Idea to handle Garage Doors

[hagak]

So I have done what I refer to as Stage 1 of my Security/HA system install. One part of the house that is not secured that I want to fix is the garage. Due to the fact that we actually use our garage to put cars in, we enter the house through the garage. Now the issue I have is if I were just to put the Garage doors on a entry zone we would never be able to get to the keypad before the time expired. Even if I use the entry2 zone with a 2 minute timeout I think it would be a rush for use to get to the keypad on time due to the fact that we need to make sure the doors are fully open before we make the approach with the cars (driveway is long and steep, if you stop the car just before the garage to wait for the door you will most likely loose traction getting going again).
One idea is to use a keyfob to disarm the system from the car, 2 things I do not like about this. 1. I do not want another keyfob to car with me. 2. I do not want to have to change my wifes operating procedures. Ideally the system should be invisible to her with the exception of the act of arm/disarming from the keypad in the house.

So after thinking about this I figured the best approach would be to use the Area feature of the M1. Seems like I could put the garage door zones in their own area. Hookup the output of the Elk to control the garage door openers. Grab a Liftmaster receiver that I can connect to the Elk input zones and program the Homelink in the cars to the receiver. Then I should be able to setup rules that will arm and disarm the Garage Area and open the garage door from the homelink control. The trick part would be making the rules in such away that it disarms the area only when the door is opening and arms the area only when the door is closing. One solution would be to use 2 channels and have one open and one close, but this goes against the rule of keeping things the same for the wife. It seems I should be able to condition the arm/disarm on the condition of the door input zone of being violated or not (Violated AND Button pressed Then ARM) (Not Violated AND Button pressed THEN DISARM)

This approach would minimize the security risk of a keyfob or car getting stolen to just the garage since the Home Area would remain armed. It would solve the issue of timing for the entry timeout. It also would be invisible to the wife.

Downside though is I would have to send the local garage door buttons to the Elk to command the Elk to open the doors and disarm the Garage Area, that should not be too much of an issue. Technically I could install a keypad to handle this but that might be overkill .

Question though is it possible to have an Area defined without having a keypad?

Has anyone done something similar to this?

 

[apostolakisl]

I use a keyfob and it works great. But it is another keyfob in your pocket and I see your point. But I sometimes don't have the keyfob so I open the door regular. You can set the delay up to 255 seconds. I put the garage doors as "entry 2" and set the delay for 255. That is more than 4 minutes which has always been plenty-o-time, even if you are grabbing stuff out of the trunck or whatever.

 

[Desert_AIP]

2 minutes is a long time. I'm willing to bet you have at least a minute after you park. The door should only take 10 seconds or less to open.

My HAI system issues voice warnings to disarm the system every 30 seconds after the garage door opens, just to remind me to go turn off the alarm when we pull in the garage.
We have a 500' driveway and usually open the door as soon as we turn off the street.
We usually disarm the alarm befor a minute is over.

Need to adjust your procedures to disarm the alrm, then come back out and grab your groceries or whatever.
It's not that tough of an adjustment.

I'd be leery of someone getting ahold of a portable keyfob that disarms my alarm system.

 

[gatchel]

If I gave someone 2 minutes before the alarm sounded I would be missing over $20,000 worth of tools and other items. They haven't even gotten to the house yet.

 

[znelbok]

If I gave someone 2 minutes before the alarm sounded I would be missing over $20,000 worth of tools and other items. They haven't even gotten to the house yet.

You mis-understand alarms. The fact that the alarm has gone off does not stop someone from cleaning out your garage if it can be done in two minutes. So what if the alarm goes off, your security company is not going to be there instantly, your neighbours probably wont do anything and you can't respong straight away either.

The sound may be a deterent to most, but its not going to stop someone who really wants something. Your 2 minutes is still going to set the alarm off unless it is turned off so its not as if its 2 minutes of no alarm system protecting the garage.

If you have $20K of gear in the garage then I suggest taht you put it elsewhere as the garage is one of the most insecure "rooms" in a house.

Mick

 

[gatchel]

I don't think the wife would like generators, chop saws, and other various items in the house, I wouldn't either.

:lol:


I hear you though. The idea was, the sooner you make a lot of noise the better your chances they'll scramble. Fortunately I do have a bunch of neighbors that are retired and one next door that works from home about 50% of the time. Hopefully they'll to their part.

 

[apostolakisl]

Two comments here.

1) If you have 20 grand in tools, you deserve a workshop, not a garage.

2) There is a very very low chance that a criminal is going to enter your house by cracking the rolling frequency garage door opener code. So I wouldn't get super up tight about it. The main reason I have my garage overhead alarmed is so that it doesn't get forgotten open. Garages get ripped off pretty much becuase they are just sitting open, not that the overhead door was opened in an unauthorized fashion.

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

One thing you can do is put a speaker in there that will announce statements like "Security warning one" when 30 seconds elapses after a garage door is opened. This would give an intruder a notification that "something" has been tripped and can easily be a reminder to the wife that the systems needs to be disarmed in the next 200 seconds.

You may also want to make sure the garage door is closed once the system is armed (in away mode) and say five minutes has passed. I even give a signal to close it and make sure the door did indeed close, or else I will get a message. I chrip the siren and blink the lights before sending a signal to close the garage door.

I also auto close the garage door if opened after arming in 'stay' mode.

 

[hagak]

Wow this topic went a little OT quickly.

I do not think you guys understand the main goal that I want to accomplish. I want to reduce how much I change the way my wife does her daily things, and I want to minimize the security risk. A keyfob is pretty much out of the question because I do not want to carry one and that would also be something else my wife will have to deal with.

