Troubleshooting

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Table Of Contents

Not receiving alerts? Try This Checklist First.

Review SETUP instructions carefully. Did you miss a step?
Fully charge the battery. Charging takes a few hours. The orange light indicates charging. After complete, unplug micro-USB cable. Note: Battery must be at least 3.7 volts and output 650mAh. Do not use high voltage or lower voltage batteries, as they will not work and may void warranty. Lastly: if battery is too low, it won't send an alert.
Plug in wired antenna. Ensure antenna is screwed to magnetic base. Occasionally, antenna gets unscrewed from the circular magnetic base. Do a fit check!
Try moving the sensor to a new location with known cellular signal to see if you get alerts. Note: Your first alert can take up to 10 minutes receive. After the first successful alert, each consecutive alert should be 20-30s.
Did you arm your sensor properly? If the sensor isn't armed, it won't triggered and send an alert; Your sensor is ready to trigger after 5 seconds without seeing motion, light or vibration. It will not trigger if it continues to detect any light, motion or vibration. When in doubt, place in a drawer for 5-10 seconds and open the drawer. The blue light indicates motion detected, and the green/red LEDs indicate attempting alert transmission. You want to see the green/red LEDs flashing! Not just the blue.
Still not receiving alerts? Remove the battery and re-inserting the battery to reset the sensor and try this last step again.
If you see “No data…”, on the app, trigger an alert first! Or, if the app says "server timeout", that is temporary and goes away after a few minutes.
Is your phone in "Do Not Disturb" or "Airplane" mode? Do you have notifications turned on and are able to receive SMS texts? Did you block the Simtek number or not accept Push Notification permissions for the Simtek app? Make sure your phone is turned on, you have cellular service or wifi, and setup the Simtek app. Click EDIT in the Simtek App on your device, and make sure the device address matches the numbers under your QR code. Additionally, ensure you see your phone number in the “subscriber” section of the EDIT screen in the Simtek app and have push notifications turned on.
Please check to ensure you did not block Push Notifications for the Simtek app!
Don’t see your problem here? Check out FAQ or SETUP. Feel free to email help@simtek.io if you've gone through this checklist and haven't many any progress. We will ALWAYS ask for a photo of your QR code (or the last four digits of the long alphanumeric number under the QR code, whichever is easier to send) so our team can review your sensor. In 99% of cases we are able to successfully resolve issues. Most issues are caused by battery being too low, or the unit is not correctly armed (ie someone leaves it out in the open and wonders why it isn't being triggered! Well, it didn't arm yet, needs to be dark/motionless first).

Not receiving alerts consistently every time?

First, perform ‘Not receiving any alerts?’ section.
Take your sensor out of the area it’s in, and try to get alerts in an area with known good service (example, from the safe to a desk drawer)
Attach the external antenna and try to arm/trigger your device.
Is it low on battery? It won’t send alerts if battery voltage is under 3.4volts.
Is the antenna screwed in tight to its' magnetic base? Sometimes that becomes loose.
Did you recently move it to a different location or change its orientation? Signal depends on coverage + antenna position and size. Poor coverage but good antenna position and a large antenna size (external) is fine. Poor for all three can make the alerts take longer, or potentially not come at all. This is and should be rare, but make sure you have the external antenna plugged in, and as close to an opening on your safe as you can. Place it alongside the edge where there’s a gap for best results. You may have to string the antenna outside the safe.
Did you unsubscribe from alerts or notifications on your Simtek app?
Did you delete the Simtek app? Did you block the Simtek phone number on your phone?
Do you have silent mode turned on your phone? Do you still have the same phone?
Do you have wifi or cellular signal on your phone? In order to receive alerts, your phone also needs either wifi and/or cellular service and it can't be on airplane mode.

Don’t see your problem here? Head on over to FAQ or SETUP.

If you can’t resolve on your own, contact help@simtek.io and describe your problems. Include a photo of your QR code in the email and your problem.

Alerts taking longer than 30s-60s to receive?

Remove and re-insert your battery.
Insert the external antenna and ensure it's properly mounted.
Move the antenna so it’s positioned near a gap, opening, crease, hole, door, etc. Closer to the opening, the better.
Check your battery level.
Check your signal level in the app.
Try moving your sensor to a new location, and triggering it.
If none of these options work, you can use a different, separate simcard that has data and sms as long as it’s GSM based and take ours out. ***Note, this is highly not recommended as we don’t have any control over the performance or compatibility. It will not ruin your device.
Additionally, we are working on firmware that will allow the device to recognize this slow performance and switch carriers. Currently, we have firmware that will switch carriers in new areas/countries, and will find a new carrier if it can’t register at all. But increasing performance is the next one we’re working on, so reach out and hang tight.
Don’t see your problem here? Check out FAQ or SETUP.

