Napco Wireless Gem-PIR

I don't use the Gem...but

Depends on how they are set, what they are looking at, room activity when testing, mounting height,...etc. Read the directions on what the settings should be. If you're going by the led stay out of the room for 5 minutes or so then walk test it.

Ah..didn't realize it was wireless. Yes, wireless pirs are usually designed to trip only every couple of minutes to save battery life.

Wireless motions will usually go dormant for about two to three minutes after they've detected motion. Actually only the transmitters usually go dormant but not the sensors. The following scene will demonstrate how it works:

The PIR is sitting there for an hour and someone walks into the room as a party begins. The motion detector, sensing them, will trip once. For the next 4 hours there is no time that the "detector" isn't sensing motion. However, the unit will not *transmit* another open signal to the transceiver for that whole period of time. At the end of the party everyone leaves the room. Not until two or three minutes after the last person leaves will the detector be able to send another open signal to the transceiver. As you can imagine, if this weren't so, you'd be changing batteries in wireless PIR's every week or so.

Wireless PIR's fall asleep for a couple of minutes after each activation to conserve the batteries........ Regards, Russ

Depends on how they are set, what they are looking at, room activity when testing, mounting height,...etc. Read the directions on what the settings should be. If you're going by the led stay out of the room for 5 minutes or so then walk test it.

Thank you all for your replies.

I did not realize there was a 2 or 3 minute dormant period.

Thanks

That's done to conserve battery power. Without it the battery would be quickly exhausted in a room where there is a lot of motion.

My guess is the reason for that is because they make no mention of it in the motion installation guide

1-way wireless detectors do this to maximise battery life. Some wireless detectors actually increase this delay after each activation upto a maximum delay usually documented somewhere (but sometimes not). So, after the first activation the detector may go to sleep for 30 seconds, if another activation occurs within that 30 seconds then the detector goes to sleep for 1 minute and so on. Sometimes up to a few minutes. This can make arming the panel a lengthy process as the detector may not be active after arming for a few minutes. In cases such as these for maximum security the property owner usually has to wait around a couple of minutes after arming commemces for the detectors to be fully operational.

In low traffic areas that detectors sleep time is kept low on variable delay systems.

2-way wireless does not suffer from this problem as the alarm panel can tell the detector to wake-up or go to sleep depending on the arm status of the panel. This is usually immediate regardless of the number of activations at the detector prior to arming. Conversly, when the panel is disarmed the detectors never activate (unless they are 24h types). 2-way systems conserve battery power in this way and generally get longer battery life as a result.

Ooops. Very long reply. Sorry.

GEM PIRS act exactly that way to save batteries. The thought being if the alarm is armed and the system is active it only needs to trip once from an intruder. Not over and over again.

If you put it in walk test mode you can activate it repeatedly for a couple minutes to check its coverage.