Motion detectors. Card Access vs. Concord 4

[Sprinky216]

Hi guys,

I wanted some info on motions. Card Access sells them at a pretty good cost, but the ones I can get for my Concord 4 security system are cheaper. The question is this, can they but imputed to my project and used like the Card Access motion? I.E. if no motion is sensed in the room the lights turn off, or anything else you'd want to do with a motion.

Thanks in advance guys,

Ryan

[thecodeman]

Yes, you can use your security system's motion sensors for programming if your security system is integrated with Control4.

[ILoveC4]

One thing I love about my Card Access motions is that they also have a light level sensor.

[JP Rizal]

Hi guys,

I wanted some info on motions. Card Access sells them at a pretty good cost, but the ones I can get for my Concord 4 security system are cheaper. The question is this, can they but imputed to my project and used like the Card Access motion? I.E. if no motion is sensed in the room the lights turn off, or anything else you'd want to do with a motion.

Thanks in advance guys,

Ryan

Hi guys,

I wanted some info on motions. Card Access sells them at a pretty good cost, but the ones I can get for my Concord 4 security system are cheaper. The question is this, can they but imputed to my project and used like the Card Access motion? I.E. if no motion is sensed in the room the lights turn off, or anything else you'd want to do with a motion.

Thanks in advance guys,

Ryan

Good Question Sprinky, I was looking in to this. So you add the "Security System" to your project then base on the arming or disarming you can program events accordingly. How about programming per zone/motion/sensor? How & where does that show up?

Do you need to add motion/sensors driver for that room?

[Sprinky216]

I have the concord 4 and it adds to the project no problem with the home automation link. You add door contacts motions, whatever you like. Each sensor is a zone in the panel and can be programmed to do lots of things. Without arming and disarming.

My favorite example is this: I blast my music all the time when I clean or do stuff around the house and sometimes I don't hear people come in the doors. What I did was anytime a door opens, all music zones drop to 15 volume so I can hear who is home, then in 30 seconds, they go back up. So ya you can use the contacts for way more than just security.

Ryan

[Neter66]

I too have a Concord4 panel. I put a contact sensor on a door to the pantry. When to door opens, the sensor fires, and then turns on the light in the pantry. It sets a timer in case the door is left open, and turns off the lights in 10 mins. However, if the door is closed, then it turns the lights off in 2 minutes.

I then use a true motion sensor hooked up to the panel to sense motion in the hallways at night. If motion is sensed, lights are ramped up to 30% brightness, and turned off 10 mins later ( for those late night runs to the kitchen when your pregnant wife has a craving. )

The cost of using the alarm panel and alarm sensors makes for a very compelling decision to increase the automation in our house.

Thanks

D.

[JP Rizal]

I too have a Concord4 panel. I put a contact sensor on a door to the pantry. When to door opens, the sensor fires, and then turns on the light in the pantry. It sets a timer in case the door is left open, and turns off the lights in 10 mins. However, if the door is closed, then it turns the lights off in 2 minutes.

I then use a true motion sensor hooked up to the panel to sense motion in the hallways at night. If motion is sensed, lights are ramped up to 30% brightness, and turned off 10 mins later ( for those late night runs to the kitchen when your pregnant wife has a craving. )

The cost of using the alarm panel and alarm sensors makes for a very compelling decision to increase the automation in our house.

Thanks

D.

So how does this sensors appear in the composer? Does it populate along when you add the "Security System" driver? or do you have to add the sensor/motion/etc driver per room?

Just trying to understand what happens if I do decide to add an IT100 to my DSC panel.

[seth_j]

On the DSC driver you'll get a Zone 1, Zone 2, ... connections. Those zones get bound to sensor devices (Control4 has a bunch of these).

I think in the past the best way to do this is just add a Security room to your project so you can see all the zones and their status in one room...

[chadburn]

@Sprinky216 & @Neter66,

Do either of you have issues with delay using the Concord 4 wireless motion sensors. I have a simple test program set up to watch for a wireless motion sensor to 'see motion' then turn on a light. From the time I walk into a room (within the range of the sensor) and the light switching on is like 5 seconds.

Are you experiencing that?

[Neter66]

@Sprinky216 & @Neter66,

Do either of you have issues with delay using the Concord 4 wireless motion sensors. I have a simple test program set up to watch for a wireless motion sensor to 'see motion' then turn on a light. From the time I walk into a room (within the range of the sensor) and the light switching on is like 5 seconds.

Are you experiencing that?

