Recent content by cliffs

There are plastic switch covers available at the Home Improvement stores. They are used to water proof outdoor switches, they should keep little fingers off. Cliffs

I have a detached garage and use wireless. I have a smoke detector and garage door status zones. You can use as many zones as your wireless expanders capacity. They are usually in 8 or 16 zone sizes. The wireless should work at 100 ft. The wireless modules are transmit only, so to switch...

The Elk M1G is a interrupt driven system. If any polling is enabled then commands will be missed when the system polls. You can write around most any case without having to use polling. Basically there is a list of events to be serviced when a interrupt occurs, either by time of date or...

FWIW: In any installation the best way to avoid intermittent operations is to trace down the noise generators. I have found that CHEAP computer power supplies are at the top of the list. The way they make these supplies to sell at under $20.00 is to leave out all the filter parts...

There might be some confusion on how the Z-Wave works, it is a RF system that requires a receiver and transmitter to send and receive the the Z-Wave signals. This is what the what the Rzcop does and it converts these signals to RS-232 that the M1G can understand. In other words the Rzcop plugs...

There are several rules you can use. The Dark rule I think is 1/2 hour after sunset and 1/2 hour before sunrise. You can also use Sunset and Sunrise, it can be modified for the event to occur anytime before or after Sunrise or Sunset. I use a similar rule for turning on the outside lights if...

I don't see the Elk M1G changing very much in the future. Sure there will be more support of other devices and the way the M1G was designed the interfaces can be added easily. It already has Internet access and LCD screen controls. The only additions might be more memory so you can add more...

Central Station can program their systems to detect if you have not sent a test in say 160 hours. The M1G can be programmed to sent a test once a week to the CS to be sure everything is working. I do this a 3AM once a week. They will notify you if they haven't received the weekly test. Cliffs

The Elk M1G is a event driven system and it was not designed to do polling(Spanky can clue you in on the technical reasons). It can receive if the light is turned on or off and remember the condition (with proper programming) either from the M1G or externally if you have the proper protocol...

I use a W800 receiver with PalmPads for wireless control of the M1G. Works quite well. I can control from all over the house and outside(from the neighbors house too). PalPads are cheap and the receiver is inexpensive. Just plug it into the serial module on the M1G. Elk already has all the...

Here is a couple of comments on the Insteon issue. Some years ago I owned a small software firm that did assembly language development for Industrial controls. Some I have some experience with small devices. I did purchase about 12 of the switchlinks and had the same experience of the bad...

I am sure you want remote access as this is built in to the ELK M1G through the telephone remote(or internet if you add additional modules). If you use a monitoring service you will already have the phone setup. Elk has several add-on relay modules(one just plugs in the M1 directly). These...

This has been asked for in the past. Add a OR command to Whenever in the rules, of course both of the OR inputs would have to be a trigger event. This would in many cases lighten the load on the processor and eliminate duplicating rules for different inputs. This should be easy to do and not...

Here is a way around the problem of going over midnight. Whenever Sunset Then turn Output190 on for 5 hours 22 minutes. Whenever Output190 is turned off Then turn off lights. The timer that controls Output190(or whatever output you choose) does not refer to clock time so...

I have about 10 Insteon switches I use in the X10 mode. They all had to have the microswitches replaced(which I did) and they have worked fine ever since. I don't think I would ever buy any more Insteon products for 2 reasons, poor warranty service and the Insteon part really is not dependable...