What Does Bypassing a Sensor Accomplish?

Bypassing a sensor will make it so that the designated sensor will not activate when the system is armed. However all of the sensors that are not bypassed will still activate as normal. Please note that you must individually set any bypassed sensors each time you go to arm your system.

The reason that bypassing a sensor is useful is because it allows you to conveniently deactivate a sensor for a single system arming, without having to change any zone programming settings or delete the sensor entirely. This can be great for situations where you don't want a sensor to activate for a particular system arming, but you will still want to activate in most situations. For example, you might be testing a motion sensor in your back room. However, to get to that motion sensor from your panel, you might have to walk right past another motion sensor in your hallway. In this case, you could bypass the motion in the hallway so that you can test the motion in your back room without having the hallway motion activate.

Whenever a sensor is bypassed, it will only be bypassed for that one system arming. The next time the system is disarmed, the bypassed zone will by unbypassed and will be active again. The next time that the system is armed, the same sensor will not be automatically bypassed, and it will function based on how it has been programmed with the system. If you want that same sensor to be bypassed, you must individually set it to be bypassed each time you go to arm your security system. Additionally, it is possible to bypass multiple sensors at the same time, and the system can have any sort of combination of bypassed and non-bypassed sensors.

Some panels support a "Forced Bypass" feature. "Forced Bypass", when enabled, will bypass all open burglary zones, and make the system ready for arming. Once the forced bypass has been performed the system can then be armed. This feature is helpful when multiple zones are faulted, such as when the system is first being configured, or on a day when you want to leave several windows open, but still arm the rest of the system. The "Forced Bypass" feature works slightly differently on different alarm panels, so check your panel's User Guide for full details.

It is important to remember that the specific bypassing process will vary between different security systems. Also, it is possible to bypass sensors using an interactive service, such as Total Connect or Alarm.com. Many users find that using one of these services is the easiest way to bypass sensors one their system. The video below will show you how to bypass sensors using Total Connect: