Why Buy A Security System
In its simplest form, a burglar alarm utilizes a control panel, an arming station and a combination of perimeter and interior protection devices which are specifically designed to protect your home or business. They are a valuable resource and a key component of any home security plan and they provide you with a strong deterrent to forcible entry.
Security Kits offers only U.L. Listed Alarm Panels and equipment from Nationl Manufacturers such as Honeywell and GE. We are one of the largest on-line retailers of security and burglar alarm equipment. We have a highly trained staff here to assist you with any design or installation questions from 6-am to 6-pm Monday through Friday.
A monitored burglar alarm panel is tied into your telephone line to allow it to send digital signals to a central station monitoring facility. The central station receives the alarm signals and immediately tries to verify that the alarm is real.
Depending on the size of your home or business, there are many different types of burglar alarm panels that can meet your needs. Hardwired or wireless; from 4 zone hardwired panels to intelligent addressable systems that can monitor hundreds of points, the options are endless and varied, but they all accomplish the same basic thing. They keep intruders out.
Make sure that the control panel that you purchase is listed by Underwriters Laboratory (U.L.) for your application. Underwriters Laboratory offers separate listings for alarm panels that are utilized for residential or commercial burglary and fire protection.
How Burglar Alarms Work
In its simplest form, a Security System utilizes a control panel, an arming station and a combination of perimeter and interior protection to provide a deterrent shield to protect your most valuable assets.
When an unauthorized entry is detected by a perimeter or interior sensor, the security system will initiate an alarm.
The control panel can be tied into your telephone line to allow it to send digital signals to a Central Station Monitoring Facility. The Central Station Monitoring Facility receives messages from the digital alarm and immediately tries to verify that the alert is real.
Alarms are a valuable resource that can provide you with a strong deterrent to forcible entry and help you to protect your most valuable assets.
The Control Panel
Control panels vary greatly in features and benefits. A smaller 4 to 8 zone panel will only support a few devices and a handful of user codes. You can add more than 8 devices to an 8-zone panel by wiring multiple devices in series. Smaller panels will also offer limited choices in arming stations and the total number of users/codes offered to the end user.
If you are installing a basic burglar alarm in your home with four outside doors and three interior motion detectors and everyone will utilize the same code to arm and disarm the system, a smaller 4 to 8 zone panel will work great.
In a commercial building with multiple outside entrances and hundreds of users, you are going to want a panel that supports multiple zones with individual point identification, an alphanumeric display and individual codes for each user.
Most control panels can be programmed to send opening and closing reports to a Central Station Monitoring Facility. The Central Station can then send you a weekly report of who has armed or disarmed your system. The reports will include the date and time and they can be invaluable in an investigation. Central Stations will charge a premium for this service, so be sure to check on the pricing if you desire this service.
Some other things to consider; If you opt for Central Station Monitoring, make sure that all connections to your telephone line are wired to provide line seizure so that the alarm panel takes precedence over any incoming or outgoing phone calls.
All alarm panels should be provided with at least a 4-hour battery back-up. You can increase or decrease the capacity by simply adding more batteries. If you experience prolonged power outages, you might consider adding additional back-up capacity. If your panel is more than 4-years old, you should have your batteries replaced.
Make sure your alarm panel is connected to a good building ground such as a cold water pipe, or a buried ground rod. This simple measure will insure that your investment is protected from transient voltage spikes.
Hardwired Or Wireless?
Hardwired security panels are less expensive than wireless security systems, but they are harder to install. Keep this in mind if you are planning on doing the installation yourself. An average home installation with a hard-wired system takes about 12-16 hours. A typical wireless installation will take less than 4 hours.
Some types of construction lend themselves well to a hardwired installation, and others will require the use of wireless. Normally all commercial security systems are hardwired, and most new residential installations will utilize wireless.
Even if you purchase a wireless alarm panel, most installations will require that some of the devices are hardwired. These typically include the power transformer, the electrical ground wire, the telephone connections and any keypads/arming stations and audible alarms. There are some exceptions to this like some of the newer all-in-one units currently being offered which incorporate the base unit, arming station and audible alarm into a single unit that plugs into one of your existing phone jacks.
Hardwired Controls
A hardiwred alarm uses a normally closed loop which allows electrical current to flow from the panel, down one wire through the alarm initiating device and back to the panel. When the current is interrupted, the panel will register a fault on the circuit/zone. End of Line (EOL) resistors are added to the circuit so that the panel can supervise the condition of the zone for ground faults, electrical shorts and open or cut wires.
