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[donna]

Ok here goes...we have 3 dogs that use a pet
door to go out thru during the day in our
enclosed yard. The problem is this - When we
lock up at night we close the pet door with
the plastic cover on the inside of the
garage door but, it wouldn't take very much
to pry it open & someone to crawl thru the
opening at night. Stupid as this might be,
since we do have dogs, how can I make this
more secure? If we use a window sensor then
when we have the pet door open it would be
going off, so thats not an option. Any ideas?
Thanks

[Kenneth Herring]

One thought is that, if you used a window
sensor and the dogs were using the doggy
door, then the system wouldn't be armed,
right? So it wouldn't go off? I mean, you're
going to probably have the same problem
regardless of what sensor you use... Let me
ask you this, are you using any of the
motion sensors in your home with the dogs
inside? Probably not, unless you've got an
area that they can't get into to
accidentally set it off, so what's another
window sensor, right? Do you leave the doggy
door unlocked during the day while you're
away, but lock it and arm the alarm at
night? In that case, it may be possible to
use a switch to shunt the loop from the
window sensor. I think it would be possible
to use a three way wall switch for this. In
one position, it shunts the power from the
sensor through the magnetic contact switch.
In the other position, it by-passes the
magnetic switch and runs back to the sensor
to maintain a closed loop. This would
effectively give you a 'home' and 'away'
option with the flick of a switch right
there are the doggy door. I wish it could be
done with an X-10 three way wall switch, but
it can't. I hope this is of help.

[anonymous]

Thats makes sense but I do not run the X10
alarm I use ADT. I have Active Home Pro,but
I need to find out how I can arm the door
the night when its closed eniterly & also
during the day, so that no one slips thru
the opening. Hmmmm this is a tricky one.
Thanks for your help

[Kenneth Herring]

Okay. I was assumig you were running X-10
stuff. I don't know much about ADT, but it
should follow the same basic 'rules'. Do you
have an ADT door/window switch at this door
you speak of? Can you access the wires going
to it? Or is the sensor mounted into the
door casing? If you can access the wires,
you can daisy chain another megnetis contact
switch off of the first and run the 3-way
switch like I suggested. What this will do
is allow you to arm just the door, or the
door AND the doggy door.
Off-hand, I know of nothing that X-10 has
that will allow you to interface a magnetic
contact switch type sensor with the regular
X-10 home automation system. Perhaps Smart-
Home has something. I haven't looked at what
all they have, but they've got a lot of
stuff.
Okay, here's a device that X-10 has that
will work and the URL to it. You can use it
in conjunction with a magnetic contact
switch and it will send X-10 signals to do a
variety of things.

http://www.x10.com/pro/automation/psc01.htm

I hope this helps.

[anonymous]

Hey thank you I will try that!