Garage Logic (Elk M1 Gold)

[snakevargas]

The wife has decided this year we're going to start parking her car in the garage. She leaves early in the morning. I work from home. I generally like having the alarm armed in 'stay' mode while I'm home, in particular so the garage door is protected.
 
1) Our current method is for her to disarm the alarm, open the garage door, back the car out of the garage, close the garage door, exit the vehicle, enter the front door to the house, arm the alarm, lock up and leave the house, get in her car, and drive away. I don't expect this to last long.
 
2) One option would be for her to arm the alarm and exit the garage before the 30-second exit delay expires. I'm somewhat fearful she'll be slow some morning getting out of the garage and the alarm will be set off and she wouldn't even know it, because it would start sounding as she was driving away.
 
3) Another option would be to automatically arm the alarm every time the garage door is closed.
 
4) Finally, I could come up with some kind of remote where she could arm the alarm from inside the car.
 
Other people with armed garages, what do you do?

 

[wuench]

What if you

• Set the door to forced armed
• Under Area set Allow Stay Key change if Armed, Disable the Instant Modes under Stay Key Scrolling
• Write a rule to open the door on armed stay
• Write a second rule to close the door when the exit delay expires

I think this would allow her to walk up to the keypad which would be armed Night, and hit the Stay key, which would arm the panel in Stay.  This would trigger the exit timer, trigger the open door rule, then once the exit timer expired the door would be closed and because it is force armed the zone would arm when closed.
 
If you want to give her more time than the exit timer, you could instead have the exit rule trigger a phantom relay for a period of time, and once that closed, trigger another rule to close the garage door.
 
The Stay Key scrolling settings and Allow Stay Key allow you to toggle between the checked modes with the stay button without actually disarming the system or having to enter a code.

 

[mikefamig]

Do you have an iphone or other ios device? We have the overhead door set to forceable and use ekeypad on the iphone to control the Elk. This way you can open the overhead door, arm the alarm, back out and close the door with the iphone. In your case you would have to disarm from stay mode first.
 
Could you get by with bypassing the garage door when in stay mode and having the system just talk when the garage door is opened in stay mode rather than triggering an alarm? I don't generally set the alarm to stay mode. Instead I turn on chimes at the keypad at night and then if anything opens I will hear it happen. Then maybe stay mode when we go to sleep.
 
Mike.

 

[Del91574]

Could also do it the hard way with a relay across the zone and shunt the point based off a user interface or F-key...such as use the F key to start a timed relay action to shunt the door contact then also give yourself the option of force arm the point.
 
Then the F key followed by the EXIT key to restart the delay (let the dog out feature) would shunt the point and also allow exiting the house without disarming the system. Throw another relay action to automatically put the door down before the shunt relay expires and it's a no-brainer.
 
Usually, I find it easier to use what is already inherently native to the M1 and then build upon it rather than putting a ton of logic and rules out there to perform a single action.

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

Here is another approach.  Search for remote controlled relay and you will find several keyfob controlled small pc boards with on-board relay that can be connected to an Elk input.
 
Keep the keyfob in the car.  When the wife pulls out of the garage have her hit a button on the keyfob after the door closes to autoarm in stay via an Elk rule.
 
You can even get a remote unit with two buttons/relays and, if you have spare inputs on the Elk, close the garage door with that other button so she only has to operate one remote.
 
This is a lot cheaper than going with the Elk wireless remote and board setup.
 
If you want feedback that you armed, have the M1 flash an outdoor light towards the end of your rule setup (assuming you have the Elk control your lighting).
 
She can keep the keyfob in her purse so you don't have to use the larger remote (safer than keeping it, or your larger original garage door's remote in the car).
 
Never perform a 'disarm' with a remote and keep it in the car of course!

 

[snakevargas]

I like this remote controlled relay appropach. Although blinking a light will probably suffice, I do wish there was better two-way communication.
 
I'm also thinking about just automatically arming the house to say mode after the garage door has been closed. For example, 5 or 10 minutes after the close event, just to be sure the driver has really left. Can the Elk's Rules do timers like that? I'm thinking:
 
1) On garage door close start a timer
2) On garage door open kill the timer
3) On the timer reaching 5 minutes, arm the system to stay mode if it is unarmed.
 
Is that doable?

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

The Elk wireless keyfob will give you this feedback, though it is a costly option for your situation.

 

[drvnbysound]

I like this remote controlled relay appropach. Although blinking a light will probably suffice, I do wish there was better two-way communication.
 
I'm also thinking about just automatically arming the house to say mode after the garage door has been closed. For example, 5 or 10 minutes after the close event, just to be sure the driver has really left. Can the Elk's Rules do timers like that? I'm thinking:
 
1) On garage door close start a timer
2) On garage door open kill the timer
3) On the timer reaching 5 minutes, arm the system to stay mode if it is unarmed.
 
Is that doable?

 
Yes, but I think it would also be just as easy for the garage door to be setup on as Force Armable as mentioned above. Using your previous set of steps, and a slight modification, the behavior could be this: 
 
1) arm the alarm in Stay mode (Exit Delay begins); if already in Stay mode, just hit Stay again (cycle through to appropriate mode)
2) open the garage door (during exit delay, see below)
3) back the car out of the garage
4) close the garage door
 
More on Force Armable Zones: Entry/Exit zones that are also force armable can be violated during the exit delay and still become force armed, allowing a user to arm, open a garage door, back out, and close the door at their leisure, without creating a false alarm and without a long exit delay time. As soon as the garage door is closed, it will return to service.

 

[wuench]

Yeah with force armable I don't think you will need to disarm/rearm.  So no need for any additional devices in the car, etc  You just hit the stay button and it will give you time to leave (if you programmed it to rotate/toggle in globals).  The rules are just there to automatically open and close your garage door for you but it can be done manually.
 
Of course there may be side effects you need to watch out for depending on how you program the rules.  Like the garage door opening when you arm night etc.

 

[video321]

I use keyfob-controlled relays for not only my garage, but to arm/disarm as well. I have numerous lines of logic to do every little bit I desire out of my system; so anything you desire is possible - just need to decide on the approach. Further, I use my strobe that is mounted above the garage door for status notifications. Lastly, to protect others, if there was a burglar alarm condition the garage door won't initially open, the strobe will flash and the siren will chirp. The disarm button allows us to use the keyfob as a simple garage door opener as well. By the way... it's all done with just 2 buttons. This was all I needed wireless control for so I purchased a simple SECO-LARM 4-channel system - I paid around $20 for the controller and $18 per keyfob.

 

[tmbrown97]

I think I'd take an entirely different approach to this.  I'd probably make the garage a second area that's armed/disarmed by following rules.  Tie a Function key to that - when lit you know the garage area is armed.  When you press the F Key, it disarms just that area and allows her to leave.  Another rule detects when the garage door is closed and if the house is armed then it arms the garage door.  Whenever the house disarms, disarm the garage area at the same time.  This could also give you separate and longer entry delays for the garage zone if you arm it while away - you could buy yourself a few extra minutes separate from the house entry delay.
 
This way she never has to disarm the house - just the garage, and the rules don't need to be time based in any way.
 
However, there was also talk of using a button in the car to integrate... I tinkered with the same thing and wrote THIS article on using the spare homelink button in the car and tying it into the elk.  you could flash the exterior lights for visual confirmation if you wanted.
 
As you can see from this thread, there are lots of ways to approach this one.