Alarm Zone

[Elgin Carmona]

Ihave my camera on the street for more tha a year, capturing various types of robberies, two in almost two weeks. I'm using Tapo notifications along IFTTT and Smart Life to do some things like turn on switchs and lights. But I have Alarm option disabled in my Tapo camera because any kind of detection will fire the alarm and I can't choose what kind of detection for alarm. I know I can add Area Intrusion or Line Cross with schedules but is not useful for my sceneario and I can't add schedules for motion detection too.

It would be nice can choose what kind of Alarm for any kind of detection, OR better give a Zone Alarm (or whatever name) property to any kind of Activity Zone that can be added (Motion Detection, Line Crossing, Area Intrusion) for example like this:

So that way I will have Activity Zones/Areas only for Alarms for any kind of detection that can be filtered. For example for my scenario I can add to my Motion Detection Activity Zone/Area an Alarm Zone/Area property

Hello,

Thank you for your feedback here, we certainly appreciate your feedback and feature request.

While we don't have any specific details that I can share about if this feature can come to the product or when it might, I'll log the feature request and pass it along to the team to evaluate.

If other users have the same request, please vote on this thread or leave your comments.

Best Regards

I'm trying to setup push notifications where I can send the name of the zone that was in trouble or not ready state when trying to arm the alarm. I have a GE panel and the control4 driver for the Interlogix NetworX security system. I cannot find a variable where the zone number or name is stored.

I'm hoping the Zone Name will be in a string variable that I can include in my push announcement. Eventually I'd like to create an audio announcement as well. I just need to figure out where to get the info about the zone causing the arm to fail

Just pulling in the security driver and ID'ing it only gives you Arm/Disarm control and that's it. Your dealer needs to bind all those zone sensors to something in C4. Motions get motions, contacts get contacts, etc.

So to answer your question - all of the zones are named and numbered in the alarm panel. They seem to be in C4 as well when you look at the properties and zones picture above. However, they are not listed under programming in the security alarm. All that is listed is Home security with its variables below, partition 2 to 8 below it. The water flood sensors have their own sensors so I guess that's what you mean with respect to binding into C4

Depending on the actual driver that you are using, you may be able to display panel information through the email agent or the push notification agent by using text like this in the message body to reference the alarm variable state info such as:

If I open a zone that would prevent the alarm panel itself from arming, it shows the correct error that it's unable to arm then by pressing the button on the panel it will tell me which zone. HOWEVER, C4 alarm screen on the T3 will always show the green ready to arm even if there is a zone open. Once I try to arm then the T3 shows unable to arm with the open zone. I just went through all of the system variables and I cannot find any variable that captures this info. Could my alarm be setup incorrectly? We have flood sensors in all of the bathrooms which are tied into the alarm but they don't count when arming or disarming the alarm...my installer did this. Could this be why Last arm failed always reports BYPASS as I figure the flood sensors have to be bypassed so they don't count??

Can anyone tell me which alarm panels will allow this functionality. My dealer believes that my GE interlogix panel doesn't. It also won't record which alarm disarm code was used...IE if I want to track use disarmed the alarm. We are using the Interlogix driver.

I received a Zone Zero tamper alarm on my Alarm.com system today. I have a 2Gig GC3 panel. As far as I know there is no Zone Zero. No sensor is showing as tripped or open. What does a Zone Zero tamper alarm mean? The gentlemen who called from monitoring had no idea.

Often this occurs on a GC3 when the back plate is not screwed shut or if the battery cable is not inserted in the gap for it before closing the panel. It can put outward pressure on the plate and cause intermittent tampers.

I have both the alarm board and an add-on board. I'm struggling to understand how the zones on each can be either input or output, and in each mode, what is the voltage? The simplest case of a sensor that is normally closed and goes open when the sensor is tripped is the easiest to understand.

