Idea to handle Garage Doors

[hagak]

When you pry a garage door open it pops open so no slither required and it really is easier than kicking in a standard exterior door. Basically you break the motor and the door is free to move.

Also it is not a matter of forgetting. It is a matter of not wanting to enter the house to disarm the system. I do not always enter the house when I get home,so why would I want to disarm the system right away?

 

[hagak]

Also I am not the one with 20k in tools. I consider the garage a lesser secure zone than the house. I want to prevent the guy from getting in the house while discouraging them from hanging out in the garage.

 

[hagak]

A point of reference to is that my garage doors are on the side of the house at the top of a step hill which makes them fairly well concealed from the road and any neighbors homes. So someone may not feel to threatened spending a good bit of time outside the garage doors even with the flood lights on them.

 

[apostolakisl]

Back to your original question, I am pretty sure you don't need a dedicated keypad to have a second area since keypads can control multiple areas.

Using the zone bypass idea accomplishes the same thing without messing with areas.

Regardless of how you program Elk, far and away the trickyist part will be setting up a homelink receiver to a relay for signaling elk and the reverse of setting up an elk relay to trip an rf sender for subsequently opening the garage door. This will no doubt require soldering fine wires to pcbs.

 

[hagak]

Well someone already did the rf signaling part. Pretty simple actually the rf receivers are about 50 bucks and come in multiple channels that provide dry contacts. I should not need to signal the opener via rf from the elk. I was think of just using an output connected to a relay module to control the opener. Basically I will be bypassing the internal rf receiver in the openers themselves.

On the bypass zone idea you have not sure how it would provide the same functionality. Bypassing a zone is done before arming. My issue is on disarming.

 

[cornutt]

I should not need to signal the opener via rf from the elk. I was think of just using an output connected to a relay module to control the opener. Basically I will be bypassing the internal rf receiver in the openers themselves.

That's what I do with mine. The relay contacts are connected to the terminal screws on the opener, in parallel with the button on the wall. Set the output to "on" for 2 seconds to activate the opener.

 

[apostolakisl]

Well someone already did the rf signaling part. Pretty simple actually the rf receivers are about 50 bucks and come in multiple channels that provide dry contacts. I should not need to signal the opener via rf from the elk. I was think of just using an output connected to a relay module to control the opener. Basically I will be bypassing the internal rf receiver in the openers themselves.

On the bypass zone idea you have not sure how it would provide the same functionality. Bypassing a zone is done before arming. My issue is on disarming.

Two things

1) I suppose you have hard wires from your garage to your Elk for triggering the automatic overhead? I don't, I use an rf remote wired to a relay.

2) Rules will bypass zones after the system is armed.

 

[tmbrown97]

Guess I'm a bit late in the game here - but I actually completely agree with the way the OP suggested for lots of reasons.

Quite often I come home, go pull in the trash cans, walk down and get the mail; unload materials from the truck; etc... once in a while my 3 yr old will see her stroller and want to go for a walk - so many times I don't go right into the house. I just flat out don't want to deal with the 255 second delay, and I find the way the Elk handles zone bypasses a bit sloppy for things you want bypassed quite often (it's great for bypassing a window or door as intended).

The multiple area idea is a great one that's come up before - you arm/disarm each area completely separately... and no, you don't need a keypad in the garage (I've considered adding one in the garage just for that purpose though). You can use the liftmaster or the Wayne Dalton Conversion Module to get homelink into the Elk and go from there with rules.

The rules will have a couple catches you'll have to work around - like when you press the button, set a timer long enough for the door to close; when the timer expires, make sure the door really did close - and if so, arm; if not, alert you somehow that it didn't secure the garage.

Regarding the suggestion above about using rules to trigger the alarm - this can definitely be done; that was my old way of thinking actually; but it burns an input and an output to accomplish it.... but really the Areas thing sounds much better to me; I'll likely implement it before long.

