Texecom Premier Elite "Beam Pair"

[@henry1]

You may recognise me from a different thread about the Texecom Connect app which is now fixed but I want some advice, this isn't a massive problem but something I would like some opinions on, without going into too much detail to reduce false alarms I have two PIRs (wireless Texecom Capture P15s) Beam Paired (the Lounge + Kitchen) so they both have to go off with each other in order to alarm but is it possible to have the Lounge PIR go off along with any other device rather than the Kitchen specifically? Thanks.

 

[secureiam]

The problem with beam pair is that it can be used for any number of sensors but then that should require any two to activate to get a single alarm activation.

So if you have an output and a zone it might be better to output to mimic zone or group of zones, and wire into a zone and beam pair with that zone so it doesn’t interfere with how the other zone behave.

 

[@henry1]

The problem with beam pair is that it can be used for any number of sensors but then that should require any two to activate to get a single alarm activation.

So if you have an output and a zone it might be better to output to mimic zone or group of zones, and wire into a zone and beam pair with that zone so it doesn’t interfere with how the other zone behave.

Thank you for the reply, I replaced one of the problem PIRs which caused an alarm with a much better Pyronix KX10DP in a slightly better location that isn't wireless and seems to have better pet immunity and I have swapped around the Beam Pairs as the other PIR moved but still have it turned on, when you talk about outputs mimicking zones I think I understand where your coming from with that but can you elaborate?

 

[secureiam]

The best way is to go perimeter protection, I have two cats and they dont trigger our normal pirs, but thats because the of system design.

having thought about this at some length, this is a system design issue and not sure I am the best person to break it down as to why its not great.

if you have two pirs on separate zones in the same room, then it may make sense to have them on a beam pair, so that both activate to generate a normal alarm rather than a confirmed alarm. positioning of these could make it more likely that its a person rather than a pet that activate them.

However in such a case you may better off with a sensor that has two separate sensors one looking down and one a across so its more likely a person would activate rather than a pet in a house.

I am not sure this is the case in your situation.

linking it to another sensor to prevent a false alarm if the sensor is in a different room, compromises the other sensor unless we look at outputs and mimic a zone to activate another zone which is beam paired and that in itself sounds a little silly.

To be fair if your cats are in a room then its likely they could activate two sensors by the time it takes them to walk from one side to the other so defeats the object unless its a large room, or sensors have very small range. There aren't many homes that have rooms bigger than 15 M (P15 has 15 M range), Your probably hard pushed to find many domestics with rooms over 5M in length or width.

 

[@henry1]

The best way is to go perimeter protection, I have two cats and they dont trigger our normal pirs, but thats because the of system design.

having thought about this at some length, this is a system design issue and not sure I am the best person to break it down as to why its not great.

if you have two pirs on separate zones in the same room, then it may make sense to have them on a beam pair, so that both activate to generate a normal alarm rather than a confirmed alarm. positioning of these could make it more likely that its a person rather than a pet that activate them.

However in such a case you may better off with a sensor that has two separate sensors one looking down and one a across so its more likely a person would activate rather than a pet in a house.

I am not sure this is the case in your situation.

linking it to another sensor to prevent a false alarm if the sensor is in a different room, compromises the other sensor unless we look at outputs and mimic a zone to activate another zone which is beam paired and that in itself sounds a little silly.

To be fair if your cats are in a room then its likely they could activate two sensors by the time it takes them to walk from one side to the other so defeats the object unless its a large room, or sensors have very small range. There aren't many homes that have rooms bigger than 15 M (P15 has 15 M range), Your probably hard pushed to find many domestics with rooms over 5M in length or width.

The PIRs Beam Paired are in separate rooms and at night the cats are confined to just one room that has a beam pair but are not during the day (that's the issue) sadly it is not financially viable to put shocks and contacts on each window and not have PIRs otherwise I would but still the majority of entry points are secured, to be honest my house layout is weird so you either have to go through the hall or utility (Beam Paired w/ lounge) to get to the lounge (trouble sensor) and you have to go through either the hall or lounge to get upstairs.