But now comes a motion detector which I have wired with three wires: red for +12V, white for -12V, and green which returns +12V if and only if there is motion. For this I need a zone to act as a voltage input. Is that possible? Am I going to need a 12V relay to open/close a circuit? [I admit that my assumption in how this works is what led to one of my nodeMCU boards going up in smoke].

Then there is the case where I want to drive a bank of eight 5V relays. These relays switch on/off status LEDs, chimes, buzzers, open/close garage door, etc. I assume I could use the zone outputs (or OUT) to drive a relay. Correct?

From my understanding, the zones act like a powered switch or outlet. It's always powered by 5 V. You are correct on the way it reads sensors by detecting when the line is open due to the sensor tripping and it being normally closed. When you switch the zone to be output, the zones become naturally open and will close the switch when it activates, supplying the line with 5 V.

Motion sensors need constant 12 V for it to be working. There should be 4 wires; red, black, green, and white. The red goes to 12 V, the black goes to ground, the green goes to one of the zone inputs, and the white goes to common. The 12 V is separate from the zones and is only on the alarm board and not the add-on board.

I just took another look at the Konnected board. The 12 V output is labeled AUX so the red wire goes to AUX + and the black wire goes to AUX -. The white wire doesn't go to common but one of the ground zones. Please view Nate's video with rewiring an alarm panel to see how it works.

The existing documentation and videos are great (really) for those transitioning from a traditional wired alarm system that is wired in typical fashion. But if that use case varies (for example, in my case I am converting a home automation system, not just alarm), or someone finds some atypical wiring, just a little more documentation is needed on the specifications on the connections.

In my case, the system I am replacing has a bank of voltage inputs which can accept 4-24V AC/DC to which my sensors are connected. For this reason, 3-conductor wiring was used for sensors that required power. Motion is indicated by presence/absence of +12V on the third wire. No fourth wire needed.

I assumed (very incorrectly based on the smoke) that a zone configured for input could accept +12V DC. My conclusion is that you cannot use voltage input, only dry switched input. This is not altogether terrible though because I don't need to rewire the house, but instead have a bank of 12V DC relays that open and close the circuit that is connected to a zone. Right?

What would certainly have helped me and anyone encountering atypical scenarios is just a list of connections on the two boards and what they expect or provide. I'll provide an example of what I mean. Please note for those reading this that you should NOT assume this is correct and it is certainly not complete! I am just providing a possible template and my best guess.

The existing documentation and videos are great (really) for those transitioning from a traditional wired alarm system that is wired in typical fashion. But if that use case varies (for example, in my case I am converting a home automation system), or someone finds some atypical wiring, just a little more documentation is needed on the specifications on the connections.

In my case, the system I am replacing has a bank of voltage inputs which can accept 4-24V AC/DC to which most of my sensors are connected. For this reason, 3-conductor wiring was used for sensors that required power. Motion is indicated by lack of +12V on the third wire. I assumed (I think very incorrectly based on the smoke) that a zone configured for input could accept +12V DC. My conclusion is that you cannot use voltage input, only switched input. This is not altogether terrible though because I don't need to rewire the house, but instead have a bank of 12V DC relays that open and close the circuit that is connected to a zone. Right?

What would certainly have helped me and anyone encountering atypical scenarios is just a list of connections on the two boards and what they expect or provide. I'll provide an example of what I mean. Please note for those reading this that you should NOT assume this is correct and it is certainly not complete! I am just providing an example and my best guess.

And there should be another wire for your motion sensor. There can not be a wire with 12 V without another wire to be ground or 0. There has to be a potential difference. Like AUX supplies 12 V when "+" is 12 V and "-" is ground or 0. I'm not really understanding your usage of +12 V and - 12 V.

The box on the left in the crude drawings represent a sensor. What I mean to convey is whether or not the output is electrically isolated from the input power that powers the sensor. In the typical case of the motion sensor as you are thinking about it, you have two wires powering the sensor, and then two more wires connected to a relay in the sensor that opens/closes with change of state, making four total.

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