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Author Topic: Protector Plus Monitor Plus Conflict  (Read 10467 times)

tom j

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Protector Plus Monitor Plus Conflict
« on: February 19, 2008, 11:41:43 AM »

Hay guys, recently bought a Monitor Plus for a house I plan on flipping with my brother in law. Decided that I didn't want to have to any long term contracts like you get with the major alarm companies but we definitely needed the added security of a monitored system for those not familiar the Monitor Plus is made by x10 and the monitoring is by Orka an x10 subsidiary I believe, at twenty dollars a month I consider it a little pricey but there are no contracts and you're only charged for the time you use like if you take a 3 week vacation every year you could retire your Protector Plus and setup your Monitor Plus for those three weeks and you would only be charged for that month 20 bucks! I think the least amount of time you can sign up for is a month.

Well for folks like me it's a good deal especially if you have spare x10 hardware laying around. Well anyway I plugged it up and was in the process of testing it out, this was the third week of testing just wanted to make sure this thing was going to function flawlessly before I entrusted it to a piece of property worth well..... quite a bit. I've been using the stuff off an on for years and if you got good equipment then it's very trustworthy. I did have a Protector Plus that I purchased once as a backup a while back and after about 6 moths it was just plugged into a wall socket and I actually forgot about it. I came home and heard this popping and gurgling and couldn't figure what the heck it was until I realized it was coming from our guest bedroom and yep it was the console, so ever since that I've just haven't had the same trust in these units. I also remember having to return my main unit Protector Plus console several times before I got a functioning unit the other two had defective voice chips noting that would have keep it from basically functioning but it was still a manufacturing defect that should of been caught before leaving the factory.

 Well anyway I accidentally set off the system and realized that the all lights on all lights off signal from the console was not functioning properly it was like it was out of sequence and disjointed, well I immediately blamed the hardware you know that cheap Chinese.... well you get the idea. Just couldn't figure it out hum..... noise on the line was a thought, hardware just couldn't figuer out what was going on then I had the presence of mind to remember that everything was working fine until I plugged the Monitor Plus in. Then I said could it be interfering with the signal ???? Nah how could it affect the signal well I'll just unplug it to eliminate even the possibility anyway and walla!!! problem solved as soon as I unplugged the Monitor Plus all was well again and the All Lights On Off worked perfectly so I just wanted everyone to be aware of what I discovered that having multiple consoles hooked up at the same time can definitely cause conflict between the systems, how or why I don't have a clue but you will encounter problems if you have multiple systems connected on the same line, and by the way this didn't happen all the time but it happen enough that it should be a concern especially if someone broke in and the system didn't preform properety. Hope this helps had me pulling my hair out for months until I figured it out. Best of luck!

tj
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jtykal

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Re: Protector Plus Monitor Plus Conflict
« Reply #1 on: February 20, 2008, 02:42:26 AM »

I'll definitely keep an eye on this potential problem and thread, as I have two DS7000 consoles active side-by-side in my  closet -- one that I keep continuously armed to monitor windows and another that I can arm/disarm to monitor doors and motion sensors.  (I use two consoles because I like to see the status of all of my sensors at a glance without pressing the "Bypass" button, so I'm only using the first 8 zones on each system.) My wife called while I was out of town this week complaining about lights going on and off. One of the consoles showed that it was tripped -- but this console was not even armed! (At least not intentionally...)  I've just been setting up and testing this configuration in the past few days, so I can't speak to the long-term reliability of this setup. I suppose it's possible there is an interference problem here, which caused my alarm to arm itself without a human telling it to do so. I'll report back if there are any other system anomalies.

On a related note, you may be wondering why she noticed flashing lights but didn't hear a siren when the alarm tripped -- I have the internal siren wired through a toggle switch that I mounted in the side of the console. Being able to turn the siren off allows me to use a flashing light in my BR to alert me when my teenagers come home late without waking up the whole house!
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tom j

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Re: Protector Plus Monitor Plus Conflict
« Reply #2 on: February 22, 2008, 06:31:11 PM »

I'll definitely keep an eye on this potential problem and thread, as I have two DS7000 consoles active side-by-side in my  closet -- one that I keep continuously armed to monitor windows and another that I can arm/disarm to monitor doors and motion sensors.  (I use two consoles because I like to see the status of all of my sensors at a glance without pressing the "Bypass" button, so I'm only using the first 8 zones on each system.) My wife called while I was out of town this week complaining about lights going on and off. One of the consoles showed that it was tripped -- but this console was not even armed! (At least not intentionally...)  I've just been setting up and testing this configuration in the past few days, so I can't speak to the long-term reliability of this setup. I suppose it's possible there is an interference problem here, which caused my alarm to arm itself without a human telling it to do so. I'll report back if there are any other system anomalies.

On a related note, you may be wondering why she noticed flashing lights but didn't hear a siren when the alarm tripped -- I have the internal siren wired through a toggle switch that I mounted in the side of the console. Being able to turn the siren off allows me to use a flashing light in my BR to alert me when my teenagers come home late without waking up the whole house!

Actually everything but the all lights on all lights off seemed to function fine but like I said occasionally the lights wouldn't work properly and seemed out of sequence. This also occurred with two Protector Plus consoles, but at one time I actually had three consoles connected at the same time and as you can imagine it was most evident when all three were connected and note THEY DID  NOT HAVE TO BE ON THE SAME HOUSECODE! Just hope someone finds this info useful we got to work together to keep the BAD GUYS OUT!!

Tomj
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