Options for detecting people in barn and garage

[theedudenator]

I have an Elk M1 with GE type Wireless
I also have Insteon with ISY interface.

The garage is rather close. I tried a GE wireless motion sensor in the garage. I got intermidiate loss of zone problems.
I did add an insteon relay (powerline) to control garage door - no issues.

The barn is far away, Elk wireless in the house will not work.
Never tried to use insteon. The barn is branched off the house panel - will probably work.

I have some wireless insteon devices, never could get them to work to control the garage lights - not sure how to program the ISY.

 

[tmbrown97]

We definitely need to know a little more... such as:

1. How far is the barn from the house?
2. Any low voltage cabling or conduit or ability to run conduit or wire between the house and barn?
3. How large is the barn?
4. What do you want to detect/control? Number of doors/windows/motion sensors
5. What's your budget?

Without knowing any of those things, but knowing that the wireless hasn't worked yet, I'd probably move to suggesting something like a long-range transmitter/receiver combination. You could wire door/window contacts and motion sensors to it, then completely bypass the Elk's Wireless - use the same receiver near the Elk and wire directly into wired zones - the Elk would just think they were wired zones.

So - something like this transmitter mounted in the barn - wire your motions and door contacts into it, and then one of these receivers at the house wired into the zones on the Elk. That would solve your problem and has a supervisory circuit in case anything doesn't check in correctly.

Otherwise, it could be mentioned that additional GE receivers can be placed on the same system - maybe there's a way to mount another one closer to the side of the house nearest the barn so it could pick up the signal?

And if Powerline works, you might just try UPB - it's a much stronger/more robust signal than Insteon (without the wireless backup) so it should work if the insteon does today. Then again, you might just need a dual band device in the barn that'll convert the wireless to the powerline and bridge the signal back to the house.

 

[theedudenator]

The barn is large and old.
No door or window sensors would work.
It would need to be motion type.

There is no way to run wiring out there.

If I can verify the insteon works, then this would be the cheapest way to run things?
I can try an insteon device out there and see what happens.

Not sure how I can get an insteon motion sensor to provide feedback to my Elk system.

 

[gatchel]

I would never trust Insteon to transmit a security signal for monitoring purposes. Work2Play has the right idea with the Linear Wireless he linked to above.

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

The barn is large and old.
No door or window sensors would work.
It would need to be motion type.

There is no way to run wiring out there.

If I can verify the insteon works, then this would be the cheapest way to run things?
I can try an insteon device out there and see what happens.

Not sure how I can get an insteon motion sensor to provide feedback to my Elk system.

So, how far away is the barn?

 

[theedudenator]

about 200 foot from the house

 

[tmbrown97]

If you want reliability, then use the linear system. They have cheaper one-channel systems if that's all you're after. If you're trying to go as cheap as possible and use the Insteon stuff, then put a dual-band device in the barn as well - that'll get the wireless and convert it to powerline which you've said works.

I'm not an insteon person so I don't know how well all the Elk integration works with it... but one option if you want it to directly correlate to a zone like any other sensor would be using an I/O Linc into a zone and have it controlled by whatever is in the barn... but if you do that, please set it to a non-alarm zone and use rules for notification; don't have it alert the CS.

 

[Neurorad]

200 feet doesn't seem that far.

I see that Home Depot rents Ditch Witch trenchers. Might be a fun project.

 

[AlexCuster]

If the barn is only 200 feet away and you are having signal issues you could try adding a repeater. We carry such repeaters specifically designed to repeat and extend the range of GE wireless products. Going this route is fine as far as UL standards so you could still have the zone monitored and the part only costs about $75.

 

[Del91574]

Depends on how you're trying to monitor, but for long range, Linear would be the option I'd go with, but it's not going to be cheap for a system to work with appropriate range. You could also use, not sure if mentioned, Dakota Alert products, but I would not use them for security purposes. Annunciation vs. alarm are 2 different items.

As stated, 200' with a ditch witch and pulling direct burial isn't a long or hard project, especially with LV, since depth isn't as critical.