At our previous home I installed the Ademco Destiny panel with voice and alphanumeric pager capability. My wife got used to it and liked it. We have installed an ELK M1 Gold in our new home. I really like the ease of setting up the system and the rules compared to the Destiny panel.
However, there are several things my wife and I liked that I'm wondering if there are easy ways to do with the M1.
1. The Destiny blinked a light on the keypad if any doors or windows were open and the LCD on the keypad listed the zones that were open. It ignored motion detectors. I know you can program a light to blink on the keypad, but it seems I would have to somehow write a rule for each door or window to activate it?
2. To force arm the ELK system when there is a zone open requires entering the user code twice - even though we programmed it for one touch arming. I haven't found the one button arming to work with a zone open. With our old system once we programmed it to allow force arming it armed with one or two presses of the arm button.
3. The old system didn't prevent you from arming if a motion detector was activated. The ELK shows "not-ready" if just a motion detector is active. (we have motion sensors near the keypad - so this is annoying when we go to arm the system).
4. I really miss the alpha numeric paging messages I got with the Destiny. They were reliable and I could monitor the messages without having to answer the cell phone like I have to do with the ELK. I have found that monitoring it myself with my pager gave me the ability to screen false alarms or call my neighbor to be on the look out. The police really get so many false alarms and don't take home security system alarms seriously so I don't believe a monitoring service contacting the police is very effective. I have homeseer. Any suggestions on how to do alphanumeric paging with the ELK or with homeseer? Also, the ELK panel shuts off the siren when it starts to call our cell phones (about 10 seconds after the siren sounds) which defeats the purpose of the alarm which is to scare off the intruder. I believe the siren resumes after the calls are made.
One feature we really like from both systems is being able to arm and disarm silently with the telephone. Doesn't wake up the kids. Overall the ELK M1 gold is a very good product that I recommend and we are very happy with. The ELK custom voice recordings you can do are great. The rules and programming it has is much more extensive than the Destiny.
Thanks for any suggestions.
However, there are several things my wife and I liked that I'm wondering if there are easy ways to do with the M1.
1. The Destiny blinked a light on the keypad if any doors or windows were open and the LCD on the keypad listed the zones that were open. It ignored motion detectors. I know you can program a light to blink on the keypad, but it seems I would have to somehow write a rule for each door or window to activate it?
2. To force arm the ELK system when there is a zone open requires entering the user code twice - even though we programmed it for one touch arming. I haven't found the one button arming to work with a zone open. With our old system once we programmed it to allow force arming it armed with one or two presses of the arm button.
3. The old system didn't prevent you from arming if a motion detector was activated. The ELK shows "not-ready" if just a motion detector is active. (we have motion sensors near the keypad - so this is annoying when we go to arm the system).
4. I really miss the alpha numeric paging messages I got with the Destiny. They were reliable and I could monitor the messages without having to answer the cell phone like I have to do with the ELK. I have found that monitoring it myself with my pager gave me the ability to screen false alarms or call my neighbor to be on the look out. The police really get so many false alarms and don't take home security system alarms seriously so I don't believe a monitoring service contacting the police is very effective. I have homeseer. Any suggestions on how to do alphanumeric paging with the ELK or with homeseer? Also, the ELK panel shuts off the siren when it starts to call our cell phones (about 10 seconds after the siren sounds) which defeats the purpose of the alarm which is to scare off the intruder. I believe the siren resumes after the calls are made.
One feature we really like from both systems is being able to arm and disarm silently with the telephone. Doesn't wake up the kids. Overall the ELK M1 gold is a very good product that I recommend and we are very happy with. The ELK custom voice recordings you can do are great. The rules and programming it has is much more extensive than the Destiny.
Thanks for any suggestions.