And - gatchel - you're suggesting that just because you have $20K in tools, someone could grab them in 2 minutes? The commotion caused by a couple guys hurriedly loading up such heavy equipment as chop saws, generators, table-saws - would catch almost as much attention as a siren; and it'd need a big truck (uhaul?) - you have to think about what they could actually grab quickly and get out. If a siren is blaring and there's a truck pulling away with a toolbox and and other equipment hanging out (not tied down either), someone will probably grab the license plate number.

 

[cheekymonkey]

Why not just put a read relay next to the garage door motor, connect it to a zone, set the zone to fast trip (or what ever it is) Then write a rule that disarms the system providing the motor zone is tripped b4 the door zone?

 

[apostolakisl]

The rules will have a couple catches you'll have to work around - like when you press the button, set a timer long enough for the door to close; when the timer expires, make sure the door really did close - and if so, arm; if not, alert you somehow that it didn't secure the garage.

You won't want to use the timer to arm the garage, set the garage as a froce-arm zone, this automatically bypasses it until it closes at which point it automatically unbypasses. Now you can arm the system, take the garbage out, put the kids bike away, etc., and finally get around to closing the door, at which point it joins the protected area. The force-arm function is on the Elk pretty much specifically for garage door overheads (I think they even use it as the example). An alert if it fails to unbyass after some period of time may still be of interest to you. Personally, I don't pull away from the house until I see it close, which isn't a prob since it closes faster than I can get out of the drive.

Useing a rule to bypass the zone upon pushing the homelink is a lot cleaner than having it as a separate area. Only one rule is required (see above post). If you make it a separate area, you will need several rules to achieve identical behavior.

If you set it as an independent area, when you arm the rest of the house, the garage won't arm. When you un-arm the rest of the house, the garage won't unarm. You would need to fix these issues with rules. The purpose of areas is for keeping costs down in multi-dwelling situations so you can buy and monitor one alarm system and have it behave (from the user's perspective) as if it were 2 or more completely independent systems. I don't think you want that, you just want the garage un-alarmed when you hit the homlink button, otherwise you want the garage arm/disarm to occur in-sync with the rest of the house.

 

[hagak]

Areas are more than just for multi-dwelling homes, they probably where put in more for use in office type situations where you need different levels of security. Elk M1 is actually overkill for most homes and was probably designed more for the office situation. In the office situation you may want to disarm the main building but keep another area armed, or have different disarming requirements for different parts of the building. Which is exactly how I am using it with my garage, it is a different part of my house that has different arming/disarming requirements.

As for your suggestion of using rules to bypass the garage zone I am not clear on what you are suggesting. Is it that you are suggesting that when the homelink remote signal is received that I have a rule that bypasses the garage door zone? If this is the case is that even possible to bypass a zone AFTER the system has been armed? Also I really do not see how this would be simpler than creating a separate Area for the garage.

 

[apostolakisl]

Areas are more than just for multi-dwelling homes, they probably where put in more for use in office type situations where you need different levels of security. Elk M1 is actually overkill for most homes and was probably designed more for the office situation. In the office situation you may want to disarm the main building but keep another area armed, or have different disarming requirements for different parts of the building. Which is exactly how I am using it with my garage, it is a different part of my house that has different arming/disarming requirements.

As for your suggestion of using rules to bypass the garage zone I am not clear on what you are suggesting. Is it that you are suggesting that when the homelink remote signal is received that I have a rule that bypasses the garage door zone? If this is the case is that even possible to bypass a zone AFTER the system has been armed? Also I really do not see how this would be simpler than creating a separate Area for the garage.

Check out my above posts again. Yes it is possible, and I did it for fun last night just to be sure. I wrote the rule you would need 2 or 3 posts ago (edit: I attached it to the bottom). If you wrote that one rule, that would be it for this project (not including hooking up the homelink).

And yes, multi area systems probably were aimed at office buildings with multiple suites. It also works great with a guest house. The point is to have each suite or area behave as if they were completely independent alarms for the user, but much less costly to install and monitor for the installer.

A NEW PROBLEM I THOUGH OF: Your keypads in your house will not show that the garage door is violated if it is part of a different area. Only a keypad designated for that area will show it. This can be worked around using rules, but this is just more complex rule finagling to undo most of the things that make an area separate.

I also though of a perk you could add.

