Keypads as MBR Panic Buttons?

IVB

IVB

Senior Member
We had a burglary in our neighborhood on Sat night, where the thieves freaked out the homeowners by opening the door to their MBR at 3:30am. The residents screamed, and the thieves took off running (dropping their gun on the floor, oddly enough).

I mentioned this to my boss, and he expressed surprise that I didn't mount a keypad in the MBR for the police/fire/medical panic buttons.

Has anyone else done this?
 
IVB said:
We had a burglary in our neighborhood on Sat night, where the thieves freaked out the homeowners by opening the door to their MBR at 3:30am. The residents screamed, and the thieves took off running (dropping their gun on the floor, oddly enough).

I mentioned this to my boss, and he expressed surprise that I didn't mount a keypad in the MBR for the police/fire/medical panic buttons.

Has anyone else done this?
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Its very common. I would put a panic buttom on the wall near the bed as well. The keypad is to far away usually but if u hit the panic and the siren goes off you should scare away the bad guy.

You might try a dual action holdup button to minimize a false alarm from the kids.
 
Well, I haven't actually had that $1K order ship from AO, so I guess adding a KP2 isn't going to be sooo bad.

What's a dual action holdup button? Google reveals some very strange results.
 
IVB said:
Well, I haven't actually had that $1K order ship from AO, so I guess adding a KP2 isn't going to be sooo bad.

What's a dual action holdup button? Google reveals some very strange results.
Click to expand...

Like what the banks use. Ademco makes one and I bet GE etc do also. You need to do two actions at the same time to trip the alarm. Keeps the little ones from tripping it. Make it a 24 hour zone so it works all of the time armed or not.
 
Wireless keyfobs are good for this as well. Then if you hear a strange "noise" you can carry the keyfob with you. Also, many systems have a keypad combination that trips it. For example, with HAI, just pick up any phone, and press # 6 times. That will trip the panic. Cordless phones work also.
 
Its not an alarm keypad, although I do have one in the MBR, I have a button on my Lutron system set to turn on ALL lights inside and out and flash certain ones to call attention. It is a double press button to keep it from being set off accidentally.
 
I also believe in putting a display keypad in the MBR to allow you to see the status and any trouble or alarm messages. And if you need glasses to use the keypad, make sure you keep a pair close. :rolleyes: Right after we moved into our current house, the existing alarm system went in to trouble mode at 3 AM for failure to communicate with the central station. Scared the crap out of us and my glasses & cell phone were in my office so I had no idea what was going on.

I agree that a keypad near the MBR door doesn't make the best panic trigger. A keyfob is a good portable trigger. If you have a place to hide it on on your headboard, a safety cover on a toggle switch is very false alarm resistant and cheap.
http://skycraftsurplus.com/index.asp?PageA...amp;ProdID=1082
 
GE does make a wireless panic button but I use the Big Red buttons (Wireless- from AO) all around the house. My neighbor even has a couple around her house which communicate with my w800 (the burbs) to alarm me and call a list of designated numbers and set off the alarm.
 
What an interesting, if a little ironic, night last night. I had just fallen asleep at 12:15am when the Elk went off (night mode). The wife was finishing up a book, so she was up. Thankfully I had put a keypad in the MBR, so I went right to it to see which zone was violated. I then handed my wife the golf club (5wood) that we keep in the MBR and told her to go to the kids room. I decided to bum-rush the 1 inside door leading to the room so as to take any intruder by surprise.

Thankfully no one was inside the house, but I did make NextAlarm stay on the phone with me as I checked it out ( the guy was great - very understanding). The huge bummer is that due to the rewiring, the camera pointed right at that window wasn't connected up (since fixed). Hence, we couldn't tell if it was a false alarm or not from inside the house, and i wasn't about to go outside to check for marks. The one thing I can think of is that I hosed off that particular windowsill pretty hard with the nozzle in "jet" mode, perhaps that interfered with the wireless sensors somehow. I'll check the outer window for jimmy marks tomorrow, forgot today.

Anyway, my lessons learned are:
- keypad in MBR has already proven to be a *very* valuable thing, and the wife is now very happy that it is there. Seriously, she high-fived me and said "ok, THAT was a good idea."
- variety of speakers throughout the house are also good, as it can undoubtedly alert any intruder as to detection
- Having a "process" that me/wife understand and agree to in event of issue is also good.
- 2 golf clubs in the MBR is a good idea, so I don't have to grab the steak knife en-route to the point of intrusion
 
IVB said:
What an interesting, if a little ironic, night last night. I had just fallen asleep at 12:15am when the Elk went off (night mode). The wife was finishing up a book, so she was up. Thankfully I had put a keypad in the MBR, so I went right to it to see which zone was violated. I then handed my wife the golf club (5wood) that we keep in the MBR and told her to go to the kids room. I decided to bum-rush the 1 inside door leading to the room so as to take any intruder by surprise.