While 2 minutes may be a good bit, I personally do not want to be forced to run in the house as soon as I get home. Ihave chores I do before entering the house. I know my wife will get the mail before driving up the driveway, but will have opened the door before hand.

My proposed solution would not put the security of the house solely on the Homelink, it would only put the security of the garage doors on it while still leaving the rest of the house armed.

What I am asking for is if anyone sees any holes in my logic or problems that the Elk M1 will not handle properly such as having an Area defined without a keypad defined for that Area.

P.S. Just counting the cars stored in my garage I have well over $20K in there, I suspect most people can get well over that dollar figure if you think about it. Plus garages hold tools in them that are very useful for entering a home

 

[cornutt]

Seems like the easiest thing to do would be to simply maximize the entry delay; if you can increase the base delay to 255 seconds and then make the garage doors be 2x zones, that would be over 8 minutes.

Another concept is to handle the garage alarms with rules. I don't know much about the Elk so I'm not sure exactly how you'd go about it on this system, but the idea is: define all the sensors in your garage as "never alarm", whatever kind of zone that is. Write a rule for each of them that triggers on the zone opening and sets off the alarm if the security mode is away (or whatever mode/modes you want those zones to alarm in). For the doors, instead of alarming right away, start a timer that provides however much entry delay you want. When the time expires, if the security is still armed, trigger the alarm.

(I don't know how you'd actually trigger the alarm from a rule on the Elk. On the HAI, which is what I have, what I'd need to do is wire an output to open a zone via a relay, and then define the zone as "POLICE EMERGENCY". A rule could then trigger the alarm by pulsing the output.)

 

[hagak]

I appreciate the suggestion of having a long entry time as a simple solution, however I do not see that as a good solution. Never mind the part of the problem that I do NOT want to run in and disarm my system just because I opened the garage, but having a really long entry delay seems like a bad idea from a security point.

Maybe I did not explain the concept of multiple AREAs. The Elk has the feature of being able to define multiple Areas, basically each area would be its own security system in a sense. The house would be Area 1 and the Garage as Area 2. You can independently arm and disarm each area. With this in mind I could disarm the garage without disarming the house. Once I enter the house the entry timer for the house Area would start and I would have to enter my code to disarm at that point. But that timer would not start until I actually entered the house.

 

[apostolakisl]

Your intent is to have your garage on a separate area that is disarmed when you use your homelink to open the garage door but the rest of your house stays armed.

Your logic is that it keeps the house more secure, I guess in the case that someone steels your car and uses your homelink. But I don't think it does.

If you have the door from the garage to the house on its own contact closure, as soon as someone enters the house from the garage, the delay will shorten to the time period specified for that door (which you would make the same as all other regular doors), meaning that your house is protected exactly the same regardless of what your overhead door delay is.

The only way the garage overhead door is going to be tripped is if you open the door and pretty much that is only possible with the garage door transmitter attached to your car. Prying a garage door open is a rediculous way to break into a house and breaking the rolling code is too complex to bother with. So, if someone has stolen your car, drives to your house, and opens your door using the homelink, and you have programmed the homelink to disarm the garage, now the crook has all day in your garage. If you had set the alarm to 255 seconds, they only have 255 seconds regardless of the homelink. And 255 seconds is plenty of time to get into the house.

But, if you really want to do this, you may consider setting your homelink to throw a relay connected to an elk zone. when the relay throws, an Elk rule would bypass the garage, and throw another relay opening the door.

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]

Why is prying a garage door open ridiculous ? It very quick and only requires a pry bar or similar strong straight object that can usually be found in a nearby yard. Garage door openers do not provide much holding force. Actually this is a common forced entry method for fire fighters.

Again I am trying to avoid having to cause someone to enter a code just because they opened the garage door. Not sure why this requirement seems odd to everyone. We often do not enter the house as soon as we arrive home. While I understand security systems do require users to change their routines I would like to minimize that while not compromising security. Right now my options are do not secure garage doors at all or find a way to secure them without having an entry delay.

 

[apostolakisl]

It would be easier to kick in a regular door then pry a garage up by a lot. Way faster, no tools required, and you don't have to slither under.

But even if they pry it up, , the contact would get tripped early in the process so they would still probably need 30 or more seconds until it was up enought to slither under. And, they still get the delay cut to 30 seconds (or whatever you set it to), when they open the door to the rest of the house.

If they steel your car and you have lots of tools in your garage and your homelink shut the garage alarm off completely, they get as much time as they want to load your tools into your car and drive away.

But, I think you would be better off using the bypass function as I mentioned above rather than making your garage a separate area. Unless you wanted to put a keypad in your garage right next to where you get out of your car. That would be easy and the simple style keypads are pretty cheap. And you could set your garage delay to something fairly short, like 60 seconds, and you wouldn't forget since you would hear it whining as soon as you opened the car door.

 

[cornutt]

So do it this way: Get a receiver that is connected to your Elk system, and program the car's Homelink to operate that instead of operating the GDO directly. When the Homelink activates the receiver, it opens or closes a zone on the Elk that a rule detects. The rule disarms the garage zone and activates an output to open the door. The advantage of doing it this way is that the garage door is still protected from forced entry; only using the Homelink will allow the door to open without eventually activating the alarm.

As for the keypad thing, I don't know this for sure, but I suspect the Elk has some way of temporarily "moving" the house keypad to the garage zone, so that the garage doesn't have to have its own keypad. HAI has that so I would think Elk has it too.