Recent content by SteveInNorCal

Good morning...we bought a used house in Idaho as a second summer home and I'm going to replace the ancient Regency security system. At first I thought I would install an Elk M1 Gold system to duplicate what we have at our main house, but I started talking local installers and they are urging me...

I just relayed your excellent question to Brad. I have 21 Honeywell Glass Shock Sensors (5800SS1) in service. I configured another three and set active zones up for them, but they wouldn't fit on the sliding glass doors, so I tossed them in a drawer in the house. I removed them from the premises...

  Thanks, RAL. Brad Weeks at ELK responded to my query about the clock battery and pretty much said the same thing. Here's Brad's response: "The 3V battery in the upper left hand corner of the M1 Main Board holds the Date and Time when the M1 is powered OFF. When the M1 is powered up the time is...

  Thanks. I'm excited to have it working correctly again. I just wish it didn't take a full day or day and a half to get my Windows machine running every time I set it aside for 6 or 12 months. It's just pathetic.   The other thing -- ELK specifically says to use a Varta #CR2032. There are many...

What sounders / screamers did you select?

I did a detailed power budget analysis of my system and found that the exterior speaker and the Uplink 4500ez GSM radio were the two big power hogs. I definitely did not want those powered by the main ELK M1G system, so I installed a separate Altronix eFlow4nx8 (12 VDC; 8 fuse-protected, Class 2...

  We just bought an existing 28 year old house in the Idaho Panhandle. While painting the living room, I took down the purple (yes, purple) smoke alarm  in the LR and found it said "Expires 2008." If it had the typical ten-year life, it suggests it was installed about 1998 not long after the...

I just checked the M1G Installation Manual to find the clock battery on the main board. The word "Battery" shows up on 22 pages well over a hundred times. 99% of the "battery" terms refer to the 8AH backup battery. I searched for "CR2032" and, buried on page 6 under "Wiring & Hookup Diagram," is...

Yeah...lesson learned. Check to see if your NTP server is still in service. I can't believe 99% of them went out of service! Wow. There must be LOTS of people similarly affected. And you don't get any notice that the server has disappeared.    I am quite surprised that the ELK M1 was off by over...

Thanks, RAL. I completely forgot about the CR2032 battery on the M1 board. I'll replace that tomorrow.   Today I replaced the CR2 batteries in all 21 Honeywell 4800SS Shock Sensors on the windows. Wow, at $11 each, that was over $230 in batteries. The original Panasonic batteries were about five...

Hi. I've got an ELK M1 Gold I installed about five years ago. I use a combination of wired and wireless sensors (glass shock and glass breakage acoustic). Everything has worked well until recently when the timer and clock started going bad. I started some basic troubleshooting today and found...

Thanks, BaduF. I was already looking into power reliability in winter in the area. Good idea to check w the power company. I just pinged our realtor who lives nearby on his experiences and thoughts on the matter.    "The Elk folk are at this point rentiers" -- exactly my impression. Thanks...

Thanks, Mike. That's pretty much my conclusion, too. There are big benefits to learning one system and managing spare parts for self-management and maintenance. There really are no shortcomings in terms of functionality (actually, I would like a better integrated thermostat, but that's not an...

I have Elk M1G in our home - about five years now and very solid. We are buying a second home and want to upgrade the security system. Thinking Elk M1G again because having the same system in two houses is a big plus for me (installation, configuration, maintenance, trouble-shooting, etc). But...

I installed an Elk M1 Gold in our primary home almost five years ago and have been very happy with it. I've used Alarm Relay for monitoring and have really liked their service - very reliable and reasonably priced. I use the built-in automation features of the Elk M1G to control lights via UPB...