Can’t download the app?

Make sure you have either an Android or iOS device. See the playstore and app store listing for compatibility with your device (Note: no ipads/tablets/tvs at this time).
Check out SETUP.

Can’t subscribe to your sensor?

Download the app, then scan the QR code or manually type in the device number (number under the QR code).
Continue through the flow until you see a success box and you are into the activity screen which should show either “No data…” or your recent activity. If you see the “No data…” language, you will need to arm and trigger your device to get alerts. They will show up here.
Check out SETUP.

Simtek App was showing alerts, now it’s not?

Note: 99% of problems are NOT with the Simtek mobile app! It is almost always a problem with the sensor itself if you are not receiving alerts.
Most app issues are temporary server timeouts. If you see the “No data..trigger your device” message, it’s probably temporary and should resolve on it’s own in 15-30 minutes or less. If you just purchased your sensor and see "No data..trigger your device" you need to get the first alert since it's brand new.
Pull down to refresh the activity page, or quit the app and restart it.
Always download the Simtek app updates. Check this, by going to the app store. If the Google or Apple store says "open" you're already on the latest Simtek mobile app version. If it says "update",. please update the app.

Location Data Inaccurate?

This is a known problem that some sensors experience. The sensor uses cellular locational triangulation, which means that the accuracy is dependent on how many cellular towers are in the area. The more cellular towers your device can hit, the more accurate the location will be. We've seen the location data be very accurate and wildly inaccurate. Unfortunately, this isn't something within our control and we do not recommend you use the sensor as a pinpoint exact accurate source of location data. We're trying to work with the telecommunication networks to increase the accuracy in the future but at this time there isn't anything we can do to improve it on our end. We give this data as a free service to you, and cannot promise or guarantee location accuracy as it's dependent on your specific area.

Battery not inserting well?

This is a known problem that again only affects a small number of people. The happy accident in this is that your device will be less likely to experience sabotage because the intruder will have to spend more time trying to get the battery out. We did not intend for this battery door issue, but once we found the issue we decided that it was actually a tamper-resistant feature which arose out of this bug.

Can't see all my devices in the app

Swipe left or right! After you've added your devices, you simply swipe left or right in the app to cycle through them.

Where is Temperature, Humidity & Location?

Tap on any alert in the app which will bring up the detail page showing temperature, humidity and location (if it's on. Once you tap on the alerts, you will find the detail page.

I'm getting false motion, light or vibration alerts.

The StealthALERT sensor rarely, if ever, has true false alerts. Which sensor was triggered is important. If it was light, then you almost certainly without question have a light source bleeding through and triggering the sensor. Is the sun hitting it at the perfect angle and bouncing off the floor up the door or a small gap? Is there an interior light, that is most likely randomly turning on? If it was a motion alert, you may have either a human or animal detected and may want to adjust your StealthALERT angle. If the white dome (infrared motion sensor) is facing down on the floor where rodents could be running around, move your sensor up higher or make it horizonal so the white dome can't see the floor and that should help. If it was vibration, did you receive many (dozen+) vibration alerts in quick succession? If so, reach out to us at help@simtek.io because vibration is the ONLY sensor of the three, that is susceptible to false alarms, because it does a calculation of X,Y,Z access and in the past we did have a bug that was fixed on all new firmware. The other two sensors, light and infrared motion, do not work that way and will only trigger if they are truly detecting any visible light or infrared movement.

Want to change the alert sound on my app?

On your Android, go to Settings > Apps > Select the app > Notifications > Notification categories > Select a category > Sound and choose your desired sound. On your iPhone, go to Settings > Sounds and Haptics > Default Alerts > Select the desired tone. Note: on iPhone the tone is not app specific, but on Android it can be.

How can I maximize battery life?

Use a USB power bank or solar charger to extend battery life if your application is in construction or not in a home environment. You can optionally keep your unit plugged in to an outlet 100% of the time via the USB input. Make sure you only use 3.7v RCR123A batteries. If you use a battery with not enough voltage (like 3v) your sensor will not have enough voltage to boot up the modem and will not operate. We recommend the Nitecore NL166 or NL169 for even more battery life.

Can I add a second or third sensor?

Tap the Gear icon > Add a sensor. You can add unlimited sensors to your Simtek app. Swipe over with your thumb to see and manage each sensor in the app!

Still need help?

Review FAQ or SETUP, your question or issue may be there.

9 out of 10 times the best advice is to fully charge the battery and test your sensor in a new location to verify if it sends you an alert. The most common issue is the sensor was not properly armed; No Light, No Motion and No Vibration for 5 seconds. Even a sliver of light, or slight jostle or you twitching your eye would prevent it from arming!

Email help@simtek.io for support and include:

Description of problem and what you tried
Photo of the QR code or last 4 digits of the device ID