My delay is about 2.5 seconds - but I've accepted that, because I have a heavily loaded system running on a pair of hc300s.

I would expect it to be faster running on an hc1000, but that's not in the budget this year.

I don't know that I could accept 5 seconds tho...

Thanks

D.

[RyanE]

No matter what, you're going to see a *bit* of a delay on security-attached motions, because they don't trigger as fast as motions that are designed for lighting use.

They do a bit more work before signalling, because security panels don't like to false alarm.

Also, there's the slight delay of being then sent over RS232.

I'd estimate about an additional second or so above a non-security sensor.

RyanE

[jacdx]

FWIW, I have a bunch of Card Access ones and a few DSC ones hard wired to my GE NX8e panel. The DSC ones are almost as fast as the Card Access ones (under 1 sec for both). So close that I'm adding a few more DSC's for spots where I don't need a light sensor built-in. And they're way cheaper.

[sevendustweb]

Could someone please walk me through the steps (including the name of the recommended driver) to add Concord 4 wireless motion detectors and door/window sensors to my Project? I understand and accept the delay/lockout.

I was told this cannot be done because there are no events that can be triggered by the motion detectors, which are connected to the security system.

My alarm is wired into C4, and the systems are talking, but my dealer has not loaded the motion detectors into my Project.

Thanks

[ericscales]

Could someone please walk me through the steps (including the name of the recommended driver) to add Concord 4 wireless motion detectors and door/window sensors to my Project? I understand and accept the delay/lockout.

I was told this cannot be done because there are no events that can be triggered by the motion detectors, which are connected to the security system.

My alarm is wired into C4, and the systems are talking, but my dealer has not loaded the motion detectors into my Project.

Thanks

 

What you are being told (that you can't trigger off of your Concord4 sensors) is absolute Horsesh*t.  You can, and I'll detail all of the information below so that you can show it to your dealer and get this done.  Unfortunately, you are missing out on a lot of cool things you can do with your C4 system integrated with your alarm system.  However, once your dealer gets all the drivers in the project and bindings set up, if you have ComposerHE, then you can take over and do whatever you want based on motion sensors, door sensors, window sensors, etc.  If you need any help with this, feel free to PM me.  I really hate it when folks aren't getting to use the full power of their system.

 

Please note the screenshots below may look different (or not exist) in your view with ComposerHE.  However, do show them to your dealer so he gets you set up properly.

 

1) You mentioned the Concord4 system is already integrated into your system.  If you have doubts, you can check by loading up ComposerHE and clicking on the security system driver in your project (mine is called "Security System").  When you click on it, it should show you how many zones the driver has learned from the security system.

 

2) Next, your dealer (this cannot be done in ComposerHE) can view the bindings for security system by clicking on the Connections tab, then on the security system driver.  As shown below, all connections are learned into the system.  I have door sensors, window sensors and glass break detectors, but if you have any smoke, heat or CO detectors wired in, it will show those too.

 

 

3) Now that we know our Concord4 driver is properly communicating with the alarm system and has learned the zones, we need to add the appropriate contact sensor drivers for each of our zones in the appropriate rooms.  Again, your dealer will need to do this.  In the image below, if you look at the right hand side (the list under "Sensors", you can see all of the sensor driver types that you can add.  On the left, you can see what I have in my Foyer.  I've added a "Door Contact Sensor" for my front door, a "Glass Break Detector" for the foyer glass break detector, and three motion sensors for the three I have in the foyer (Hallway Motion, Entry Motion, Stairs Motion).  You can also add windows and such but I have no windows in the Foyer.

 

 

4) After your dealer has added in all of the sensor drivers, he will need to bind these to the appropriate zone outputs on the Concord4 driver.  I've given an example below that shows my "Entry Motion" detector bound to the "FOYER MOTION (Zone 23)" output of the Concord4 driver.  It doesn't matter if the system is armed or disarmed, whever there is motion detected, Concord4 signals the driver to tell it motion has been detected.

 

 

5) Now we get to the fun part with stuff you can do with ComposerHE (or your dealer can do this for you if you prefer).  After your dealer has done all the driver and binding work, you can program off of these sensors at your will.  The example below shows what I do when motion has been sensed on my Entry Motion detector.  I'm not sure if you do your own programming, but essentially, when motion is sensed, turn the lights on, then when motion has stopped being sensed, start a timer to turn the lights off after say 5 minutes.  Mine is a bit more complicated as you can see below, but you get the idea.

 

 

So that's it.  Please feel free to PM me if you have questions.  I hope this helps.

Eric