I've downloaded Wintex and while fixing some weird programming I had a look at the outputs, would it work if I Beam Paired the lounge to on-board zone 4 in my case and then have output 1 wired into that zone and configured to mimic zone group 1 armed, and then have a few sensors in said group?

 

[secureiam]

Do you have a spare zone/s on the panel?

The pir is hardwired?

 

[@henry1]

Do you have a spare zone/s on the panel?

I have one left, others in use

 

[secureiam]

if hard wired you can wire a second pir and set up the coverage so it would activate for a human but almost impossible for a single cat to activate them both.

Or you can fudge with beam pair.

So if your spare zone is zone 8.
The output would wire into zone 8, the output would be group 1 mimic armed,
Group1 would be all the other sensors.

You would beam pair the room the pir is in and zone 8 which is a virtual device if you like.

Double knock or multi knock can be done on hard wired devices but it’s possible the cats would still activate.

The only advantage of beam pair in this case though is that you will know they have been in that room or cat activated it. To that end may just as well have the zone programmed as not used? As it’s not really doing anything

 

[@henry1]

if hard wired you can wire a second pir and set up the coverage so it would activate for a human but almost impossible for a single cat to activate them both.

Or you can fudge with beam pair.

So if your spare zone is zone 8.
The output would wire into zone 8, the output would be group 1 mimic armed,
Group1 would be all the other sensors.

You would beam pair the room the pir is in and zone 8 which is a virtual device if you like.

Double knock or multi knock can be done on hard wired devices but it’s possible the cats would still activate.

The only advantage of beam pair in this case though is that you will know they have been in that room or cat activated it. To that end may just as well have the zone programmed as not used? As it’s not really doing anything

I'm going to mess around with outputs as running a wired PIR into that room is very difficult without getting another Ricochet one which seems daft since its a small room anyway, I use multi-knock so footballs don't set off my shock sensors but didn't try them on PIRs because as you said I have a feeling it won't do much to prevent any false alarms, when you say program as not used do you mean the PIR or zone going into the output?

 

[secureiam]

Not used is not an instruction, it’s a case of the zone with cats in room is effectively doing nothing so may as well not be used!!! For what good it is being in terms of security.

 

[secureiam]

How many cores do you currently have running to that pir that are good?

How many cores do you have in use?

we need two wires for power.
We need 1 wire to report to the zone, so even if you are using 4 core and all four cores are good we can make one core spare.
We run a new cable in the room from the current pir, two cores for power, the spare core connected to a core in the new cable to report new device on a seperate zone.

 

[@henry1]

Not used is not an instruction, it’s a case of the zone with cats in room is effectively doing nothing so may as well not be used!!! For what good it is being in terms of security.

Fair point on the Lounge tbf I could add some more contacts on the window in theory as that's about the only thing I haven't done other than shocks and by doing so would make the PIR 100% redundant, I have 8 core cable (meant to order 6 core but it is what it is) with 4 in use on the hall PIR and the others wrapped up just in case.

 

[secureiam]

so you can join the cable and run that cable to a new pir and you dont even need to do anything two fancy.

4 for one pir and 4 for another, always use 8 core as standard as plenty of spares and the cost isnt much more.

 

[@henry1]

so you can join the cable and run that cable to a new pir and you dont even need to do anything two fancy.

4 for one pir and 4 for another, always use 8 core as standard as plenty of spares and the cost isnt much more.

Running cables into the Lounge isn't something I wanted to do (last resort as it was decorated a few years prior) but if worst comes to worst then will do, I will try out the outputs thing tmr and consider my options moving from here, at the moment we have the zone omitted and are setting the system without it.

 

[secureiam]

For now can you assign the pir to a different area and key switch monitor only.

This way it won’t trigger alarms sounder but you will get a notification when it’s activated and then you can look at how many times it activates.

what you are looking for is how many times does it activate and how close the activations are, so time stamps day hh:mm:ss are very important.

You want to do it for some time so you can get a good idea of what’s happening.

Cats for example won’t move around all day and unlikely to react to someone outside the property like a dog would.