Garage Exit Bypass & Rearm

I have Auto Bypass on. This allows me to arm the system with a zone open (like the garage door).
But I don't want to arm the system with a window or other zone open, so line 34 restores all zones as soon as arming starts.
It's like not having auto bypass on, but you don;t have to close up the house to arm the system. Higher WAF.
I have a separate code block that checks for open windows and gives me a voice warning.

Line 35 gives me an exit path, door to the garage, garage motion, and garage door. I have 12 minutes to get out of the garage and close the door.
If I need to come back inside, the door from the house to the garage is bypassed for the same period.
Line 36 restores the door to the garage and garage motion in AWAY/VACATION only. That way I can go in and out of the garage in DAY mode.

Line 37 restores the garage door at either the end of the 12 minutes, or once the door closes - whichever is first.
This allows the system to be armed as soon as possible after leaving.
It also arms the system whether or not the outer door is closed.
So if I forget to clse the door, the alarm will trip after the delay, and I'll get a call on my cell phoine to remind me to go home and close the door.

Desert, thanks for the info. You have a somewhat different approach to the problem then I do. I'm going to take a look at what you've got, although we haven't had as much of a problem; we've got the exit delay set to the 180 second maximum and that seems to be sufficient for us.

One thing that might make your code a bit less complicated is to remember that a zone that is auto-bypassed will be automatically restored as soon as it becomes secure. By taking advantage of that, you may be able to cut the first two actions out of block 35 and get rid of block 37.

I would not be able to use the RESTORE ALL ZONES trick. I tinker with my zones and sensors a lot, and at any given time it's not unusual for me to have a zone bypassed because it isn't working right or because I've messed with it and haven't put it back together yet.

cornutt said:

One thing that might make your code a bit less complicated is to remember that a zone that is auto-bypassed will be automatically restored as soon as it becomes secure. By taking advantage of that, you may be able to cut the first two actions out of block 35 and get rid of block 37.

I would not be able to use the RESTORE ALL ZONES trick. I tinker with my zones and sensors a lot, and at any given time it's not unusual for me to have a zone bypassed because it isn't working right or because I've messed with it and haven't put it back together yet.

Click to expand...

I SPECIFICALLY do NOT want to rely on the auto bypass restore. The zone only restores when it is made secure. So I could possibly arm the system and leave a window open. If the window never closed the zone would never be restored. Someone could come upon my house and just go in through the open non alarmed window. Same with the Garage Door.

With my method, if there is a window open at the end of the normal arming delay, 120 seconds in my case, the the alarm will sound. I should only be a mile or two down the road and able to turn around and get back to the house to secure it.

I use it as a fail safe that all zones are indeed secured when the system arms.

BUT, by usng auto-bypass I do not have to have the zones secure when I arm the system, for convenience. So when my wife goes out and opens the garage before me, we don't have to close up the garage and the garage entry door then arm the system and open the doors to get out.

I have voice alerts for open windows as well, so ideally I shouldn't go off with a window open anyway.

I usually go in to PC Access and make a zone "Auxillary" when I am testing it or disabling it.

I do have buttons to bypass zones, but they only operate for DAY mode. So we can open a window for air, bypass it, arm the system and take a nap. Or we can bypass a zone in an armed system and open the window.

There is no "RESTORE ALL ZONES" for DAY mode. But I don't want to ever accidentally leave a zone open in the other modes.