Sensors on 2nd floor windows?

Other Devices & Integrations Door Locks & Sensors
1

I am debating between a Honeywell Vista 20p and a 128p panel. At the high water mark, I would be at about 55 devices, just slightly over the 48 limit on the 20p.

My wife wants to put window sensors on the 2nd floor windows (kids rooms) and also since we are putting those sensors on, she wants to put a glass break sensor in each room too. All of these are casement windows by the way.

So I am just wondering, how much of this is overkill vs, worth it in your opinion?

Most of these windows will always stay closed, or they can have a zwave sensor that alerts us that we left a window open after a certain time, thus eliminating the limit on the panel’s zones. I have read that glass break sensors are a good approach to cover a bunch of windows, but then the thought of windows getting pried open gets brought up and we go down that rat hole.

While we are at it, even on a first floor, with casement windows, is it worth it to have a sensor on each, or just cover them with glassbreak sensors?

In the end, I plan on integrating all of this with an EVL3 board into Vera.

So… thoughts?

2

I personally don’t like or use glass break. Window sensors work good and will also allow you to tell if you left them open for a/c or when you leave the house. Motion’s take care of people climbing threw the window and also for turning on and off lights.

I ran all my sensors threw the alarm panel. 55 devices seems like an awful lot for even a big house and is that wired or wireless or use a combination of both. Wireless devices more of a pain to maintain and motions don’t work as well.

3

Why aren’t you a fan of glass break sensors? Technically, Honeywell makes a window sensor that does both glass break and open/close. The only problem is that it has two loops, ultimately resulting in even more zones.

I have 30 windows in the house that are openable, not including a few that aren’t. So if I went down that sensor path, I’d be at 60 zones just for the windows alone.

I am interested to understand why you think wireless motion sensors don’t work as well? Is it the delay you don’t like? I have a mixture of honeywell motion sensors which are wireless for my current alarm system (lifeshield), and schlage zwave motion sensors. I have been very happy with the performance of the schlage realizing that there is a slight response delay. I’ll take it over fishing wires!

4

[quote=“airedale, post:3, topic:185663”]Why aren’t you a fan of glass break sensors? Technically, Honeywell makes a window sensor that does both glass break and open/close. The only problem is that it has two loops, ultimately resulting in even more zones.

I have 30 windows in the house that are openable, not including a few that aren’t. So if I went down that sensor path, I’d be at 60 zones just for the windows alone.

I am interested to understand why you think wireless motion sensors don’t work as well? Is it the delay you don’t like? I have a mixture of honeywell motion sensors which are wireless for my current alarm system (lifeshield), and schlage zwave motion sensors. I have been very happy with the performance of the schlage realizing that there is a slight response delay. I’ll take it over fishing wires![/quote]

There is a bunch of reasons. First glass brake don’t replace contacts. Read statics most entry’s are threw a unlocked door or window. A glass brake and no contact this doesn’t do anything for that. Glass brakes are not accurate and have more false alarms. Usually the decision is motions vs glass brakes not glass brakes vs. contacts and I prefer a motion.

Aside from the alarm prospective VERA has alot more uses for a window sensor vs. a glass brake. When I leave the house it will tell me if I left a window open. If the a/c is running for a few min and window stays open it will tell me.

Wireless motions Sleep, take batteries and cost alot. Again when using motions in vera after the motions keep sensing motion they stop reporting it for a period of time. When the alarm is set and there is no motion in the house the sensor are good for the first trip (yes there is also a delay with wireless) but after your walking around setting it off so many times it finally says let me take a brake to conserve battery since I already done my job and alerted them the first time. This doesn’t work so good when using vera to turn on lights and such during room entry. Neither does the delay either.

The only advantage of wireless is ease of install, besides that one single point I can’t think of one other thing wireless does better.

Window contacts you can group. If you have 3 windows in one room you can choose to group all 3 together. It’s always better to know excatly which one of the windows it is, but if you run out of channels (you should be able to expand) you can group.

You can also use a combination of wireless receiver wired to 3 window contacts.

There is alot of options out there.

5

Well whether or not I go down the wireless vs wired, I think based on some of this conversation and thinking it over, I’d like to know the status of each window in the house. Therefore, going up to the 128BPT panel is probably the best course of action.

In some ways though, I sorta wish I could just go all in Zwave and skip having two different systems running in my house! I do get the reasons behind running these separate. It just is annoying to think about having to run both.

6

[quote=“airedale, post:5, topic:185663”]Well whether or not I go down the wireless vs wired, I think based on some of this conversation and thinking it over, I’d like to know the status of each window in the house. Therefore, going up to the 128BPT panel is probably the best course of action.

In some ways though, I sorta wish I could just go all in Zwave and skip having two different systems running in my house! I do get the reasons behind running these separate. It just is annoying to think about having to run both.[/quote]

I use a caddx (GE) NX8E alarm and it does around 190 zones. There is also alot of other alarm panels to choose from if the vista doesn’t work out. Don’t feel limited. Checking sensor prices might be the best bet.

Also on the two different systems. z-wave is new, and changing fast. I personally like to have more sensors not on z-wave. The alarm panels we are talking about have been around for years. They work and are way more reliable then vera. If I toss out my vera tomorrow my alarm panel still works and will with the next controller, I move to. Wireless distance on alarm panel devices is several hundred feet not 50ft like z-wave. Both my VERAs are out of RAM and I have issues because of that. If I were running all of those devices only z-wave it would be even worse. And again the cost each door contact cost me 1.50, motion 10.00 and a 1000ft roll of wire was 30.00.

Bottomline is not always good to have all your eggs in one basket and having VERA’s name on the basket makes it worse.

I used contacts like this.
http://www.smarthome.com/seco-larm-sm-207-5q-w-short-round-magnetic-contacts.html?src=Froogle&gclid=Cj0KEQiAuremBRCbtr-1qJnKi-4BEiQAh0x08J8jk326UBeXXXkihpyX9E0SG0mhwLdbJV0sJw_y1oIaAhub8P8HAQ

But even if you go wireless in alarm panel you can use wireless hidden sensors like this. Same install as above but wireless is used in the video

If you go z-wave you need bulky sensors on outsides of windows or doors.