M1G Areas - Need Help

DotNetDog

Active Member
Let's talk M1G areas... I'm trying to decide how to best setup my M1G for my situation.

In my house we have a basement. Half of the basement is an in-law suite...complete with bedroom, bathroom, full kitchen, laundry room and living area. The other half of the basement is a bar, media room, exercise room and storage.

There is a sound-proof wall with a solid interior door separating the halves of the basement.

With my M1G system I have 4 keypads. One in the media room of the basement and another in the in-law suite. One one the main floor and the 4th in the master bedroom.

Here is my goal...
  • I want my MIL (mother-in-law) to be able to arm/disarm her area independently of the rest of the house
  • I want to be able to arm/disarm the rest of the house independently of the MIL suite
  • I want to be able to arm/disarm the entire house at the same time
So....I can think of two ways of defining the areas:
  1. Define the house except for the MIL suite as Area 1 and then the MIL suite as Area 2
  2. Define the house except for the MIL suite as Area 2 and then the MIL suite as Area 3 and then create Area 1 as the entire house (include the MIL suite)
I think that #1 would force me to arm/disarm the entire house in two steps: area1 and then area2.

I think that with #2 I could define areas 2 and 3 to be "common" to area 1. Then I could arm/disarm either: area 1 (entire house), area 2 (house without the MIL suite) or area 3 (MIL suite).

Thoughts?
 
Oops! I just read this from the M1G Install Manual...
"Once armed, Area 1 will disarm if any common area becomes disarmed"

So much idea #2. I'm trying to figure out how to arm/disarm either the MIL-suite, the rest of the house, or the entire house. All with minimal steps (gotta maintain a high WAF).
 
Those guys at Automated outlet are excellent! I just got off the phone with Trey. He explained why "common" areas won't work for what I'm trying to do. Then he explained how I could use rules combined with flags and and F key to accomplish what I want. With one of my goals being a high WAF, I needed it to work very simply. I'm a programmer so writing rules is trivial...I just need it to be easy to use. Trey's ideas were spot on!

Thanks AO and Trey!
 
Care to elaborate on what you did, just for others?

Reading this, my thoughts were to have them as separate areas with no common areas; then use different codes; one for everyday disarming of just the main house, and another that would disarm the whole house (using a rule to disarm the other area).

The function button idea seems like it'd work too... set a flag via a function button and toggle it; and based on the status, disarm the rest of the house. Or even using a function button to monitor the status of the MIL area; and if main house is disarmed, be able to disarm the rest of the house via the button.
 
Sorry about that...I should have elaborated... OK, so to recap the goals:
  • Mother-in-law should be able to arm/disarm her in-law suite independently of the rest of the house
  • I should be able to arm/disarm the "rest of the house" without including the ML suite
  • I should be able to arm/disarm the entire house
  • All of the above with minimal button presses and/or menu navigation (WAF)
So, I defined two areas:
  1. Area 1 is the house without the MIL suite
  2. Area 2 is the MIL suite
I use a phantom output (200) as a flag. The state of it determines if area 1 is armed alone or if arming will include area 2 (entire house).
I use an F key to toggle output (200). A rule watches for a change in output (200) and displays a text message on the keypad for 30 seconds. The message is either "Arm Entire" or "Arm Main" based on the state of output (200).

Also, I time the output (200) state change to alway return to the "Arm Main" state. That's what I want the default arm/disarm to be.

So my MIL can simply press "Stay" or "Exit" and it can't be any easier for her. My wife often runs out during the day and simply press "Exit"...the main house will arm but not the MIL suite. Whenever my wife leaves with her mom she can press the F Key, she sees the message on the keypad and knows that "Exit" will now arm the entire house.

This solution requires a few rules but makes it very easy on my wife and her mom.
 
I think that If you set up a counter to start counting the first time an F key is pressed it will allow you to tell if the key was pressed twice within a few seconds of time. With this you could write a rule to arm local if the key is pressed once and arm all if the key is pressed twice.
 
Mike.
 
I talked with the owner about this tonight and found that they want the default arming to be the ENTIRE home (both Areas), but to use the F-key + Arm to only arm Area 1 (Stay and/or Away).
 
I need to actually do some testing with this, but doing it this way proved to be more difficult in terms of the logic/programming. Unfortunately I wasn't able to test it tonight as there was a lot of traffic and was not able to see many "Ready" states for arming.
 
drvnbysound said:
I talked with the owner about this tonight and found that they want the default arming to be the ENTIRE home (both Areas), but to use the F-key + Arm to only arm Area 1 (Stay and/or Away).
 
I need to actually do some testing with this, but doing it this way proved to be more difficult in terms of the logic/programming. Unfortunately I wasn't able to test it tonight as there was a lot of traffic and was not able to see many "Ready" states for arming.
You could set all zones to forceable in order to arm the system when the zones are not ready to arm. The system will bypass all forceable zones that are not ready and arm. Ot just bypass all zones and then arm. 
 
 
Mike
 
mikefamig said:
You could set all zones to forceable in order to arm the system when the zones are not ready to arm. The system will bypass all forceable zones that are not ready and arm. Ot just bypass all zones and then arm. 
 
 
Mike
 
Understood - there are FA zones in the system already. The difficulty I would have had with this is 1) there are over 50 zones in this system, so changing them to FA for testing isn't trivial 2) I didn't want to have to deal with the system activating the burglar alarm due to the traffic of people coming and going.
 
drvnbysound said:
Understood - there are FA zones in the system already. The difficulty I would have had with this is 1) there are over 50 zones in this system, so changing them to FA for testing isn't trivial 2) I didn't want to have to deal with the system activating the burglar alarm due to the traffic of people coming and going.
I guess I think small, I have only 16 zones in my home system. For the sound though you could turn the volume down for out1 in the global settings. If you have a speaker connected to out2 you could just disconnect it for the test or put one of those 2.2k EOL resistors in series with the speaker and it makes it just audible.
Mike.
 
No worries. It's just a combination of issues when 5-6 people are actively moving amoung a home to perform an operational test on the system - not so much the issue with speakers and the noise, but rather the family setting off zones that I'm not testing. Or in the case mentioned above, moving around in Areas that I'm trying to arm.
 
There is a speaker (SP12F) connected to OUT1 in the MBR, I also have (3) other speakers connected to a TWA that are placed throughout the rest of the home, including one in the MIL suite. I have the TWA programmed to speak in the appropriate zones as planned, but just trying to iron out the details of arming each and both areas when desired.
 
I read the solution and I've done it even simpler....F key arms multiple partitions and each partition still maintains it's own functionality and no additional rules or phantom outputs needed. Press F key for 3 seconds and then arms area(s) to whatever mode and insert the text to fit the "arming", attach the F indicator light to arm state if you want to (but requires rules to look into...most likely phantom outputs being easiest).
 
What do you mean by, "...each partition still maintains it's own functionality..." ?
Isn't that the basis of having separate Areas defined?
 
Also... "Press F key for 3 seconds and then arms area(s) to whatever mode"
What is the F key doing after a 3 second press, that negates the need for a flag?
 
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