Alarm Relay Claims "Invalid Reports"

[EOppegaard]

We just installed an Envisalink 3 over Friday and the process has been pretty painless. Everything works correctly as far as status monitoring over the web, as well as system control via the web portal.

Now Alarm Relay has called twice saying they are receiving either "invalid" or "blank" reports from our alarm system phone number. I have their Boldnet/Elink access and when I look at the codes they are getting, it all seems to make sense to me...open/close reports.

I am wondering a bit if they are claiming these are "invalid" since I do not pay AlarmRelay for the additional Open/Close monitoring. When I asked the rep on the phone they said they would open a trouble ticket and someone from their maintenance department would call me during the week.

We use POTS for monitoring, and I can hear the dialer click over when we arm/disarm the system. Obviously this is due to my making the reports active so they will be reported to the Envisalink.

Anyone else experience something similar? I will call into AlarmRelay next week to speak with a tech, however I have had better luck posting here

[GrandWizard]

Alarm Relay is a customer of ours, and active user, so this has nothing to do with the Envisalink. As you surmise, they probably don't like receiving opening and closing reports.

Are you on DSC or Honeywell?

[EOppegaard]

Are you on DSC or Honeywell?

We are on Honeywell, Vista 20p. I believe we are somewhat stuck, as reports are sent to both the Envisalink and the dialer with the Vista panels...right?

Thanks for the response GrandWizard. Overall we are really happy with the product.

[GrandWizard]

Ademco uses the industry standard (invented by them) CID form of communications. If Alarm Relay can't understand CID then there is something seriously wrong. I would press them on this, they have thousands of customers using Vista panels. It's got to be something small on their end.

They use the Envisalink for IP monitoring so our alarms don't go through POTS.

[DaveSin]

Alarm Relay is a customer of ours, and active user, so this has nothing to do with the Envisalink.

When did they become a customer and why hasn't there been any mention of this until now. I was pushing them to start supporting the EnvisaLink 3 some months ago and they said they would look into it, so I'm surprised that this was accomplished. I see nothing on their website to suggest they are now supporting the EnvisaLink. I would think that given Alamr relay's large customer base, that type of information being made public would be a big sales driver for the EnvisaLink 3.

On another note, do you know if you use the EnvisaLink with Alarm Relay, will you be able to still get (free) Alerts independent of them? In other words, do the device gets registered to their server only? I know they would want to charge extra for the EnvisAlerts like they do for other data.

[DaveSin]

Are you on DSC or Honeywell?

We are on Honeywell, Vista 20p. I believe we are somewhat stuck, as reports are sent to both the Envisalink and the dialer with the Vista panels...right?

Thanks for the response GrandWizard. Overall we are really happy with the product.

I wonder why this is not an issue with the Monitoring through their ARIM device? I have all the same reporting activated and they haven't said anything to us. Why would a POTS line be any different?

BTW, what information is being sent when you look at the Boldnet/Elink open/close reports? Is it any different from what you see on the EYEZ-ON activity logs? Maybe you might consider Alarm Relay Monitoring through the EnvisaLink now that it is available (dropping your Alarm-dedicated POTS line all together)

[EOppegaard]

[quote="DaveSin"BTW, what information is being sent when you look at the Boldnet/Elink open/close reports? Is it any different from what you see on the EYEZ-ON activity logs?[/quote]

These are some of the recent ones I see in Boldnet/Elink in comparison to what is in my EYEZ-ON activity Log

O/C (OP1)
Opening By User Eric- Partition 1

Restore Type 1 (RS1)
Closing By User Eric- Partition 1

O/C (OP1)
Closing By User Eric- Partition 1

Close by user (CL1)
Closing By User Eric- Partition 1

Armed stay (CL)
Opening By User Eric- Partition 1

[GrandWizard]

Those events can't be the same. We may be reporting less, or they are creating new events. The codes like CL and CL1 aren't CID codes, they look more like internal codes for their event automation system. There probably is no one-to-one mapping.

If you send me your MAC address to support I can pull your raw CID log. There are more reports sent by your panel than we report on the portal, at this time.