Multiple normally closed devices can be connected to a single zone by connecting the devices in series, with the EOL resistors installed on the last device in line. This way, the entire circuit is completely supervised from the panel to the last device in line.
If you opt for a hard-wired system, make absolutely sure that the system is installed with the supervisory resistors at the end of the line. To make installation simpler, many installers will place the resistors in the panel rather than at the end of the line. While this method provides supervision of the zone for ground faults, it does not provide protection for a direct short or worse yet, someone splicing into the wire and shorting them together which will essentially close the loop so the panel will not see the zone open or close.
In larger commercial or residential installations, many panels will support remote modules that can greatly expand the number of zones on your system. These remote modules/zone expanders tie into an RS485/422 data loop and have built in supervision between modules. Depending on the manufacture, they come in 1, 2, 8 and 16 zone configurations. In a 50,000 SQF warehouse, the use of remote point modules can save thousands of dollars in wire and labor costs. A security system with remote point modules can be expanded to 128 zones or more of protection.
Wireless Alarm Panels
When wireless alarms first appeared on the market, they were not very reliable. Most of them were Non-Supervised. A non-supervised wireless transmitter would only send a signal "one way" to the receiver when it was activated. For example, when a door or window was opened, the transmitter would send a signal. The alarm panel would receive the signal and activate the appropriate zone. The transmitter would not send a signal when the door or window was closed, so the receiver/zone had to reset itself after a few seconds. With a non-supervised wireless system, you could actually arm the system with a door or window wide open without even knowing it.
Another problem with non-supervised systems is that you do not know when the batteries in the transmitters are low or need to be replaced. The only way to verify that they were working is to periodically test them.
Most of the early wireless systems were very limited in their addressing schemes. They utilized dip switches with binary addressing to differentiate between points on the system. This was O.K. if your wireless system was installed and commissioned correctly, but what happened when your neighbor installed the same type of system? If the neighbors motion detector was addressed the same as your garage door, your alarm would go off every time they moved around their house. As you can imagine, this could cause some major problems that were very difficult to troubleshoot.
Most modern wireless systems give you the ability to program a transmitter as supervised or non-supervised. There are still a few circumstances where you would want a wireless transmitter to be programmed as non-supervised.
A wireless panic alarms that personnel can carry with them is a good example. If someone takes the panic transmitter away from the premises, a supervised panel will go into trouble when the transmitter is out the range of the receiver.
Fully supervised wireless utilizes two way communications between the transmitters and the receivers; therefore, It can tell you the real time status of a door or window. If a door is open, it will keep the zone faulted until the door is closed. If your transmitter has a low battery, the keypad/arming station will immediately inform you of the trouble condition.
Even the most sophisticated wireless alarm panels are useless if the transmitter batteries are dead, therefore supervised wireless panels are programmed to check in with each of the remote transmitters at least once every 24 hours. They can be programmed to check in as much as every 10 minutes, but it will greatly reduce the life of the transmitter batteries.
To extend the life of the batteries, most systems will only transmit the supervisory signal as described in the preceding paragraph or on a change of state, such as a door or window being opened or closed. Wireless motion detectors will send a signal when they detect motion, and then shut themselves off for a few minutes to conserve battery power.
In order to provide the longest possible life, most wireless transmitters do not use standard batteries. They typically utilize some type of proprietary Nickel Cadmium batteries that cannot be bought at your local electronics store. Remember that the life of the batteries will vary depending on the type of sensor, how the system is programmed, and the environment in which it is installed.
Modern wireless systems utilize serial numbers, binary house codes, or other proprietary technology to assure that only transmitters enrolled into your panel will be received by your alarm system. If you do your research and purchase a good reliable supervised alarm system, you should never need to worry about your neighbor’s wireless transmitter setting off your alarm system.
With any wireless system you should always test your system regularly. The performance and range of any wireless product can be affected by the environment and the structure in which it is installed. Additionally, the range can be adversely affected by environmental conditions, interference form electrical devices or even the orientation of the transmitter in relation to the receiver.
Be warned, there are still systems being sold and installed today that are non-supervised, so make sure that any system you are considering offers complete wireless supervision. Security Kits will only sell fully supervised wireless alarm systems.
