Alarm System opinions

ericmedley

Hello all,

We are currently spec-ing in Ademco/Honeywell alarm systems. We are being forced to change from using the Destiny 6100 to the Vista FBP128. The 6100s are being discontinued. I don't have any problems that I'm aware of with the Vista. We thought, however, that we might use the switch to investigate other solutions.

Does anyone have any other options we should look at in alarm systems with particular emphasis on how they integrate with AMX. We've heard some good things about GE.

Thanks in advance.

eric

Spire_Jeff

I have not recently had to integrate with the NX8E by GE, but I did work with quite a few of them a couple years ago. They are very fast at reporting zone status, but there were a few minor things that it had problems with. As I recall, we had problems getting reports from the panic buttons. The original NX8 panels could be a little tricky to get communicating, but the newer NX8E worked a lot better. Overall, I would give them an 8/10 rating.

The Vista panels have a LOT of data available if you have the newer firmware and don't mind writing some additional code to handle the information. You can get information as detailed as when the system gets put into walk test mode. As I recall, the messages use hex values from 01 to FF and there are messages that make use of at least 50% of the available codes. They can be a little slow (a couple of seconds at times) in sending zone updates, but they work well. I would probably give them an 8/10 rating as well.

Jeff

John Gonzales

I like the GE Networx NX8e. There are a lot of settings required to get them communicating properly but once they're set, they work very well.

We're using them on projects where we have 120+ zones and they have been bulletproof for us. I haven't integrated with the Vista panels, but Jeff mentions how the Vista panels may not report zone status quickly. The GE is practically instantaneous. Because of the quick response times, we can use them to effectively control lighting systems based on motion, as well as other systems based on the feedback from the panel. The comm module that AMX provides is pretty good, but the UI module has some bugs, is very basic and is practically useless for most applications.

Most importantly the Networx products are very reliable and their tech support is excellent. When we first started playing with the NX8e I would have rated it lower, but once we rewrote the UI and figured out how it (mostly) all works, I would rate the NX8e at 8-1/2 out of 10 on the integration scale.


--John

vining

I like using HAI for security and others have said the ELK stuff is just as nice or nicer. HAI you can use their TStat and they have new smaller programmable ones and have PDA and cell phone link capabilties. You can also send strings from the alarm system to other devices if you don't feel the need to route it through AMX or use those strings to trigger AMX from the cell phone or PDA or any type of event.

And some times when AMX doesn't fit into the budget you can still do some basic levels of integration with a very basic programming capabilities.

GSLogic

As VIN said, HAI and ELK are in the same ballpark. I've had the non-pleasure of programming just about ever security panel made and I use the ELK M1 Gold all the time. Easy to program and it can be setup to communicate over IP (very fast).