Elk and w800 newbie experience

[noshali]

At 11:59 pm the 30 second rule kicked in and every 30 seconds kept on announcing "garage door is open" My wife woke me up in a panic as she thought that someone had opened the garage door. Ofcourse I had not told her about the problems that I was facing with the rules coming on on their own.

I had to go down stairs 1. to make sure that no one had opened the door and 2. to open and close the door to reset the outputs.

Not good......I will probably have to delete all the rules for the garage door as I still hear garage door closed from time to time for no reason.

I thought about putting the ge wireless contacts but they are expensive and secondly there is no easy way to put them on the garage door .

Looking forward to hearing from elk tech support to see what I am doing wrong. I betcha it is something very simple which I missed.

regards,

 

[Tombo]

Computers do what they are told. I would think the weakness is in the wireless sensors giving a false output. I hate X10 wired or wireless and will not put any of that cheap junk in my house. Your wife will start to think your an incompetent boob soon. I speak from experience with my X10 crap over several years of use. Is it worth going the cheap route? Go buy the GE Caddx and eliminate some problems from the get go. Plus, why take a good system like Elk and then screw it up with unreliable hardware. It is like putting Firestone tires on your Porsche.

 

[noshali]

I know...I know...x10 is what I used to use and now moved to he elk (quality product)..however I have so much invested in the sensors...getting rid of that is heart breaking. For eg. I have 4 MS10 in almost every room or ccupancy so I am sure that you can feel my pain.

Installing GE on the garage door is not easy as one part of the sensor is much bigger than just 2 contacts. As the bulk is connected to the wire. Putting a sensor in the closed position when the garage door is open did not work very well.

As far as my wife thinking of me as a boob..that has already been established...elk or x10 is not going to change that.

regards,

 

[Tombo]

Yes I hear you. Putting up all those devices gets tedious and costly. I have my garage door hard wired put it was not easy to do. I hope your problem works out. Sometimes it helps to put in a delay with duplicate code/rule checks to make sure the device is actually telling you the correct information. You would not believe how much electrical noise is the cause of problems. There was a problem with Zwave devices turning on randomly and it turned out to be noise in the actual switch digital input. (the protocol is solid so could not be the problem)

One of these days all that automation / security will pay off and your boob status will move to smart guy status (well maybe not that high but you might move above the family pet in rank). Waking up the wife in the middle of the night on a false alarm takes a while to heal.

Good Luck.
Tom

 

[noshali]

Spanky,
Thanks for having Brad look at my system config. I kind of narrowed it down to text being received periodically.

Electron,
Since you have the most experience with ELK and w800 and DS10a...here is my question. Does the DS10a send periodic signals??? The reason why I ask is because in my setup I occasionally hear the "Garage door closed" even though no one has touched the garage door. The rule is that if OFF text is received by w800 for the DS10A then announce garage door closed. I have tried everything and have come to the conclusion that DS10A is sending out it's exisitng status to w800. I have had similar experience with another sensor.

Please she some light on this issue.

Thanks & Regards,

 

[FrankMc]

Spanky,
Thanks for having Brad look at my system config. I kind of narrowed it down to text being received periodically.

Electron,
Since you have the most experience with ELK and w800 and DS10a...here is my question. Does the DS10a send periodic signals??? The reason why I ask is because in my setup I occasionally hear the "Garage door closed" even though no one has touched the garage door. The rule is that if OFF text is received by w800 for the DS10A then announce garage door closed. I have tried everything and have come to the conclusion that DS10A is sending out it's exisitng status to w800. I have had similar experience with another sensor.

Please she some light on this issue.

Thanks & Regards,

Hi

Yes the ds10,s send a periodic status message as a kind of heart beat message...So i suppose if you can set / clear a flag when status has changed and then with each message ensure the correct flag status is current before sending audio messages....

IE......If garage door is opened reported and garage door open flag is clear (door closed) report door open and clear flag.....If door flag when tested was set then do nothing.......

HTH
Frank

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

Ah, I was thinking that the W800 is receiving noise or is sending "false" signals, but Frank's explanation would rule that out!

 

[noshali]

Spanky,
Thanks for having Brad look at my system config. I kind of narrowed it down to text being received periodically.

Electron,
Since you have the most experience with ELK and w800 and DS10a...here is my question. Does the DS10a send periodic signals??? The reason why I ask is because in my setup I occasionally hear the "Garage door closed" even though no one has touched the garage door. The rule is that if OFF text is received by w800 for the DS10A then announce garage door closed. I have tried everything and have come to the conclusion that DS10A is sending out it's exisitng status to w800. I have had similar experience with another sensor.

Please she some light on this issue.

