Honeywell VISTA-21iPSIA

The Honeywell VISTA-21iPSIA is an internet alarm control panel that was designed to meet the strict requirements of the Security Industry Association’s (SIA) CP-01 standards for alarm control panels. The SIA CP-01 standards were developed to combat the problem of false alarms which were beginning to be a major issue for the alarm industry. Not enough alarm companies were taking the time to properly educate their customers on how to use their security system after installation. As those irresponsible alarms companies installed more security systems, the number of false alarms received continued to rise. In fact, sometimes those alarm companies were using installers that were improperly installing or programming the security systems that they sold and therefore false alarms were more likely. Every time a false alarm is dispatched on by a central station, the local authorities are forced to respond to that alarm as they do not know it is not a real emergency. It’s only natural that as these local authorities were responding to an increased number of false alarms, they started to treat all alarms as false alarms. Therefore, response times increased as the local police officers no longer felt that a central station alarm dispatch was an emergency event. Also, the local cities and towns that were paying for these police departments started realizing how much time and resources were being wasted on false alarms. Some jurisdictions enacted laws that required all central station alarm dispatches be verified before a police officer would arrive on scene. Other jurisdictions flat out refused to respond to any central station alarm dispatches. If the false alarm issue had remained unchecked, the entire alarm monitoring industry was in danger of becoming obsolete.

Thankfully SIA’s main role is to protect the alarm industry and all of the active alarm dealers. Therefore, they enacted the CP-01 standards so that security system manufacturers could help combat the false alarm problem. All CP-01 alarm control panels, such as the VISTA-21iPSIA, have special programming features that are either hard coded or set by default to reduce the chance of a false alarm being reported to a central station. While you can program a Honeywell VISTA-21iP internet alarm control panel to match the same settings as the VISTA-21iPSIA, the VISTA-21iPSIA has those settings right out of the box. We recommend choosing a CP-01 alarm control panel for all new security system installations. In fact, some areas of the country require a CP-01 alarm control panel to be used with all new installations. As more alarm companies and more alarm users insist on using CP-01 alarm control panels, the number of false alarms received will continue to go down.

Aside from the special programming settings which are aimed at reducing false alarms, the VISTA-21iPSIA is identical to a standard VISTA-21iP. The VISTA-21iPSIA has many great features that make it an ideal choice for most applications. Unlike most VISTA Series alarm control panels, the VISTA-21iPSIA has an integrated AlarmNet internet alarm communicator. Therefore, you can use your high speed internet connection to send your alarm signals to a central station without needing a phone line. Also, you can choose to sign up for AlarmNet’s advanced Total Connect 2.0 interactive service which is compatible with the VISTA-21iPSIA internet alarm control panel. The Total Connect 2.0 service allows you to remotely control your Honeywell security system from any web browser or from an application on an iPhone®, iPad®, Blackberry® or Android™ device. You can even setup your Total Connect 2.0 account to send you instant email and/or text messages every time different events occur with your Honeywell internet alarm control panel. Aside from the advanced alarm communication features, the VISTA-21iPSIA supports up to (8) hardwired zones out of the box and can be upgraded with Honeywell 4219 zone expansion modules to expand the hardwired zone capabilities up to (48) total zones. You can also add a Honeywell wireless receiver to upgrade the VISTA-21iPSIA with wireless zone capability. Once you have upgraded your internet alarm control panel with a wireless receiver, you can add any of the Honeywell 5800 Series wireless devices which will make your security system installation as easy as possible. You will need to add at least (1) hardwired alarm keypad to program and control your VISTA-21iPSIA. We recommend choosing between the Honeywell 6160 or 6160RF alarm keypad as both keypads are alphanumeric keypads that will allow you full acces to security system programming. The 6160RF is unique because it has an integrated wireless receiver so that you would not need to purchase a separate wireless receiver to use the Honeywell 5800 Series wireless devices with your Honeywell VISTA-21iPSIA internet alarm control panel.