Where to place my M1XRF

shenandoah75

Active Member
It's arrived!!!!!

I've updated the firmmare on the M1 and i'm ready to go... But when i saw the suggested 10' from electrical/electronic sources suggestions i got tripped up a bit. I had planned to put this in a central closet where the elk and my other wiring/networking is all located. It's a small little room and this likely won't work...

To make it easy i could put it a few feet away from one of my remote boxes with input expanders in them.... Probably 4-5 away. My preferred location which keeps me fairly central to the house, the outbuilding and most points on the 3/4 acre lot (thinking i may need to use the ground plane antennae as signal will be traveling through block walls as well as interior ones) is near a box containing an input and output expander, relay boards and the 24 wall-wart suppply. It may also be a few feet within my pool equipment and wiring overhead though.

The other panel would have less likelyhood of interferance i'd be 10' away from everythin in my master closet, but it's on the far reaches of the house/lot making.

I know i can buy more than one for coverage, but would like to avoid if possible. I can certainly test and see what happens, but really want it in the location noted above as it's much more central to the lot and closer to my outbuilding.

thx for any input...
-brad





P.S. Another question would be whether height a consideration (with or without ground pole antennaes)? I want coverage out in my yard which would probably be up to 150-200' from the receiver. Would moving to upstairs be better. I don't have a real good option there either though because my only closet there has an A/C unit in it...
 
IMHO I think there are so many variables it is near impossible to guess. I would try it in your preferred location and see what happens, then adjust from there. Mine is in a closet with other equipment and I get pretty good coverage, even down the street at least 100 or 150'.
 
fair enough... i'll post results after i play around tonight...


100' down the street, meening in addition to your lot dimensions? that is impressive! tat with or without the ground planes?
 
I know i can buy more than one for coverage, but would like to avoid if possible.

Maybe I'm the only one that was confused by the multiple M1XRF ability. Fact is, for each M1XRF you add you can no longer use one M1XIN. For example, if you want 16 wireless zones and the rest hardwired, using all 208 zones, you are limited to one M1XRF. Make sense?
 
sorry, not following; you only have 208 total zones, and up to you how you distribute them between wired & wireless? Mine's coming tomorrow, i only got 3 M1XIN's, but want to make sure I don't let the magic smoke out.
 
You're good... take a look at the apendix in the manual on Elk's site... it's a lot to decipher, but after a while it's logical...

I also have 3 inX's and 1 wireless receiver... i've still got tons of room to expand...

-brad
 
FYI - one thing that scared me here was that before i saw the appendix, the wording/bold recommendation/table confused me into thinking that elk was recommending you put your first wireless receiever at address 2 and move the hardwired expanders to start after the last wireless receiver...
As per the appendix, that is clearly not the case.... hopefully i'm the only one who could get confused on this...

-brad
 
I'll ask my simple question in your thread;

As mentioned above, I currently have 3 M1XIN's. However, I also noticed this blurb:

(Page 5)
c) Regardless of where the wireless zones start we strongly suggest that all additional wireless zones be contiguous and that no M1XIJN Hardwired Zone Expanders be installed at data bus addresses assocaited with those wireless zone nubers.
d) The last wireless zone # cannot be above 160.

I could start with Z#65 for the M1XRF, but then if I add another M1XIN I'd have to put it at Z161 even though I wouldn't have 96 wireless zones.

Can I start the M1XRF at Z#81 even though nothing exists from Z65->Z80 right now?
 
I could start with Z#65 for the M1XRF, but then if I add another M1XIN I'd have to put it at Z161 even though I wouldn't have 96 wireless zones.


On first part, no... you only loose the zones you want to use... Check out the example matrixes in Appendix A. If you use only 48 for exmple, you could have hardwire expanders available starting at 113+


On second part. not sure - i was wondering the same as i may add two more additional hardwired examders later and though putting the wireless zones at the end would be best... Per the excerpt it definately can be done if you don't follow the guideline. But i think the addresses might need to be sequential (will check M1 manual in a sec) - CORRECTION - can't find this anywhere in elk doc.. maybe you can skip
 
sorry, not following; you only have 208 total zones, and up to you how you distribute them between wired & wireless? Mine's coming tomorrow, i only got 3 M1XIN's, but want to make sure I don't let the magic smoke out.

It is a little confusing. When I spoke with Amy in tech support she had to go to the engineers to get it straight for me. First, the M1XRF shares the same data bus address as an M1XIN. So, an M1XRF cannot duplicate the same address as an M1XIN. On an install I'm working on right now I'm using 16 wireless zones beginning at zone 113. The other 192 zones are all being used and are hardwired. This means I am using the 16 main board zones, one M1XRF for zones 113-129, and 11 M1XIN's for zones 17-32, 33-48, 49-64. 65-80, 81-96, 97-112, 129-144, 145-160, 161-176, 177-192, 193-208. There is a maximum of 12 input expanders that can be enrolled. Do you now see why I cannot add another M1XRF? To add another M1XRF I would have to delete one of the M1XIN's and in effect lose 16 hardwired zones. So, yes you can have multiple M1XRF's, but if you have a full panel you will have to lose something. Spanky, we need to be able to enroll more M1XRF's even though we are not increasing the number of available M1 zones.
 