Thanks & Regards,

Hi

Yes the ds10,s send a periodic status message as a kind of heart beat message...So i suppose if you can set / clear a flag when status has changed and then with each message ensure the correct flag status is current before sending audio messages....

IE......If garage door is opened reported and garage door open flag is clear (door closed) report door open and clear flag.....If door flag when tested was set then do nothing.......

HTH
Frank

Frank,

Thanks.....is there a way to shut of periodic hearbeat messages? I am assuming no.

I am lost on the flag part...it just went over my head. I understand the concept but have no clue how to accomplish that.

I am not sure if you read the earliesr posts to this thread but my experience so far has been very frustrating. Can you please take the time to explain how I coudl do this as I have mentioned I have too much money invested int he DS10a and the MS10a to just walk away.

What else could be the workaround????

Thanks & Regards,

 

[FrankMc]

Spanky,
Thanks for having Brad look at my system config. I kind of narrowed it down to text being received periodically.

Electron,
Since you have the most experience with ELK and w800 and DS10a...here is my question. Does the DS10a send periodic signals??? The reason why I ask is because in my setup I occasionally hear the "Garage door closed" even though no one has touched the garage door. The rule is that if OFF text is received by w800 for the DS10A then announce garage door closed. I have tried everything and have come to the conclusion that DS10A is sending out it's exisitng status to w800. I have had similar experience with another sensor.

Please she some light on this issue.

Thanks & Regards,

Hi

Yes the ds10,s send a periodic status message as a kind of heart beat message...So i suppose if you can set / clear a flag when status has changed and then with each message ensure the correct flag status is current before sending audio messages....

IE......If garage door is opened reported and garage door open flag is clear (door closed) report door open and clear flag.....If door flag when tested was set then do nothing.......

HTH
Frank

Frank,

Thanks.....is there a way to shut of periodic hearbeat messages? I am assuming no.

I am lost on the flag part...it just went over my head. I understand the concept but have no clue how to accomplish that.

I am not sure if you read the earliesr posts to this thread but my experience so far has been very frustrating. Can you please take the time to explain how I coudl do this as I have mentioned I have too much money invested int he DS10a and the MS10a to just walk away.

What else could be the workaround????

Thanks & Regards,

Hi

No i dont think you can turn off the heart beat message .....This is used to indicate battery status ok i believe.....

>I am lost on the flag part...it just went over my head. I understand the concept but >have no clue how to accomplish that.

Is it possible in the Elk programming to do IF THEN statements ???..

What im trying to say is that you only require to send audio message when ever there is a change of status with the DS10 .....and not send a audio message if DS10 is the same status as the last received message ie hbeat message.......

Im not familiar with Elk as its only recently released here in Oz.......

Can you do the following with the Elk

this condition ( rule??) is tested when ever an ds10 device 1 open message received........
IF
Output 100 on (this indicates the door is closed)
THEN
Output 100 = off (turn it off) assume door opening here
send text message "door opening"
end of condition

You need to get one condition (rule) working reliably.. ie leave the door open and ensure no repeat open messages are transmitted and then progress to the other rules as they will be much the same as this one......

HTH
Frank
PS.......Hopefully other Elk users will pick up on what im trying to put across and wil be able to write some code for you to try ...good luck

 

[nsisman]

I don't have an Elk but I remember having to recode my dS10's to be in the x10 mode (in the W800 sensor mode programming) to stop these heartbeat messages from coming thru.

They worked fine in the x10 mode just using "on" and "off" conditions in my events.

Might be something to try ?

Neil

 

[electron]

As far as I know, the Elk M1 doesn't support that heartbeat, so unless it's identical to the on/off code, I would think the Elk would ignore it. I don't remember changing the DS10A mode, and don't have any problems, but will take a look at them tonight (when I get home), to see how I configured them.

 

[noshali]

In my experience it is the actual on off code that is being generated and not a hearbeat message. These work fine if you want to see the status ona screen like HS or any other computer system or if I don't assign an announce message to it. Do note that the status has not changed it just sends an off and when an off is sent (randomly) the output 100 turns off and an announcement is heard.

It would not make a difference if there is no anouncement as the door is closed and will still show as closed. No wonder these worked well in HS as all I ever wanted to see was the status.

I also assigned x10 devices in elk to see what was generated. I noticed x10 commands coming in my HS log at hourly intervals (most of the time) but there was no consistent pattern.

regards,

 

[FrankMc]

Hi

Yes it sends the current status approx every 45 minutes as a hbeat message....I dont believe you can stop the ds10 from sending these hbeat messages....

Is it not possible as i have mentioned previously to filter them out using some logic and only initiate text commands on change of status ...????

Frank

 

[noshali]

Frank,

If I only knew how????

Regards,

 

[FrankMc]

Have you got a link to any programming info on the Elk m1...??

Frank