Alarm randomly going off

[jameswhit]

Hi,

I’ve had an issue the last few nights where my alarm on my 68 plate Leon has been randomly going off!

The first night I heard it because it was around 11pm so went down to turn it off but our neighbour has informed me it was going off the other night too and the lights were flashing in the middle of the night.

I didn’t hear the sound last night but I woke up around 1am and it was flashing again for no apparent reason.

Has anybody got any ideas what could be causing this issue? I’ve got no warning lights on the dash or anything! It’s also really odd how it’s only happening during the night, I’ve not noticed it all when it’s been sat on the drive during the day and no one has mentioned it at work either.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

Thank you,
James.

 

[SRGTD]

A dying car battery can cause the alarm to randomly sound, so if your battery is nearing the end of its life it might be worth changing it. Some dash cams have been known to drain the battery when they’re set to monitoring mode, so if you have a dash cam and use monitoring mode, it might be worth switching it off for a few nights to see if the false alarms stop. Also, check to see if any interior lights are staying on (e.g. boot light) that might be drawing current; probably not an issue in the short term if your battery’s in good health, but might be if the battery is in poor health.

Lastly, if any large insects have found their way into your car, the alarm’s motion sensors can pick them up and trigger the alarm; you can check whether that’s the cause of your false alarms by switching off the alarm’s interior monitoring - press the lock button on the key fob twice when you lock your car (the alarm will still remain active; it’s just the interior monitoring that’ll be deactivated).

 

[jameswhit]

A dying car battery can cause the alarm to randomly sound, so if your battery is nearing the end of its life it might be worth changing it. Some dash cams have been known to drain the battery when they’re set to monitoring mode, so if you have a dash cam and use monitoring mode, it might be worth switching it off for a few nights to see if the false alarms stop. Also, check to see if any interior lights are staying on (e.g. boot light) that might be drawing current; probably not an issue in the short term if your battery’s in good health, but might be if the battery is in poor health.

Lastly, if any large insects have found their way into your car, the alarm’s motion sensors can pick them up and trigger the alarm; you can check whether that’s the cause of your false alarms by switching off the alarm’s interior monitoring - press the lock button on the key fob twice when you lock your car (the alarm will still remain active; it’s just the interior monitoring that’ll be deactivated).

Ah thank you, very useful info

Will try disabling the interior monitoring tonight and see if that makes any difference. I did notice the battery voltage has dropped to approx 12.03 volts when I checked it with a multimeter, so not sure if that could be a sign of the battery being on its way out or not? Believe it’s the original battery.

Thanks!

 

[BrianOrtim]

This might be a bit of a stupid comment but I had the same problem - alarm goes off randomly when the car was locked. Especially fun during the night for all the neighbours. Eliminated animals jumping on it, electrical faults, weather conditions.

After about a year, in a real "duh" moment figured out that it was the dashcam attached with a suction cup getting unglued from the window every now and then, dangling from its cable and setting of the internal alarm.

Doesn't need to be anything quite so obviously silly as that, but loose objects in the cabin and insects as per the first comment in retrospect seem like a good place to start...

 

[jameswhit]

This might be a bit of a stupid comment but I had the same problem - alarm goes off randomly when the car was locked. Especially fun during the night for all the neighbours. Eliminated animals jumping on it, electrical faults, weather conditions.

After about a year, in a real "duh" moment figured out that it was the dashcam attached with a suction cup getting unglued from the window every now and then, dangling from its cable and setting of the internal alarm.

Doesn't need to be anything quite so obviously silly as that, but loose objects in the cabin and insects as per the first comment in retrospect seem like a good place to start...

Thank you! After the third time of going in and out of my car I did find a moth hiding between the passenger door trim and the door itself, so I’m hoping this was the culprit. Would make sense that it was only active at nighttime I guess too.