ELK M1 Gold qestions

[AnotherOne]

I'm thinking about getting an M1 gold to replace my current security system. I have a few questions and this seems to be a VERY knowedgable forum for ELK products.

1. I have a bunch of Macurco detectors - 8 smoke, 4 combusible gas, 5 CO, 4 heat. I believe these are all 4 wire hookups. Are there requirements that these go on the first 16 zones or can they be on an expansion module?

2. Can you have multiple dialers? I have a gate phone which I'd like to automatically open when an alarm goes off and then have close when the alarm is serviced.

3. If my current wires do not have any resistors on them, do I need to add them?

4. Is the M1EZ8MSI main serial interface supported (or needed) - I need two RS-232 ports, one for a PC for controlling stuff and one to a litetouch panel?

5. If I arm the sysetm with windows open, does it ignore the open windows and arm anyway?

I'm sure there are more questions, but these are the ones off the top of my head.

THANKS!

 

[WayneW]

1) if they are 4 wire sensors, they should all be compatible with any Elk zone, main board or expansion.

2) you want to dial your gate to open it?

3) no, just configure the Elk to not use EOL resistors. I do it that way.

4) if you want PC control and a lighting interface, then you need at least two serial ports. With the M1, that means you need to add 1 XSP for the lighting interface and use the main port for the PC. The M1EZ8MSI isn't needed on the M1Gold as the M1Gold includes it, but the EZ8 doesn't.

5) It can be configured that way. You would configure those zones for "force arming".

 

[AnotherOne]

>2. Can you have multiple dialers? I have a gate phone which I'd like to automatically open when an alarm goes off and then have close when the alarm is serviced.

We have 3 phone lines, one is the gate. So we have 4 line phones and we just use line 3 to answer / open / close the gate. So it seems we would have to have a dialer for one of the outside lines and a dialer for the gate line.

 

[Spanky]

Welcome AnotherOne.

The M1 can dial 8 different numbers. I suppose there is a touchtone sequence to open and close the gate. You can dial a number, add several 2 second waits, and add other touchtone command digits with a total of 20 digits in the telephone number.

Dial example: 4321234,,,,,9876. The commas are 2 second waits, 9876 would be the touchtone command to open or close the gate.

 

[AnotherOne]

I think your missing the fact that it's a different "phone line". What we have is 2 outgoing lines that have dial tones, etc and one line going to the gate. The gate controller responds to touch tones, so the sequence "##93##" will open the gate, "##981300##" will open the gate until 1pm, etc. There is no way to open the gate except from a phone in the house using line 3, i.e. you can't call the gate from your cell phone and open it or press a button somewhere and open /close it.

Thanks.

 

[Digger]

If you are looking for the M1 to switch to a secondary phone line it cant do it on its own. Not to say its impossible but the M1 was set up to use one phone line not as a dual transmission system (dial out on two sepreate lines).

Now to make it work you could theroretically have the M1 use a rule to trip a double pole double throw relay (with break before make contacts) to switch to a second phone line and send the message to the gate and then revert back to the original phone line?

Just an idea and think it through since I only gave it a little thought and there may be reasons you dont want to do this.

 

[Steve]

Or, what about putting another m1xsp and hooking a modem and line 3 to it. In the M1 program it to send the custom ascii strings to dial the digits you need sent?

 

[Spanky]

Digger has the right idea. Program two TASKS: one to open the gate, the other to close the gate. Activate one of the TASKs on the M1 which will activate a double pole, double throw relay to switch the telephone lines, dial the touchtone commands and switch the telephone line back to the regular telephone line.

TASKs may be activated from the keypad, Touchscreen, Rules, telephone remote control, or ASCII text commands.

 

[AnotherOne]

The modem idea sounds very interesting. I'll dig out a modem and see if I can get it to work - it greatly simplfies things. The relay seems like it would work as well, but it would add a point of failure on the outgoing call scenerio, which I'd like to keep as failure free as possible.

And thanks for the prompt replies. I'll let you know if the modem works when I get home tonight.

 

[Spanky]

Sounds like you have a hard dedicated telephone line to the gate. You could simplify the overall operation by using a sensitive relay at the gate and triggering it from the M1. Any of the above mentioned user interfaces could operate the gate.

 

[AnotherOne]

Okay, I hooked up my fax modem to the gate phone and it works just fine. And I have an old 28.8 external modem laying around that should work for this application.

Another random question: is there anyway to tell if there are EOL resistors in my zones? Can I just use an ohm meter?

Thanks.

 

[Digger]

The relay idea was cheaper but if you have a modem etc around and it works great.

I am like a bird..... Cheap.... cheap..... cheap.....

 

[Spanky]

With all the contacts on a zone in the normal or closed state, measure the resistance of the zone by disconnecting at least one wire of the zone from the security control. If it reads less than 100 ohms then you have no End of Line Resistor (EOLR). If it reads 1000 to 4000 ohms that is the EOLR value. The M1 uses a 2200 ohm resistor as the nominal EOLR value.

If you have no EOLR's installed, program the M1 for no EOL resistors in each zone configuration. Many residential installations do not use EOL resistors