Elk - Garage Door Sensor Wiring

[wuench]

I have the ODC-59B garage door sensor from AO. It has 3 wires Black-Common, Green-NO, Red-NC. I currently have it connected as follows:

Black-Common to M1XIN Neg
Red-NC to M1XIN Z1

When I open the door the M1 reports a Violated/Short(-), when I close the door I see 13.8V on the zone. So I configured the zone for Normally Open. It appears to work ok.

1.) This is my first wired zone, the short has me concerned, is this correct?
2.) Would I be better off rewiring for N/C with an EOL and how would I wire this up?

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

It really doesn't matter as long as you have the logic correct.

If you have a meter you can test the conditons to see if you are getting contact closure when the door is open or closed. That model can give you either.

If you want to use an EOL you will need to wire the normally closed contacts in line with the resistor. This has certain advantages such as knowing if something happens to your wiring, but that's about it.

 

[wuench]

Riddle me this...

With the way it is wired as stated above, and configured for N/O. When I power on the ELK it takes several minutes for it to realize the Garage Door is closed and the zone is not violated. If I power it up unarmed, it shows Not Ready Zone 17, even though it is force armable, not Ready Force. And the F4 key I have assigned to that zone status blinks. After several minutes it goes to Ready to Arm.

If I arm the system, power it off, and power it back on. So it powers up in an armed state, it doesn't alarm, but the F4 key does blink for several minutes.

Any ideas why this is occurring? Could this cause any issues?

 

[rfdesq]

Sounds to me like it's a function of how the M1 boots up. Quick fix is not to power down the panel once you have it working .

 

[wuench]

Yeah , I guess that would solve it

I just happened upon the behavior when wiring it up. I rewired to the green (N/O) wire and configured the zone as N/C. (I know is sounds backwards, but that is how it seems to work with this sensor.) And the boot up behavior was the same.

So it seems the M1 takes a few minutes on power up to determine the zone status on the input expanders and until then it doesn't take any action. (i.e. alarm). I don't have any monitoring setup, but I would ASSume it wouldn't send any bad signals during this time period either, if armed.

I don't know if adding an EOL and supervising it would make a difference, but that zone is wired and the box closed up, so maybe i'll play with it on my next zone...

 

[rfdesq]

I don't have any monitoring setup, but I would ASSume it wouldn't send any bad signals during this time period either, if armed.

I think you are correct. If you haven't decided on a Central Station you may want to look into NextAlarm. You can set up an account and do all the testing you want without paying a fee. I don't work for them I just use them on several accounts.

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

I'm sure the Spankster can confirm this , but I believe what you are seeing is the way an expansion module "scans" it's inputs. If none of the inputs change state then the zones are scanned once every 30 or so seconds. If any one of the expansion card's zone changes state, than an entire scan is initiated for that card.

To prove this try moving your garage door sensor to a zone on the Elk's main board. The zones on the main board are scanned faster than the expansion modules.

 

[Spanky]

The zone expander for the M1 can take up to 1 minute upon power up to report into the M1 its zone status. If you change any zone state on the M1XIN module it will be reported immediately. On power up all zones are temporarily bypassed until the zone expander reports in and the correct status is set. If the M1 is disarmed, the keypad will show the zone as violated until the zone reports in and then the status will show ready.

 

[wuench]

Yep, that's exactly what I am seeing. Thanks for the clarification Spanky. Glad to know it's not my wiring.