Hey everyone,
I am moving and in the new house there are 8 or so smoke detectors in the house. They are all USI Electric with three wires, white, black, and yellow with a quick connector. I am guessing that is a two wire??? If one goes off, so do the others.
I want to get the smoke detector network connected to a new ELK M1 Gold alarm panel via Zone 16 right?
I am assuming that yellow wire is the communications channel between all of the detectors. I also assume I can not just take a splice from that and run it to zone 16 right? I do know USI offers the USI-960 for "accessories". Per the manual they say its not recommended for use with alarm panels:
<I couldnt post urls but google for USI-960-manual.pdf>
But from my limited understanding all it does, is create a open / close relay. Isnt that what the ELK needs? Why shouldn't it be used for this purpose? Also I keep hearing things about EOL (end of line), I have zero way to know which smoke detector is in fact EOL, they are all already installed.
So I don't know what to do, could I just use the 960, and tap onto the line and hope the until closest to the alarm panel is EOL and if not oh well? Is there another brand of detector I can buy that will use the existing wiring that is less sensitive to EOL?
Hoping someone shead some lights on what I should be doing. I dont mind buying new detectors but I can not rerun new wires, ideally I would love to just buy new USI units as they are already mounts for them throughout the house.
Thanks in advance!
I am moving and in the new house there are 8 or so smoke detectors in the house. They are all USI Electric with three wires, white, black, and yellow with a quick connector. I am guessing that is a two wire??? If one goes off, so do the others.
I want to get the smoke detector network connected to a new ELK M1 Gold alarm panel via Zone 16 right?
I am assuming that yellow wire is the communications channel between all of the detectors. I also assume I can not just take a splice from that and run it to zone 16 right? I do know USI offers the USI-960 for "accessories". Per the manual they say its not recommended for use with alarm panels:
<I couldnt post urls but google for USI-960-manual.pdf>
But from my limited understanding all it does, is create a open / close relay. Isnt that what the ELK needs? Why shouldn't it be used for this purpose? Also I keep hearing things about EOL (end of line), I have zero way to know which smoke detector is in fact EOL, they are all already installed.
So I don't know what to do, could I just use the 960, and tap onto the line and hope the until closest to the alarm panel is EOL and if not oh well? Is there another brand of detector I can buy that will use the existing wiring that is less sensitive to EOL?
Hoping someone shead some lights on what I should be doing. I dont mind buying new detectors but I can not rerun new wires, ideally I would love to just buy new USI units as they are already mounts for them throughout the house.
Thanks in advance!