Thankfully no one was inside the house, but I did make NextAlarm stay on the phone with me as I checked it out ( the guy was great - very understanding). The huge bummer is that due to the rewiring, the camera pointed right at that window wasn't connected up (since fixed). Hence, we couldn't tell if it was a false alarm or not from inside the house, and i wasn't about to go outside to check for marks. The one thing I can think of is that I hosed off that particular windowsill pretty hard with the nozzle in "jet" mode, perhaps that interfered with the wireless sensors somehow. I'll check the outer window for jimmy marks tomorrow, forgot today.

Anyway, my lessons learned are:
- keypad in MBR has already proven to be a *very* valuable thing, and the wife is now very happy that it is there. Seriously, she high-fived me and said "ok, THAT was a good idea."
- variety of speakers throughout the house are also good, as it can undoubtedly alert any intruder as to detection
- Having a "process" that me/wife understand and agree to in event of issue is also good.
- 2 golf clubs in the MBR is a good idea, so I don't have to grab the steak knife en-route to the point of intrusion
Click to expand...

IVB, Thanks for posting this. I've been thinking about whether to put a keypad in the MBR and your story has convinced me. It will be a pain to run the wire but worth it. On the business of dealing with the point of intrusion--reminds me of the old joke told in community mental health centers: How do you tell the staff from everyone else? They're the ones running toward the guy who's screaming and yelling. I think my approach to this will be a little different. Despite the fact that I've trained in martial arts for years, hold black belts in some of them and know how to use my gun, I believe that I would, from the bedroom, monitor the area for motion and video and have the police deal with anyone who was there. If my monitoring didn't show anyone present, I might then go and check things out. There are just too many things that can go wrong in a confrontation and preserving property just isn't worth the risk of death or injury. Now if the kids or the wife were in danger, that would be an entirely different story and most likely very unfortunate for the intruder....
 
keepersg said:
I think my approach to this will be a little different. Despite the fact that I've trained in martial arts for years, hold black belts in some of them and know how to use my gun, I believe that I would, from the bedroom, monitor the area for motion and video and have the police deal with anyone who was there. If my monitoring didn't show anyone present, I might then go and check things out. There are just too many things that can go wrong in a confrontation and preserving property just isn't worth the risk of death or injury. Now if the kids or the wife were in danger, that would be an entirely different story and most likely very unfortunate for the intruder....
Click to expand...
True, but it wasn't a property preservation concern in my case. The one thing I didn't post was the scary bit about the location, which was that the first room an intruder would open from the violated window was the kids room and that was only 12' from that window. Rather than roust the 3yr old & 5yr old kids and evac to the backroom on what could be a false alarm and then suffer for the rest of the night, I figured I better check it out myself.
 
IVB said:
keepersg said:
I think my approach to this will be a little different. Despite the fact that I've trained in martial arts for years, hold black belts in some of them and know how to use my gun, I believe that I would, from the bedroom, monitor the area for motion and video and have the police deal with anyone who was there. If my monitoring didn't show anyone present, I might then go and check things out. There are just too many things that can go wrong in a confrontation and preserving property just isn't worth the risk of death or injury. Now if the kids or the wife were in danger, that would be an entirely different story and most likely very unfortunate for the intruder....
Click to expand...
True, but it wasn't a property preservation concern in my case. The one thing I didn't post was the scary bit about the location, which was that the first room an intruder would open from the violated window was the kids room and that was only 12' from that window. Rather than roust the 3yr old & 5yr old kids and evac to the backroom on what could be a false alarm and then suffer for the rest of the night, I figured I better check it out myself.
Click to expand...

Oh, absolutely, under those circumstances I'd be there in a flash too. I'm glad you didn't find anybody and that your family was safe.
 
I've had an extra 8-button UPB tabletop controller sitting on my bedroom nightstand that I've been thinking of using for this purpose. Now I'm extra motivated to make it work. I think I can program the Elk to watch for a sequence of links coming from the UPB controller and trigger a real and/or duress alarm...
 
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