Whenever
Area 1 is armed
and
zone garage overhead is bypassed
and
garage overhead becomes secure

Then
unbypass garage overhead

Assuming you used the bypass rule I wrote a few posts ago, this rule would rejoin the garage to the house if you closed it again without ever disarming the system. For example, you come home with the kids in the car. Push homelink, the garage bypasses, the door opens. You grab your bikes and hit the button to close the garage, as soon it as it finishes closing, it unbypasses and your garage is armed again without doing anything.

Something like this (I am not using exact elk words here)
Whenever,
Zone (attached to homlink tripped relay) becomes secure
and
system is armed
and
zone (garage door overhead is secure)
Then
bypass zone (garage door overhead)
turn output (that is attached to garage door remote) on for 2 seconds.

 

[hagak]

Ok now I see it Lou I like the bypass rule idea. May do that instead. Now just need to get the parts order to do this. Also of course wire it, currently no my garage is not wired to my Elk. However the garage wall that gives me access to the basement where the elk is currently is opened from wiring other parts of the system. I have not redone that drywall yet because I want to figure out what wiring I want to do in the garage first. Right now that wall has holes in it covered with temporary boards.

 

[kwando]

My wife and I just had a baby and went through this dilemma. Do we have enough time to drive up, park, unsecure the baby, not wake him up, close doors, unlock door, disarm??? After much thought we went with a keyfob. It was the easiest route, and i setup a rule to flash the garage light a few times to acknowledge the system is disarmed.

What about using RFID?

 

[apostolakisl]

If it is easy to run wires to the garage door openers, then I would definitely do that. It is kind of a pain to solder to those little contacts on a pcb. Also, when using rf you have to deal with the fact that only one button on a multi-button transmitter works at a time. And eventually the batteries go dead.

Depending on how many automatic overhead doors you have and how many buttons you have you can do what I did using your homelink (I did it with keyfob buttons, but it would work the same). I have 3 doors and 4 buttons.

button 1 will check the status of all three garage doors and close any and all of them if needed and arm the system.
button 2 will open door 1 (if closed) and turn the alarm off (you would do bypass); or (if open already) will close door without arming
button 3 will open door 2 (if closed) and turn the alarm off (you would do bypass); or (if open already) will close door without arming
button 4 will open door 3 (if closed) and turn the alarm off (you would do bypass); or (if open already) will close door without arming


If you only have one door, this may be a little superfluous.

The sum of all of the following rules plus the ones in my previous post is that if you have 3 homelink buttons and two overhead doors.

Button 1: Arms the system and closes one or both doors as necessary.
Button 2: Opens door 1 and bypasses door 1 if the system is armed. If the system is not armed, it will open or close the door just like a normal garage door button without any affect on the alarm.
Button 3: Same as button 2, except that it works for garage door 2.


I used a task to do this (I can then access the task using other methods besides the keyfob this way).

Whenever
zone keyfob button1 becomes secure
then
arm system
and
execute task close garage doors

Whenever task close garage doors is activated
and
garage 1 is not secure
then
turn garage door 1 relay on for 2 seconds


Whenever task close door is activated
and
garage 2 is not secure
then
turn garage door 2 relay on for 2 seconds

If you have your garage doors hardwired to the relays this will work just as is. If you use a wireless remote like I did, I had to use a timer in there since you can only hit one button at a time on an rf transmitter.

The following two rules close each of two garage doors independently without arming. You use the same two buttons that also open those two doors.

Whenever
zone homelink button 2 becomes secure
and
zone garage overhead 1 is not secure
then
turn output garage door 1 relay on for 2 seconds

Whenever
zone homelink button 3 becomes secure
and
zone garage overhead 2 is not secure
then
turn output garage door 2 relay on for 2 seconds



Lastly here are two rules that allow the garage door to be opened/closed using the same two buttons when the system is not armed and thus there is no need to bypass

Whenever
zone homelink button2 becomes secure
and
area 1 is not armed
then
turn output garage door 1 relay on for 2 seconds

Whenever
zone homelink button3 is becomes secure
and
area 1 is not armed
then
turn output garage door 2 relay on for 2 seconds.