Best zone type for water/freeze alarm

[m1u]

For a vacation home that can be unattended for long periods of time, I
want to add a freeze alarm to notice if the heat has failed, and a
water alarm as well. In both cases, I'd like to have a problem
reported to the central station, and also trigger some rules to say,
send an extra email.

My understanding is that although a rule can detect if an elk temp
sensor falls below some value I pick, rules can't trigger reported
alarms... only a zone contact can do that (or you could have a
temperature rule trip an output relay to trip a zone, but that is kind
of indirect). OK, I have a sensor that is like a thermostat: dial in
the threshold freezing/heat failure temperature like 40F degrees on
its dial, and it will close contacts if it falls below that. I can
wire that up with EOLR, and for water sensors I can use a 2800 or
2600.

But I'm not sure what type of zone type to use:

"Type 19 Freeze Alarm 24 hr" seems about right for freeze, and type 25
Water Alarm 24 hr" for flood, since I want a report even if the alarm
has not been armed. The problem with these is that they sound the
siren, even though the manual says that these zone types are not
assigned to outputs unless you write rules to do that. I don't want
the siren to sound for these alarms. Possibly that can be fixed by
checking the "silent alarm" box on these zones in RP? Or by changing
the siren cutoff to zero seconds for FrezDuration ant WatrDuration.
Is there a reason to prefer one approach vs the other?

Another alternative would be to use "Type 13 Auxiliary1 24 hr", which
seems to do exactly what I want. I don't see why I'd even need to use
type 14 Aux2... both freeze and water can be Aux1, and you tell them
apart by zone number. But it seems odd to use a cryptic "aux" type
when "water" and "freeze" are available. So I keep thinking I'm
missing something important in deciding how to set this up.

What is the best approach for this?

 

[apostolakisl]

I am in the same situation. You can check the box "silent alarm" in the zone attribute section, but I still want some sort of local notification.

I can set the voice to speak "water alarm". But it seems as though it will only do that once when it first trips. I would like to see it do that every couple minutes or so until the situation is resolved.

I am looking into perhaps setting a variable when the water alarm trips and then having that variable trip a repeated voice "water alarm".

 

[chedemefedeme]

I am in the same situation. You can check the box "silent alarm" in the zone attribute section, but I still want some sort of local notification.

I can set the voice to speak "water alarm". But it seems as though it will only do that once when it first trips. I would like to see it do that every couple minutes or so until the situation is resolved.

I am looking into perhaps setting a variable when the water alarm trips and then having that variable trip a repeated voice "water alarm".

Set a variable or turn a random highly numbered output on and then write a separate rule that says something like
WHEN every 5 minutes
AND output 120 is ON
THEN speak water alarm


I do wish at times that there were some things ELk would do to reduce the number of redundant rules i have filling my system..but its certainly possible with what we have now.

 

[video321]

I had wrestled with this as well. I ended up keeping it as Type 25 = Water Alarm and set the cutoff timer for water to 0 as I didn't want any sirens going off. Then I wrote a rule to announce "water alarm" 3 times. If I recall correctly, the keypads will continue to beep until I acknowledge the alarm. That will definitely get my attention.

The problem with these is that they sound the
siren, even though the manual says that these zone types are not
assigned to outputs unless you write rules to do that.

The first time I set it up and the exterior siren went off during a test I was like "WHAT!?!?!?!...."

 

[apostolakisl]

I set my water zones to "silent" and can confirm that they still send the system into alarm and they do not sound the siren. I was cleaning hair out of my daughters trap on Saturday(amazing the crap they get in there!) and spilled water on the sensor. About 1 minute later my phone rang, "watchlight here, we have a water alarm".

I had set a rule that says

Whenever
every 60 secons
and any water alarm any area is active
then announce water (vm294)

The voice announce never happened. The system was in alarm mode for several minutes before I shut it off, so it had well over 60 seconds to at least say it once. No idea what is wrong here. :wacko: (and my voice announcements for other stuff is working).

 

[video321]

I set my water zones to "silent" and can confirm that they still send the system into alarm and they do not sound the siren. I was cleaning hair out of my daughters trap on Saturday(amazing the crap they get in there!) and spilled water on the sensor. About 1 minute later my phone rang, "watchlight here, we have a water alarm".

I had set a rule that says

Whenever
every 60 secons
and any water alarm any area is active
then announce water (vm294)

The voice announce never happened. The system was in alarm mode for several minutes before I shut it off, so it had well over 60 seconds to at least say it once. No idea what is wrong here. :wacko: (and my voice announcements for other stuff is working).

I've never used the silent mode on a zone, but perhaps that means no announcements as well. Possibly so other water zones can siren/announce/whatever, but with silent activated on the zone only an alert is sent to the monitoring station. Test it by removing silet as you know everything else is working correctly with the rules since you received your message. If you do test it, post back I'm curious to know.

The other thing that really stunk is even if I wanted the internal speakers to alarm I couldn't without the exterior siren going off instantly as well - the siren would not follow the delay time set for it with a water zone as it would for a burglar zone.

 

[apostolakisl]

I've never used the silent mode on a zone, but perhaps that means no announcements as well. Possibly so other water zones can siren/announce/whatever, but with silent activated on the zone only an alert is sent to the monitoring station. Test it by removing silet as you know everything else is working correctly with the rules since you received your message. If you do test it, post back I'm curious to know.

The other thing that really stunk is even if I wanted the internal speakers to alarm I couldn't without the exterior siren going off instantly as well - the siren would not follow the delay time set for it with a water zone as it would for a burglar zone.

Well maybe I'll unplug the siren and try it. I really hate setting that thing off! Have to call Watchlight ahead of time as well. I wouldn't think that silent alarm would also make it "silent" to the rules, but you may by right.

 

[video321]

Well maybe I'll unplug the siren and try it. I really hate setting that thing off! Have to call Watchlight ahead of time as well. I wouldn't think that silent alarm would also make it "silent" to the rules, but you may by right.

Instead of unplugging the siren just set the water cutoff to 0. It would be the same as silent alarm, but would allow to check your system for voice announcements. Mine is setup that way and I get my announcements.