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Few questions on DSC Integration


eggzlot

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A few questions for me as a user using the Domosapiens driver.

1) I see all of my sensors (Windows and doors) in my project and I see my water sensors and my carbon monoxide detectors.  I have it programmed that I get 2 texts - a general alarm is activated text and then a notice of the zone(s) that are tripped/opened.

Situation: The other night an A/C air handler leaked and the water luckily quickly got into one of my smoke detectors on the floor below (handler sits on the floor in the attic and right under was a smoke detector on another floor) so at 3:30am my alarm went off because the smoke got the water and I guess technically shorted out.  I got the first text that the alarm went off but never got the follow up text about what zone was "open".  Once the monitoring company called and said it was fire we did a check of the house, noticed no fire, and while going room to room saw some drops of water on the floor and figured it out.

Question: In my project I do not see smoke detectors, so I could not program "if smoke detectors go off > send text to..." - make sense?  Is something a deficiency with DSC/driver or just an oversight on my original installer and we just need to ID the smoke detectors into C4?  Would have been nice that when the alarm went off at 330am and my phone is next to me I know exactly what is going on.

2) Is there a difference in alarm states between fire, burglar, etc?  I have a line of code that should turn my TV on if it is between 10pm and 8am and put a screen shot of my cameras on the TV if the alarm goes off.  I get the cameras on the TV via Videostorm.  I've tested it, it works.  When the fire alarm went off, the TV did not go on.  Do I need to put that line of programming somewhere else?  It currently resides in:

Security System (how the driver is named)

      Panel (Partition 1 I guess where everything is)

            When AV Rack > Panel is in Alarm

I have the "Alarm has been triggered" text there too and I got that text, so wondering why the Video Display did not show up.   Any thoughts?

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I also use the Domosapiens driver with a DSC system (aside, this really is a cool driver).  I don't have my computer in front of me right now, so am answering from memory (if that does not help, I can have a proper look tomorrow).

Yes, you can have smoke detectors identified in the project. I think your dealer would need to connect them.

Yes, there are 3 different alarm types (fire, police and medical).  I don't use when partition is in alarm for this very reason. There is somewhere - I think it is back one item in the tree from where you are (I.e. On the Security system rather than on the partition - but I may be wrong here) - where you get a drop down list of all sorts of events (e.g. Zone group A active etc.). There are 3 relevant events (fire alarm activated, police alarm activated, medical alarm activated) - I may have the names slightly wrong, but you get the picture.  You probably want to program against all 3 of these. I have one macro that I call from each of the 3 of these and it does the cameras on TVs, email messages, Lights etc. I also have a variable to let me know which of the 3 alarm types occurred so that my macro can deal with slight nuances.

Hope that helps. If you can't find the drop down list that I am referring to, let me know and I will go in tomorrow, find it and take a screen shot for you.

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Best? Best will get you a million answers - But NEO, the older Powerseries from DSC or GE/Interlogix Concord are good and commonly used and equipment is easily found. Elk, Paradox can give you different 'levels' of integration options however, but their distribution is more limited.

On 9/23/2017 at 11:33 AM, South Africa C4 user said:

Yes, you can have smoke detectors identified in the project. I think your dealer would need to connect them.

Please note however that this will depend on the system to some degree - ie are they set as separate zones or a common fire series connection. If the latter, you can't really add smokes in the system as there is no available binding

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18 hours ago, Cyknight said:

Elk, Paradox can give you different 'levels' of integration options however, but their distribution is more limited.

Aside from distribution, does this mean you like Elk and Paradox better?

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20 hours ago, Elvis said:

Aside from distribution, does this mean you like Elk and Paradox better?

Ehh...beter isn't the right word. ELK I know a bit better than Paradox and just has nice option (single gang simple keypads for example. I wanted to do Elk for myself, but due to most if not all parts being special order it got just far more expensive, and then C4 came out with the new interface for Concord, plus the mnitoring company we ourself use refused to budge on monitoring an ELK so....

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  • 4 weeks later...

I spoke to my alarm guy (not a c4 dealer, pure alarm guy) and he said "the fire alarm is in a zone its built in internally on a PGN zone".  Any one know if that can be seen somehow in Control4?  @Cyknight any idea - I know you usually have some good insight into DSC panels.  I'd like to see the smokes in my C4 project so I can program against it.

This make sense to anyone?

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IF he used two wire smokes (or wired the 4 wire smokes that way), no you cannot see the fire zone, let alone each detector separately. This is because the 'fire zone' isn't an actual zone/sensor on the security panel as such, it doesn't have an assigned zone number.

That doesn't mean DSC or C4 can't do it, but it means replacing the detectors with 4 wire units and wire them to actual zone connections, or use wireless smokes (which have an actual zone number by default)

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Mostly makes sense :-).  Not sure it’s worth the expense or hassle.  I already get two texts.  One saying alarm is going off and a second as to which zone is “open”.  So I’ll assume if I only get one text it’s a fire and get out!

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4 hours ago, eggzlot said:

Mostly makes sense :-).  Not sure it’s worth the expense or hassle.  I already get two texts.  One saying alarm is going off and a second as to which zone is “open”.  So I’ll assume if I only get one text it’s a fire and get out!

Don’t forget one more step... if you smell smoke... get out!

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