“AT&T Home Security System - Cleaning Smoke Detector”

 By Ron Stultz

21 Dec 2010

Summary: if an AT&T smoke detector is alarming when there is no smoke or fire, it probably requires a cleaning. Cleaning is not difficult.

AT&T Home Security System smoke detectors normally function without any sort of maintenance but if a smoke detector starts alarming when there is no smoke or fire present, it might be that dust or a spider web is inside the smoke particle detection chamber. To determine if this is the case: 

(1) Using a wireless keypad, enter your home's security code, press the “OFF” button and then on the CC press the “TEST/DEMO” button. When “0.” appears in the CC status display window, remove the batteries from the smoke detector to be serviced.

(2) Open the smoke detector by pressing on the small tab on one side of the detector and swinging the cover off the internals of the smoke detector.

(3) Inside the smoke detector, mounted to the circuit board is a small black box covering the actual smoke detector device. This black box is held to the printed circuit board by 2 tabs, which stick into the board. Using your thumb and forefinger, squeeze the box where the front tab goes into the board and lift up and pull the box towards the rear tab. Once the front tab is out of the small slot in the circuit board, it is easy to get the rear box tab out of the circuit board hole it is positioned into.

(3) Turn the small black box upside down and remove the wire screen inside it.

(4) Using a can of compressed air (available at Staples and other retail stores) clean the inside of the small black box. Then use the can of air to blow over the black detector mounted on the circuit board. This detector has several "holes" in it. One "hole" is a light emitter and the other a detector. Should dirt accumulate on the detector, if will false alarm. Spider webs are a common source of problems inside the detector black box.

(5) Once you have cleaned the inside of the black box and the black detector assembly on the circuit board, Re-insert small black box onto circuit board. Note that the tabs on the black box are not the same size and thus orient the black box so the tabs match the hole size on the printed circuit board. Again squeezing the box at the tabs towards the middle of the box, insert the black box tabs into the circuit board.

(6) Re-insert the batteries.

(7) Using a wireless keypad, enter the security code and press the “OFF” button.

I have 2 AT&T Home Security System smoke detectors. Over the 16 year period I have had the system, I have had to only clean one detector one time and turned out to be a spider web.