Can Elk monitor door bell?

[sanders2222]

Hi, I'm retrofitting an older home installing a new ELK M1. The house has a standard door bell and I want the ELK to monitor button presses. Can I just wire a zone to the wires from the door bell button?

I assume the wire carries some sort of voltage as the button has light in it. The door bell itself has current that is needed to chime.

Can ELK zones tolerate any kind of voltage or must discard the existing door chime althogether? ANd if I have to do that, how can the ELK replicate what the door chime does?

 

[BLH]

ELK makes a doorbell current sensing board. ELK930.

http://www.elkproducts.com/_webapp_2981405/ELK-930_Doorbell_and_Telephone_Ring_Detector

When the doorbells current flows through the board. The doorbell rings like normal and a dry contact output is made.
I use one to trigger an X10 Powerflash and an Insteon I/OLInc. No reason why it could not trigger something in an ELK M1.

It is actually a three board. In my case one of the doorbell and the telephone parts is in storage for now.

 

[apostolakisl]

Yes, you can wire a doorbell switch directly to an Elk zone. The problem would be if the switch had a light powered by the signal wires. Elk puts out 13.8v on each zone. A standard incandescent bulb in the switch would

1) probably not light up at all (too little current)
2) probably have too little resistance to look like an open zone when the button is not being pressed

LED bulbs in the switch would work. There is plenty of current to light up the bulb, and the diode has enough resistance to look like an EOL resistor to the Elk. When you push the button, it shorts the contacts, the light turns off and the Elk sees a closed zone. From that you can program to do any number of things.

For example, you might have it close a relay which closes the contacts to a "ding dong" noise maker. Or you could have the Elk make a sound over its own speaker. You could have it turn the lights on at the door (provided you have Insteon/UPB/similar).