble only with that one window ?

 

all the upstairs windows are on the same zone, and the downstairs windows are on another zone. only this one window is causing the problem.

the alarm company is monitronics and it uses alarm.com. I'm not actually sure of anything more specific. I'll poke around in the panel and see what I can find.

 

the control panel says go!control on it

 

Oh, great, Monitronics has jumped on the 2-Gig band wagon:
2GIG Technologies - Go!Control Control Panel

The problem with this is that Monitronic routinely locks down the programming access on most systems that they retail. The problem you are having is almost certainly a programming configuration error, and _they_ are the only ones who can access programming to fix it.

Somewhere in your system is a module that connects the hardwired infrastructure to the wireless 2-gig system, and they have something in that particular input programmed incorrectly.

In short, you need to have your installer fix the glitch.

 

yes, I found the book for it ... I have a 2GIG-CNTRL2 (2GIG-CP2)

thanks for the info!

 

I have the installer toolbox access code. I went in there and it's pretty non-intuitive. I was able to get it to list all the configuration items, there were over 100 of them.

one item looked sort of interesting: "troubles resound after holdoff" is set to 0/disabled

 

my "Swinger shutdown count" is set to 2. default is 1. another possible candidate?

 

so the upstairs windows are on "RF Sensor 2". the equipment code for that sensor is (0637) HW D/W “5816”

 

I'm actually surprised that the software access was not locked down (very non-Monitronic...). The swinger shutdown _might_ be the problem. That's normally intended to prevent repeated trips from the same door/window or motion (picture a loose door swinging in the wind...)

That contact is apparently a Honeywell/Ademco 5816. One possibility is that they set the wrong loop input. Loop 2 is the built in reed switch; Loop 1 is the external contact input. Programming the wrong loop for the application can make alarm systems act quite odd. I would look at the settings for that particular transmitter.

I'm guessing that they may have replaced a Honeywell/Ademco system with the 2-gig (which are fairly new to the market; and can take over Ademco transmitters).

 

it is set to use loop number 1. I guess I can try switching it to loop 2 and see what happens. you'd think it wouldn't work at all though if it was set to the wrong loop?