Elk m1 glass window door wiring questions

[usuallyresourceful]

I am ready to wire all my sensors to my elk m1 panel. I read the manual, twice, as suggested in some other posts. But I can't quite grasp a few things. I've found some related topics in the forums but everyone seems to breeze by my specific questions

1. Some rooms have multiple window and door sensors, I would want that room to be a zone. All the sensors wire was ran in a star configuration. Can I put two, three, or even four pairs of wire on the terminal block specified for each zone? Placing one wire per screw in seems crazy.

2. I can't figure out if I need to use all those resistors that came with the system on my sensors? How do i tell?

The programming part looks easy, I'm used to doing that part. Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[video321]

1. First off, unless you're pinching every zone input you really don't want to put doors on the same zone as windows. For your question - you need to wire everything in series going from one sensor to the next. To give you an idea I used 22/4 for my double windows but series them to 1 zone by connecting 1 wire from a contact to the zone input and 1 wire from the other contact to the common and the two remaining wires were connected together creating a series circuit.

2. The use of the resistors is up to you whether or not you want supervision on the zone.

 

[usuallyresourceful]

First off I googled 22/4 to make sure I was using the same stuff and google said 5.5, lol.

Thanks for the reply video.

The house was wired by a professional installer and now I'm trying to make sense of things. Taking a look at the wiring, the windows are wired in series. Some rooms also have the shattered glass sensors and open door sensors.

Let's use the master bedroom as an example, it's got 3 windows, glass and door sensor. The windows are wired in series. So this means I have 3 pairs of wire to wire to the elk. I was hoping that since they are all in the same room I would twist these all together and only use one of my 16 zones on the elk panel, compared to using three zones. But what you are saying is that I should not mix these three types. If this is the case then I'm going to have to purchase three zone expanders, those run about $100 a piece... But if that's what it takes that's what I gotta do.

The manual does not go into great detail about supervision, I am a bit shaky on this but this is what I think adding the resistors would do for me based on my google findings

Tell me if the circuit is normal
Abnormal
Open
Short
Or ground fault

This would be good diagnostic info in the future if the alarm was tripping unexpectedly, would you pretty much just splice and solder a resistor in between the positive and negative wires of your sensor near the terminal block?

 

[video321]

Let's use the master bedroom as an example, it's got 3 windows, glass and door sensor. The windows are wired in series. So this means I have 3 pairs of wire to wire to the elk. I was hoping that since they are all in the same room I would twist these all together and only use one of my 16 zones on the elk panel, compared to using three zones. But what you are saying is that I should not mix these three types.

If you can get what you want out of your system by combining all of those to 1 zone then there is nothing stoping you. However, you bought an Elk panel....think about it
If you decide to combine everything to a single zone then you would NOT be twisting all the wires together. Like I said above you need to series them into the zone input - just like the windows your installer did for you. Lastly, I hope the glassbreak sensors have 4 wires coming from them as they require power.

The manual does not go into great detail about supervision, I am a bit shaky on this but this is what I think adding the resistors would do for me based on my google findings

Tell me if the circuit is normal
Abnormal
Open
Short
Or ground fault

This would be good diagnostic info in the future if the alarm was tripping unexpectedly, would you pretty much just splice and solder a resistor in between the positive and negative wires of your sensor near the terminal block?

Yes, but do NOT install them at the panel. Splice them in at the last sensor on the zone. I chose not to install them after seeing posts by an Elk engineer recommending to not use them for a home install.

 

[apostolakisl]

Amazon is selling the m1xin for $68. And I highly recommend you get one or two of them. There are lots of things to use zones for besides security zones on an Elk. If you have an Elk you certainly want home automation and the zones can be used to detect other things for monitoring and tripping HA tasks.

Of course I totally agree that you should not merge your door/window/glass break detector. And, as mentioned, they can't run in parrallel or your burgler will need to leave open the door and window and then break some glass. If you still want to merge them on one zone you need hook them up in series at the panel by merging one wire of the door, to one wire of the window, the other window wire to one wire of the glass break (not the power ones), then hook the two left over wires to the Elk board.

If your professional didn't put your EOL resistors in then it might be tough now. Did you install the contactors or did the pro? A lot of the time you can slide one of the contactors out and put an EOL resistor right there. You only put one on each zone and try to put it . . . at the end of the line (the furthest from the Elk, electrically speaking). Without EOL the system won't be able to detect a short in the wire.

 

[usuallyresourceful]

Thanks for clearing things up.

I'll have to fire the system up with a couple rooms to check to see how the pros wired things. The pros installed the contacts, I talked with the previous owner about that. I bought the house incomplete, but he is not sure about the resistors. Unfortunately he does not remember the security company he hired or i would call.

Thanks for the tips as well. I'm going to get to work on hooking all this up!

 

[AutomatedOutlet]

As far as the supervision goes, if you are combining some of those windows, make sure to use only 1 resistor per zone on the M1.

 

[apostolakisl]

As far as the supervision goes, if you are combining some of those windows, make sure to use only 1 resistor per zone on the M1.

And if they already put resistors, one for each home runned wire, you can not put them in series without removing the resistors (or at least all but one).

It is obvious if there are resistors. When you hook it up to the panel, check the voltage on the Elk RP status screen. When the zone is secure, it will read roughly 13 volts without an eol, with a resistor it will read roughly 7.

 

[tmbrown97]

If the contacts are already in I personally don't see much point in dealing with adding them now. If you have an electrical meter you can test if they're there or not - just put it on the Resistance test and put one lead on each of the two wires. With the door/window open, it'll likely show infinite resistance; with it closed it'll likely show a full short. That would mean no EOL.

How to wire does depend on how far you take things. I like having every sensor on its own zone so I know exactly which window is open (don't have to look around). Also combining types is bad as stated above... just think how the alarm will react when violated - and what'll get reported to the central station... do you want "something happened in the master bedroom" or "glass break then window opened in the master bedroom"?

 

[usuallyresourceful]

Thanks for all the replies! Testing with resistance to find the eol is a great idea. And knowing the voltage with a resistor is good to. I ordered plenty of m1xin for zones. I agree that every zone should be isolated.

We'll see how many of these sensors are working in a few minutes.

 

[usuallyresourceful]

The testing went great. I found out that eol resistors were not installed, but thats ok. At least my questions got answered and any body searching these keywords in the future will be able to get a good grasp on this as well.