I could start with Z#65 for the M1XRF, but then if I add another M1XIN I'd have to put it at Z161 even though I wouldn't have 96 wireless zones.

On second part. not sure - i was wondering the same as i may add two more additional hardwired examders later and though putting the wireless zones at the end would be best... Per the excerpt it definately can be done if you don't follow the guideline. But i think the addresses might need to be sequential (will check M1 manual in a sec) - CORRECTION - can't find this anywhere in elk doc.. maybe you can skip

Ok, just found this. I think i'll just try it tomorrow when it comes, see how it goes.

(page 11)
"Consider existing or future M1XIN hardwired zone expanders...
- If the job needs lots of hardwired zones.....consider starting the M1XRF at a higher address, leaving room for future hardwired expansion at the lower addresses.
 
So, yes you can have multiple M1XRF's, but if you have a full panel you will have to lose something. Spanky, we need to be able to enroll more M1XRF's even though we are not increasing the number of available M1 zones.
I don't see how that would be possible. The panel handles a max of 208 zones whether they are hardwire or wireless. You can do 144 wireless zones on a single XRF so you don't need to add several of them, but I see it as 208 is your cap regardless. So, I don't really see it as you are losing something by adding the wireless as much as you have reached the capacity of the panel.
 
all i can say is WOW!!!!! - Spanky wasn't blowing smoke in that post where he said they got "pretty good range" or whatever he said out of these in beta testing...

I have full coverage to all areas of my lot and onto the street... Thats using just the two upper antennas and putting it in the central closet near a ton of stuff in my cabinets... I think i'm going to leave it there.


As always, very nice job Elk!!! (holding my breath for all the other forthcoming goodies you've dangled bait on now) !!!!!

-brad
 
I don't see how that would be possible. The panel handles a max of 208 zones whether they are hardwire or wireless. You can do 144 wireless zones on a single XRF so you don't need to add several of them, but I see it as 208 is your cap regardless. So, I don't really see it as you are losing something by adding the wireless as much as you have reached the capacity of the panel.

The last word I got was the engineers were looking into the ability of adding additional bus addresses beyond the limit of 12 for the input expanders. This wouldn't increase the number of zones just the ability to add redundant, as in no dead spots, M1XRF's. Even though the M1XRF can handle 144 wireless zones it is the ability of adding redundant M1XRF's, for use in a 15,000 square foot building, that was appealing to me. In this install I only want 16 wireless zones, all the rest for a full 208 zones to be hard wired, and three redundant M1XRF's. In the present state of the M1, this is impossible.
 
The way the addressing of the M1XRFG2 may be a little confusing until you understand how the expandability works. The addresses are divided into groups of 16 zones starting at zone 17, zone 33, zone 49 ... zone 144. The last wireless zone is zone 160 giving a total of 144 wireless zones.

When a M1XRF is addressed from address 2 (zones 17 to Zone 32) to address 10 (zones 144 to zones 160) those 16 zones are occupied by the M1XRF. Using ELKRP, you can add more zone groups in 16 zone blocks anywhere from address 2 to address 10 as long as a M1XIN hardwire input expander is not occupying that address space. Therefore one or more receivers can provide received data to the M1 for any or all of the zones from zones 17 to zone 160.

Note: Additional, redundant M1XRF receivers can be added to addresses 11,12, and 13 if lower addresses 2 to 10 are occupied. These additional receivers will send received data to the M1 and the M1 will reference wireless zone groups from zone 17 to 160.

The instructions go into more details on how the addressing works.


Bottom line is that you can add up to 12 M1XRF wireless receivers providing M1 wireless data for any of the zones 17 to 160.

On M1XRFG2 receiver placement, conveniently place it away from metal and other electronics that could be generating or blocking the RF receiver signal, but don't get up tight on the placement until it does not work at a particular location. We have two receivers covering a 60000 square foot building with multiple walls. One of the receivers is in a computer server room. In normal applications, one M1XRFG2 will cover most houses.

The receiver front end has a fairly narrow bandwidth to reject out of band interference. That is why we specify using crystal based transmitters. The SAW based transmitters can drift out of the reception band causing lost or reduced range reception.

Another way to think about the M1XRFG2 is that its job is to provide valid, enrolled transmitter data to the M1. The received data is sent to the M1 on the RS485 data bus. The M1 determines which one of the possible 144 wireless zones the data belongs to. Multiple M1XRFG2 receivers could all be receiving the same transmitter and trying to send the data back to the M1. The first receiver that gets its data back to the M1 wins, and the M1 tells any other receivers with the same data to get rid of its pending data, eliminating redundant data bus traffic.


Happy M1ing! :D
 
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