Wireless sensors?

[jwilson56]

I would like to hear from people that have used wireless door and window sensors with their Elk. How are the performance and reliability? What model receiver and transmitters did you use?

As some of you know I have recently had major back surgery so I am not sure I am ready to start pulling wire in this house that has wet plaster walls.


John

 

[Steve]

While I don't usually like or recommend wireless sensors for security, at least the Caddx wireless stuff is decent. I would at least recommend a wired sensor on major points of entry like the doors if possible. I use the Elk receiver and various Caddx sensors. I have one on the mailbox for announcements, a few water sensors and one on the shed. Also going to put them on the screen enclosure doors when fixed. I like the Elk receiver better than the GE one and I would use Crystal based sensors.

 

[upstatemike]

I am also curious what the largest number of wireless contacts is that somebody has used in a single installation? And what issues do you see as the number of transmitters goes up?

 

[Spanky]

I know of at least one installation in a large home where 144 transmitters were used into an ELK receiver. No problems reported.

In the engineering facility here, there are hundreds of GE transmitters in storage within 300 feet. The batteries are installed in all the transmitters and each transmitter sends a supervisory signal every hour. When you look at the data display of the transmitters being received, they occur every 1 to 10 seconds. I have never seen a problem with missing signals from transmitter clash. Although, technically it could occur. We have triggered 10 transmitters at exactly the same time and they have all been received.

 

[jwilson56]

While I don't usually like or recommend wireless sensors for security, at least the Caddx wireless stuff is decent. I would at least recommend a wired sensor on major points of entry like the doors if possible. I use the Elk receiver and various Caddx sensors. I have one on the mailbox for announcements, a few water sensors and one on the shed. Also going to put them on the screen enclosure doors when fixed. I like the Elk receiver better than the GE one and I would use Crystal based sensors.

Mind giving me some AO links so I know what receiver and sensors your referring to just to be on the safe side?

John

 

[Steve]

Receiver: Here
Transmitters: Here

The NX-454's are pretty popular for doors/windows.

 

[IVB]

I have the Elk wireless receiver and the Caddx NX458 transmitters. (recessed wireless).

It has been nothing short of a disaster. My view is that I've wasted $800 on transmitters, i can't even easily resell them as i end up breaking a piece of them when i pull them out and put wired ones in.

 

[BadDog]

I've had an Elk wireless receiver running with an M1G for a few months now. At the moment, I have 11 wireless sensors (smoke, CO, door and window). There was an initial problem using the micro NX-454 sensors in my old plaster and stone building. On rare occasions, the Elk would not detect a door close with the NX-454's, leading to an exit error condition. I swapped the NX-454's for the larger NX-650 sensors, and all has been running perfectly. If you watch the LEDs on the Elk receiver, you'll see that the NX-650's send out about 8 bursts of RF per trigger, while the micro NX-454's only send out about 4. I'm guessing this is what made the difference for my installation.

 

[Spanky]

The earlier software versions (1.0.8 and earlier) of the Elk Receiver only required one data packet out of 8 that matched the parity and checksum in the Caddx/GE protocol. Noise along with distant transmitters can flip bits in the transmitted data. The parity and checksum data was too weak on a single data packet to guarantee the incoming packet was correct, so the current Elk receiver software requires two matching 56 bit packets out of the 8 transmitted to be a valid transmission from the GE transmitters. In addition the transmitter ID must match a transmitter enrolled in the M1 before the receiver will send the data to the M1. This software upgrade should eliminate any falsing transmitters on the ELK side. If a transmitter is sending good data, but a false alarm, all the M1 can do is report it and wake you at night.

If you are having an issue with wireless transmitters and have older software in the ELK Receiver and M1, you may want to upgrade. Go to the m1dealer.elkproduct.com site for the software upgrade. Of course, as always, it is a free upgrade.