wuench
Senior Member
Cat5 is 24 guage... I would highly recommend 18/20 guage for speakers. At the very least I recommend you contact Elk and ask them, easier to ask first than to replace components later....
About to purchase Elk M1
- Thread starter Havok1327
- Start date
Cat5 is 24 guage... I would highly recommend 18/20 guage for speakers. At the very least I recommend you contact Elk and ask them, easier to ask first than to replace components later....
tmbrown97
Senior Member
interesting concept on the spares - I never noticed that... I was just thinking to re-crimp the end without those 2 wires in it - and run them separately.
the wattage is low enough, and you probably don't have the volume max'd... A good search could probably turn up the guy who said he was running his off the extra pair - but he did say it was working fine.
the wattage is low enough, and you probably don't have the volume max'd... A good search could probably turn up the guy who said he was running his off the extra pair - but he did say it was working fine.
tmbrown97
Senior Member
I believe we used mostly 18/2 for speakers, 24/4 for motions (the little terminals can be tough to work with, so smaller gauge and possibly solid-core help) - and 24/2 for the contact sensors. Cat5 for the keypads of course. If you're going to run relay outputs that'll depend on what you're controlling - for me, all my relays are in the garage with the equipment they control, so that made it easy - a single Cat5 run to the garage with an 18/2 pair lets me control the sprinklers (10-zones), pool fill, garage doors, strobe - and leaves 2 free... and I can run a keypad out there if I want. In the cabinet I used leftover 18/2 for the power connections and bought 10ft of 18/4 from HomeDepot to make other interconnects as needed.
felixrosbergen
Senior Member
Congrats on the purchase.....
Regarding the wires i thought the 'standard' was 22/2 or 22/4 (you only need 2 conductors for door/window sensors, but motions/glassbreaks/smokes need 4). You'll need something to connected the Elk AC adapter to the main panel...i think the manual calls for 18/2 on that but better check...
I see you're not using the DBH so i assume you're hooking the 1 keypad up directly to the databus on the M1. When you need more keypads or any expanders you'll probably want to look at a DataBusHub (m1-DBH) which you can connect either with cat5 or 22/4...22/4 would be better i think and you should have it laying around anyway.
If you plan to use Elk-RP you need to get a serial cable 'straight (not crossover or null modem) Male-Female type. But i guess with the XEP you may not need that.
Good luck, read the manuals carefully and tackly i item at a time so when stuff stops working you just undo your last change. I just did mine and found it quite easy actually. Elk has online video as well which are very usefull.
Hopefully SPANKY can chime in on the possibility of using the spare channels on the DBH for SP12's. I'll see if he responds here, if not i'll post the question in the Elk section of this forum in a few days...if that woudl work it would be totally awesome.
Regarding the wires i thought the 'standard' was 22/2 or 22/4 (you only need 2 conductors for door/window sensors, but motions/glassbreaks/smokes need 4). You'll need something to connected the Elk AC adapter to the main panel...i think the manual calls for 18/2 on that but better check...
I see you're not using the DBH so i assume you're hooking the 1 keypad up directly to the databus on the M1. When you need more keypads or any expanders you'll probably want to look at a DataBusHub (m1-DBH) which you can connect either with cat5 or 22/4...22/4 would be better i think and you should have it laying around anyway.
If you plan to use Elk-RP you need to get a serial cable 'straight (not crossover or null modem) Male-Female type. But i guess with the XEP you may not need that.
Good luck, read the manuals carefully and tackly i item at a time so when stuff stops working you just undo your last change. I just did mine and found it quite easy actually. Elk has online video as well which are very usefull.
Hopefully SPANKY can chime in on the possibility of using the spare channels on the DBH for SP12's. I'll see if he responds here, if not i'll post the question in the Elk section of this forum in a few days...if that woudl work it would be totally awesome.
