Voxcom Alarm System

[AE110327]

Does anyone know how to reprogram an alarm system?, i am swithing from bell to Vonage and Voxcom told me that my alarm system needs to be reprogram.Have anyone done this before?

[philelmo]

that reminds me, what alarm systems do you recommend for a regular household?

adt? voxcom? etc

want a low price, but also safest

[loudsubz]

there is only a few different alarm manufacturers out there, companies like ADT and the major ones just use the manufacturers and get them to customize their systems to suit their needs.

Most Are DSC panels in disguise.

When you See ADT and Voxcom and Chubb etc, they are just the installers of the alarm and they use 3rd party equipment and just charge you for monitoring etc.

Thats what all alarm companies do mainly.

For us we use Mostly Paradox Panels. I like Paradox over DSC but both are good panels.

You can't really go wrong with either. Both are reliable as long as the rest of your system is installer properly. All the alarm does is monitor zones and go into alarm when a zone is breached. A zone is either a normally open contact with EOL resistor to monitor any troubles on the circuit, or a normally closed circuit. As soon as the circuit is broken or latched it will trigger an alarm or start an entry delay depending on how it was set up.

Where you see problems is in the install. Improper motion detector mounting, sticking door switches that dont open when the door is open, and bad wiring with exposed copper so that the circuit will remain closed even when the zone is tripped.

As for switching from bell to Vonage, you might be ok. Depending on how your dialer is set up now it may still dial out at a decent speed that will allow the monitoring station to hear the kiss off at the end.

We had a similar problem with vonage that would generate a trouble 7 (fail to communicate) because the monitoring centre was not receiving the kiss off from the alarm panel at the end. We fixed it by changing reporting format to 4+2 which is slower than contact ID.

As far as programming it yourself, if the originally alarm installer put in an installer lockout code in the panel there is no way you can go in to program it yourself. Almost every alarm company will have their own unique installer code to prevent the end user from tampering with programming if they get their hands on an manual.

The only other option is to see if you can locate a windows based programming software for the panel. They make it for DSC and Paradox and maybe a few others, im not sure. You can sometimes log in remotely via a modem if they havn't set up further lockouts and depending on the security and level of the alarm panel.