Wireless panic button took down an entire office network

Got a call last week from a medical office in Portland. They said their alarm kept triggering false alarms every 2 hours. I figured it was a bad sensor or low battery. Turns out the wireless panic button was on the same frequency as their WiFi router. Soon as I moved the receiver 15 feet away from their server room, it stopped happening. Has anyone else run into interference issues with newer wireless alarm gear?

2 comments

2 Comments

hugoj8622d ago

Honestly I'm not sure about that. I've put in probably 50 wireless panic buttons over the last 3 years and never once had a WiFi interference issue. They run on 900 MHz or Z-Wave mostly, not the same 2.4 or 5 GHz bands as WiFi. Last month I installed one in a dentist office with the receiver sitting right next to their Unifi access point and it's been fine for 6 weeks now. Could be that Portland office had a defective unit or someone accidentally paired it to the wrong frequency channel.

diana_flores2522d ago

No yeah that makes total sense. I had almost the exact same thing happen at a small law firm I helped out. The client kept saying their motion sensors were randomly going off every couple hours. I swapped out the batteries and even replaced the whole panel but nothing fixed it. Finally I noticed their WiFi router was literally mounted on the wall right next to the alarm control box. I moved the router maybe 10 feet away to the other side of the room and the false alarms just stopped completely. Crazy how sensitive some of these newer wireless modules are to interference, especially the ones that advertise long range.