Wiring doorbell to chime on keypads or simple video intercom.

[newalarm]

I was wondering if there were any problems with wiring the m1g so that you have a door bell button that when pressed, it chimes on all the keypads or give a voice message? Since we have keypads on both floors and garage, thought it would be good way of doing a door bell.

Alternatively, we were looking at a simple video intercom system that was not too expensive and that might work on Cat-5.

Thanks.

 

[apostolakisl]

I have done this at my office where I have a DSC system. The system has 4 different chimes so I was able to set different doors and different doorbell buttons to trigger different sounds. I also have an Elk at home, which I did not do this with, but you could do something similar.

I do not believe Elk allows different chimes for different zones. So if you did this, you would not be able differentiate a door opening chime (if you use that) from a doorbell chime, or front door from back door.

In short, wire the doorbell button to a zone on the Elk. When the zone closes (button pressed), this will trigger the chime (provided you checked off the "chime" box and you had the chime feature active).

Alternatively, you can have Elk speak to you (something like "front door") . . . but that would not come out the keypads unless you mounted speakers behind them.

 

[newalarm]

Thanks Lou Apo. I will have to check to see if a zone can have a dedicated sound/chime. Good point on the chime turning off on keypad.

alternatively, i could use a relay to activate a doorbells on each floor.

 

[tmbrown97]

I went a step further with my Elk - since I have keypads around the house with the SP12 speakers behind them, I incorporated an Elk124 recordable voice module and hooked it inline with the Elk to connect to those speakers. Then I plugged the onboard outputs into the 124 - so now I have 8 custom sounds I can play whenever I want; and they're not affected by turning sounds on/off on the elk or disabling chimes - but through rules I can decide when they do or don't work.

Right now I have a nice westminister chime for the doorbell, a couple custom sounds, and some leftovers from halloween - when someone rings my doorbell on halloween, they get screaming and other effects, then as I open the door, it alternates between a couple different sound effects for me. For my next one, I'm considering some grandfather-clock type sounds to help the kids keep tabs on when the night should be winding down. It's not the cheapest add-on, but I've had a lot of fun with it.

 

[bucko]

I went a step further with my Elk - since I have keypads around the house with the SP12 speakers behind them, I incorporated an Elk124 recordable voice module and hooked it inline with the Elk to connect to those speakers. Then I plugged the onboard outputs into the 124 - so now I have 8 custom sounds I can play whenever I want; and they're not affected by turning sounds on/off on the elk or disabling chimes - but through rules I can decide when they do or don't work.

Right now I have a nice westminister chime for the doorbell, a couple custom sounds, and some leftovers from halloween - when someone rings my doorbell on halloween, they get screaming and other effects, then as I open the door, it alternates between a couple different sound effects for me. For my next one, I'm considering some grandfather-clock type sounds to help the kids keep tabs on when the night should be winding down. It's not the cheapest add-on, but I've had a lot of fun with it.

 
Hi work2play,
 
I read your post and I have the 124 and a TWA. I understand about the J7 and using the 8 outputs. But how can you have the 124 AND output1 (system announcements) work off these same speakers? Do you have this working as well?

 

[tmbrown97]

I did have that in my previous home and it worked great - I've actually been really wanting to do it again here but haven't had time for many involved HA projects with three little ones now running around.  It was best around halloween when it'd play spooky sounds instead of a doorbell, and would alternate between a couple different sound effects as I opened the front door.
 
If I remember back, I think you're supposed to use capacitors or something to parallel both audio sources OR you could use relays to switch them back and forth - but I skipped that and just hooked them both up in parallel.  If by some chance the M1 and the 124 were both driving them at the same time, it'd be a distorted mess, but literally that only happened on system power up when it's make a power on announcement and trigger the first thing on the 124, which was my doorbell.  Even still, no harm was done.
 
Here's an ancient Elk tech-note on doing this:
http://cocoontech.com/forums/topic/16178-elk-audio-distribution-ideas/#entry136312