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I just got a viper alarm installed today and I had them add a motion sensor to it. Now I'm back home and all I keep hearing is the alarm warning me. It is raining and I searched the threads and one guy said water on the glass would set them off. Is that true and do they become more sensitive at night???

 
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they chirp when someone wakes them up.

sensitivity should be able to be adjusted. go back, tell them whats going on, and they can fix it

 
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you should have an option to turn off the motion sensor, and set it to where it will go off if the car door/trunk opens. motion sensors suck sometimes, because if there are cars with loud exhausts, etc... that pass by, it will go off. it's annoying. i only set my motion sensor at night in front of the house, when i'm sleeping and there's less traffic or not many cars around.

 
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If morning dew sets off your alarm, it's way too sensitive. Turn it way down or off. It is possible to break a window without the motion sensor going off, regardless of sensitivity. So if you turn up the sensitivity and tick off your neighbours, that's your perogative. I'd turn the motion sensor way down and spend a bit of money to get a glass break sensor, because once the glass break sensor is set, they don't false.

 
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Yea I had been working with the sensitivity on the alarm and the motion sensor. Its got the 2 stages and I turned both of them down which helped a lot. I can also unplug the motion sensor all together. How does the motion sensor actually work anyway and how could clear water pass through? I had my backglass broken into a couple of weeks ago and I am trying to prevent the glass break from happening. ($147 down the drain)

 
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The motion sensor is a piezoelectric element. It basically generates a small amount of current when it vibrates (eg. during an impact, truck driving by, car with a stupid ricer muffler). An amplifier/detector circuit then steps up the current and generates a ground signal which triggers your alarm. When you adjust the sensitivity of the sensor you are effectively adjusting the threshold magnitude of the current which triggers the alarm. Really, these things are noisemakers and a nuisance. They don't do much to prevent glass from being broken because there are ways to break tempered glass without creating enough vibration to set off the alarm. A glass break sensor on the other hand, is a microphone with a similar amplifier circuit, but it has a high bandpass filter which discriminates between the types of noise and vibration it responds to. It rejects low bandwidth stuff like subwoofers, mufflers, truck vibrations, while listening for the high pitched sound of glass breaking. The only thing that can make these false is leaving your window open and alarm armed while parked (a very bad idea in any case). A truck which squeals its brakes with the windows down will set off the glass break sensor.

 
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Yep Yep. Agree with tacheon. I got the RSX kit, which is what the viper kit is based on. I have the motion sensor as well and when I first got it, it chirped for everything. You should definitely decrease sensitivity, which decreases how close someone has to be to the car. You should be able to do it since it is just a screw. I have it set up where it only goes off inside, so if I got the window open, if someone sticks his hand inside it goes off.

 
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I agree with tacheon on the fact that they are nothing more than noisemakers. If I could, I would remove it altogether, but that would just be a waste of my 12 dollars. To tell you the truth, I am at the point where I just ignore the sensor when it sends a warn to the pager.

 
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yeah thats what I'm thinking. I did adjust it some and got it to quit going off so much. I also found that when I let all the air out of my bags and leave the car the struts start to settle and it sends small vibrations that are setting off the main alarm. So not everytime the alarm was chirpin it was from movement. Think I finally got it tuned about where i want it though.