Arming with violated zone

[cmerlino]

Ok, so here's the problem...
My cleaning lady comes and disarms and opens side door with a keycard. When she's done, she opens side door, presses the exit key (quick-arm) and leaves - leaving my house un-armed and me guessing if she's really gone so I can arm remotely. Telling her to close the door and/or look for the green light before arming is NOT a possibility (after many tries...) BTW - side door is on it's own zone (1).

So - I had the bright idea of making Z1 not an alarm zone, and then monitoring with rules, but - it seems you can't trigger an alarm from rules (thus mimicking an alarm zone).

Any ideas here? Really need to be able to quick-arm with the side door open....

 

[apostolakisl]

Set that door as a "force arm" zone. The system will arm with the zone violated and then add it to the armed zones once it becomes secure. The green light will blink when all other zones are secure minus that one.

 

[mustangcoupe]

Any ideas here? Really need to be able to quick-arm with the side door open....

Is this zone set as force arm? What will happen is the alarm will arm as normal, and then arm that zone once she closes the door.

 

[cmerlino]

I'll give it a try, but I thought you couldn't quick-arm when a force zone is violated - need to enter code to arm, which won't happen here....
I was thinking of using output 3 to short the zone when cleaning disarms, and un-short whenever re-armed. Any downsides??

 

[apostolakisl]

You are right. You can't quick arm and you did put that in your note.

You can right a rule that will allow a different trigger to arm the system after a delay. For example, you could set one of the f keys to do it.

whenever function key . . . is pressed,
and the time is (a time you know the cleaning lady will have arrived and before she leaves),
and it is before (a time you know she would have left by)
and it is (day of week cleaning lady comes),
then set counter x to 120.

Whenever every 1 second
and counter x is not equal to 0
then subract 1 from counter x

Whenver counter x becomes 0
Arm sytem away.

Or here is another idea.

Write a rule that bypasses that zone on the day the cleaning lady comes.
Then write a second rule that unbypasses that zone a few minutes after the system is armed away.
I am not 100% sure that a rule unbypassing a zone after the system is armed adds it to the armed zones. You would need to confirm that.

whenever the time is (a time you know the cleaning lady will have arrived and before she leaves),
and it is (day of week cleaning lady comes),
then bypass zone x

whenever system arms away
then set counter x to 120

Whenever every 1 second
and counter x is not equal to 0
then subract 1 from counter x

Whenver counter x becomes 0
then unbypass zone x

 

[wuench]

She can arm without a code before she opens the door. The open it go out and close it, if it is force-arm.

 

[dreadlocks]

threaten to fire your cleaning lady if she leaves your home unsecured again?

 

[tmbrown97]

A couple notes - I've tested some scenarios back when we were talking about better ways of monitoring the garage door.

I'm almost 99.9% positive that in order to force arm, you must enter a code - that seems even less likely to happen if she can't handle closing the door first.

You can use a rule to un-bypass a zone while armed and it becomes a fully monitored zone. Even more fun - if you un-bypass a violated zone by rules while armed, the alarm triggers instantly. The problem with Bypass is that it clears all bypassed zones upon disarm - so you'd have to re-bypass the door again on her days there.

If you want to monitor a zone purely by rules and trip it purely by rules, this is totally doable... the catch is that you have to burn an output and an input. If you think you're out of outputs and inputs, remember that each keypad has an output and input - so you could do this at any keypad if you had to in order to save inputs/outputs on the main board... What you do is wire the output to a small Elk Relay, and hook the Input to the relay as well. When the output turns on, the normally closed relay opens breaking the contact, and triggering the alarm. You can turn on the output through any rule you want.

The other option as you stated is shorting the zone for that door for a while when she's arming the system... There's nothing at all wrong with this - in fact, it's quite common practice for secure locations that stay armed all the time - and generally there's a "Request to Exit" which bypasses the zone for a period of time.

Also remember that there are 8 onboard voltage-only outputs on the M1 board, so it's easy to add your own relays if you need more.

Then there are other options - depending on how good your motion coverage is:

Whenever Alarm is disarmed by user XXX
Turn on output 55 for 30 minutes.

Whenever Burglar Status Becomes Not Ready to Arm and Out 55 is on
Then Turn Out 55 on for 30 minutes, restart timer if running.

Whenever Out 55 turns off, Force Arm the system.

That would put it in a monitored mode only when she uses her code to disarm the alarm - then as long as she's moving around the house and crosses a motion sensor or opens a monitored zone every 30 (or more) minutes, she keeps restarting the timer. Once no more activity is detected in the house, it arms itself.

You could take it even further with more rules to give a warning 3 minutes before auto-arming; giving her time to walk in front of a sensor - at which time it would announce Auto Arm Delayed - or something like that.

This must be a really good cleaning lady if you keep her employed despite not handling a very basic instruction and leaving your home at risk.

 

[cmerlino]

Thanks to all - some great ideas here.
Wired Out3 to short the zone and tried it, seems to be working well. I programmed the "short" to turn-on when system disarmed by cleaning lady, turn-off whenever armed. The keycard is programmed to work only on specific days/times, so I think that covers it....

I also programmed the 30 minute timer/auto-arm sequence suggested (thanks Work2Play) but I have it sending e-mail, not arming, for now... let's see how this all functions in the real world.

BTW - as for the cleaning lady, not really that good, but English is 2nd language, and hired by wife, so dismissing due to "hard to use technology" is a non-starter...

Thanks again!