wiring help

[hardatk]

Hey all, got my Omnipro board in and have been reading all the documentation... but some of it isn't too clear, granted I'm not an electrician... but I do have some experience.
 
One question I have is, I have 9 motion sensors and they require the aux power, is there a better / easier way to connect them all to the two aux ports on the board than just splicing them together?
 
I do not currently have the board hooked up to ground (nor the enclosure)... is it acceptable to use a nearby outlet ground, is there a good tutorial on how to use another type? the panel _is_ in the room with the main breaker box, so I could take advantage of that...
 
thanks!

 

[RAL]

Some people use terminal strips as a neater way of distributing the AUX power to the sensors that require it.  Use 2 strips and run a daisy chained wire down one side and connect it to +12V or GND,  and connect the power wires to each sensor to the other side.  There are also jumper strips that make the daisy chain easy to do.  But be careful to buy jumpers that have the same spacing/pitch as the screws on the terminal strip!
 
You could also use a power distribution board, like an Elk PD9 or a combination of Altronix PD4 and PD8, or a PD16. 
 
The installation manual recommends grounding the Earth terminal of the panel to a water pipe or a ground rod using 14 gauge wire.  Since the panel is in the same room as your electrical panel, the best thing would be to connect it to the same ground rod as the electrical panel uses.
 
Using an outlet for earth ground is not recommended, as you want to divert any energy from a surge to earth ground through the shortest and most direct path as possible.

 

[hardatk]

Thanks, I'll look at using terminal strips for now, but maybe down the line I'll install an Elk PD9
 
Is there a way to stack the terminals on top of the board and have them securely fastened? Seems like having them aligned on top of the sensor zones would be ideal

 

[RAL]

Assuming there is enough clearance in your enclosure, you could mount the terminal strips on a small sheet of acrylic plastic and then mount the plastic sheet above the omni pro board using standoffs, much in the same way expansion boards get mounted. Use standoffs that are tall enough to create some space between the components on the omni pro board and the acrylic sheet to permit air to flow between them.

 

[drvnbysound]

Something else I've seen done is a wire run from the board terminals (i.e. jumper) running to the group of wires that need power, then the group all wire nutted together.

 

[sda]

What I did was to punch down the 22/4 cables onto a split 66 block, red/black/green/yellow, etc.   Then on the other side a red and black wire was :weaved" to supply power (from the last pair on the block).  Its pretty clean this way since only a 22/2 enters the panel for each zone.  Motions and glass breaks are on separate 66 blocks and go to separate m1-xins.
 
If I could do it all over again, I would have ditched the 66 blocks and used din rail terminal blocks and bridges.

 

[Del91574]

As an aside, there were a few companies in my locale that chose to use 66 blocks for their cabling. Look nice but a real PITA to service. Also introduces a lot of issues with stranded cable.