Best way to have Dimmer LED lights reflect alarm status

[pkkaiser]

I want to have the LED of the top button of my light switch (and in some locations top button of keypad) near each exterior door to represent alarm status (armed = red, disarmed = green). I can write a script that when the alarm changes status, it sets all the LED's to the correct color (which works great), UNTIL when I use the light it then goes back to the default behavior and no longer reflects alarm status.

 

One way to fix, I have set up a Timer that last 5 seconds, when the timer expires:

if system armed

    - set all LED's to RED

    - Reset timer

    - STOP

set all LED's to GREEN

Reset timer

 

This requires constant setting of LED lights which I am sure is a bad thing....

 

Thanks for any suggestions on a better way to program this (it works now, but I am sure there is away more elegant approach)...

 

 

[eggzlot]

this may not be of help, but to get around your issue....I have disarmed Green.  Red Alarmed.  so I made the default LED's of the lights to green.  so its black bottom/green top if light is on, alarm is off.  green bottom, black top if light and alarm are off.  its red on the bottom, that means the alarm is on.  red bottom/black top means lights off/alarm on, red bottom/green top means alarm is on, light is on.

 

if you want the LEDs to be something other than red or green AND show status of alarm, then yes, its going to be tricky.  try to maybe use the top or bottom LED as the alarm color indicator.

[South Africa C4 user]

I am using certain LEDs in the way you are looking for and have had no need of timers... I suspect that all that is needed is to change the LED behaviour setup (for the relevant buttons on your keypad and the top / bottom / toggle switch positions) to 'Programmed' in the Monitoring section of Composer (HE) or the design section of Composer (Pro).

In saying that, I am a little surprised that you get the LEDs doing anything if you don't have the behaviour set to programmed... So, on further thought, another possibility is that you have programming impacting the LEDs already? This could be against the light, the button or an advanced lighting scene... If so, you simply need to remove this old code that you don't want anymore.

One last comment, if you have a powercut, the LEDs can get out of sync with your Director (assuming it is on a UPS and your keypads are not). The only foolproof way that I have found to deal with this is to catch the powercut and program a toggle of the LED setting followed by a second toggle...

[brucecampbell]

An alternative:

 

Why display the unarmed status at all?

I have all my top LED's go red when I am arming my alarm.

 - I have a two minute timer running a pre exit delay, after two mins is up, the alarm away button is triggered, which itself has a min or two exit delay.

If the exit delay is stopped, or the alarm arms, I then set all top LED's back to my defaults using a macro.

While the alarm is armed, if a sensor is triggered, all top led's turn red again.

When the alarm is disarmed, they again return to my default colours.

 

Point is - I know it's armed or in exit delay because my led's are red.

I don't need to have an alternative colour for unarmed - if they are not all red, then I know it's not armed.

[pkkaiser]

Thanks all! I think I can get it to stay by unchecking LED follows load in monitoring...this seems to work