Installation question

[gschrader]

I just got my Envisalink 3 today (I haven't even opened the box yet) I've looked at the installation instructions which looks pretty easy. I'm just wondering what my monitoring company will see when I do the install. From my reading once everything is powered back up I assume they'll see that there was a power fault from unplugging it and removing the battery but will they see that the Envisalink is now there?

I want to avoid the hassle of contacting them for them to ok me installing it in case they have a problem with it.

[pounder]

Just call them up, say you are doing some maintenance and you want a blackout window for an hour or so, its none of their business beyond that. Keep in mind, you pay them not vice versa.

[GrandWizard]

They won't be able to know if there is an Envisalink there (on DSC) unless they do a remote DLS session and they need your intervention to do that.

Plus, as Pounder says, its really none of their business.

[pounder]

Another point here - 99% of the time the monitoring company is not the installer, so when you call up they have no idea who you are, who is going to do the work, etc, all they care is you give them the right password. For all they know the installer could be standing there beside you. I've never been questioned calling on behalf of people or having them call, which in most cases its because they were unhappy with the original installer and just needed a quick sensor change or something and asked me if I knew how to do it.

On a side note - consumers - you paid for the alarm, INSIST the job is not complete till you have paper copies of ALL manuals that came with it, not just the user manual, and have the programming worksheets with all values filled in INCLUDING the installer password.

That way not only can you educate yourself about all the settings and why they are the way they are, but you are not locked into an installer later if you have some issues. Anyone who is confident in their work will gladly provide you all that information.

I have found the most overpriced installers are the ones that take shortcuts like no EOL resistors, and things like that even when they ship with the panels and take an extra 10sec to install.

[gschrader]

Thanks for the feedback! Yeah I don't really foresee a problem as yes it is my equipment. It was subsidized by signing a monitoring agreement and I'm in the 1% where it is the same company so to be honest I don't know what's in the agreement I signed (dumb I know). The wife forced my hand to get an alarm and get it quickly when we had an incident in the spring so I didn't get the chance to do much research. In hindsight I wish I would have held off a bit and done it myself, however I was thrilled when I found this product existed.

[pounder]

If you are really paranoid about it just tell them you need to kill power to move the box to run a wire, or you spilled something or have a leak and want to power it off for cleanup.

Unless they are super paranoid control freaks they are not going to think twice about it, and really do you want someone like that involved in your setup ?

[gschrader]

Well installation was a piece of cake, my only issue was a too short network cable and a long one that unfortunately doesn't work for some reason but luckily the lights on the E3 told me that. No call from the monitoring company yet

[pounder]

You know you can put it in another box closer to the router or switch right ? and just use utp 2pr to make the connection to the keybus - I think the limit is like 1000ft which is more than enough for any house I can think of.