2GIG GC3: DIY Installation

Hi DIYers. This is Frank at Alarm Grid here today and we're working on the 2GIG GC3 panel. We'll be working on the physical installation of the system. This is a fully wireless system. Although it does have two wired terminals on it, commonly those aren't even used. Today, we'll be focusing on the physical install.

So when you work with any self-contained wireless panel, the placement of where you physically mount this unit on the wall is important. So not just for control as far as having it near an entry point, but you also want to have it strategically located so that your wireless sensors are within range of the panel. So you want to essentially locate the panel, if possible-- if it's a smaller space that you're trying to secure, then it's not as big of a deal, but it is important to consider that in your placement. And before you physically wall mount your panel, it's always a good idea to put up your sensors, even program your sensors and test before physically snaking cables so that you can avoid any issues of needing to relocate a panel and patch the holes in the wall.

So today, we're putting it on our lab wall, which we have a bunch of systems here, just above our GC2 panel, which is the smaller touchscreen. The programming on this unit is night and day better than the GC2, so we're pretty excited about it. We also work with the Honeywell LYNX touch panel. So this is much more similar to those wireless zones.

So let's just jump right into it. As far as physically mounting the back plate, we're going to use a few things. First, we have our sheet rock saw, which I used to cut in the back-- the hole in the back plate. You can just basically trace. Once you level and measure out the back plate, you can use the sheet rock saw to cut right into that.

So we used this earlier as well, which is a level. And you can see we just set this right on top and give that-- we can loosen these screws a little bit so that it's nice and level. And then we can set our GC3 panel right on it.

It's also handy to have one of these, which it's just a screwdriver. You can also use these for drill bits to pre-drill the screws so that they go in nicely. Let's see. And then we're also going to get into snaking our LT cable. This is just a little retractable snake that I used. You can also use larger snakes or sometimes they have them in a bigger coil, whichever one works for you.

What we'll start with is, first of all, you want to measure things out. Ideally, you want to have your keypad at just around chest height. It's going to be a personal preference as far as daily how you want to see the system, whether you want it at eye level or a little lower.

In our lab, we have it a little higher than normal because we have our GC2 beneath it. This is our LT cable, which I want to show you in the bag here. So the LT, it has a two prong connector on it.

There's the two spades, the positive and negative-- red for positive, black for negative-- and then a DC port. So there's actually a male DC connection that will go into the back of the GC3. I don't know if you can see it in the shot here, but there's a little port here just above the terminal block where you can plug that in.

So the LT cable also comes with a dongle that, for systems that don't have the port-- which there are some new LYNX touch panels, and possibly down the line, the GC3 may strip this out, but we're not really sure. There's two small leads here that can go directly into the green terminal block.

You can see-- let's see here. You can see power positive and negative. And you basically just can go right into those connections. And then this is a small female connection where you can actually plug this right in.

For today's purposes, we're actually using the LT right angle barrel connector going directly into the panel. So we've already used our snake to pull the cable. In this case, we're actually using a transformer plugging into a receptacle up near the ceiling. So that's why it's hanging down here.

So I've already used this snake. I've shot the snake up into the ceiling and pulled it out. So I have our transformer here. And you can see that I've already connected the red lead to the positive where it says DC plus on the left, and then our black lead to the negative where it says DC minus. That's our ground.

So you'll first want to do that. As we're getting things set up, you don't necessarily have to plug this in yet. Since this is a fixed connection, you can actually plug it in if you want, but we'll just keep it unplugged for now for today's purposes.

So what we're going to do next, after this back plate has been leveled and where you want it, is we can plug our panel right in. So we can take this barrel connector. It's a little tricky to see where this connection is. Just beneath the battery, you want to just push in. And you can leave this.

Don't go underneath the third hand here. We want to actually put this on top and right in under the battery. We can flip this over. And you can push any of the extra slack right into the wall.

Now, the key to this panel-- we've had some customers mention that getting it off the back plate or putting it on can be a little bit tricky. The key here is if you can kind of get under it, you want to hook the top two hooks onto the back so you can kind of feel that it has some tension there and then push it and snap it right into place. So now that's on there.

If you ever want to pull this panel off, if you try and pull straight off, you'll notice that it won't come off. All you have to do is use your two thumbs on the bottom, and pop off and then lift up, and you'll be off the back plate. So I'll do that one more time here. Push any excess power cable in and just snap it in.

And then you have your panel right on the wall. Right now, I had already powered my system with AC power. That's why it's on the backup battery. If you had not plugged in your transformer yet, you would not see the panel powered up. So it's still on the backup battery since I had powered it earlier and left the battery plugged in.

So now I can basically plug this AC transformer in, which I'll do here momentarily. So now we have our panel with AC power and DC backup battery power. You can see here right next to the 2GIG symbol, we have this charging circuit symbol and the two prong AC transformer symbol kind of alternating.

What that means is it's now on AC power and the backup battery is recharging. So you may see some flashing on the screen as the battery is charging up. That's totally fine. It'll take several hours to do that when you first power up.

So we can just kind of move forward from here. Basically, this system is now installed. If you ever need to remove it off the back plate to power cycle it, we can just, again, pull up from the bottom, remove the unit. And we'll do two things. We will first remove AC power. And then secondly, we'll unplug the battery.

So you can see the battery has a little lead here coming underneath. And with this little black ferret, what we'll do is unplug that. And that comes right off this white clip just beneath the battery. Now you'll notice the panel is completely powered off. And that's how you would hard power cycle the panel.

So when you first install this, you're going to want to plug in the battery first. This little black piece of plastic here, this ring on it, if it's sitting here, the back plate won't go on. So you're going to want to slide this out of the way and get that lead pushed down so that the back plate will sit nicely on the panel. So we'll do that one more time.

Just going to plug in AC. And then we'll flip this around. Push in our excess cable. You can see the panel now powering up. That's what it would do the first time.

Hook it on the top so that it's nice and level. Snap it in. And we'll let the panel boot up. At this point, you now have the transformer plugged into your AC outlet. It does have to be outside of the wall. So by code, you can't have low voltage and high voltage mixed together in the same receptacle, so you're going to have to use that transformer and physically plug it into a wall outlet-- a 120 VAC outlet-- and then use those spade connectors.

You can also custom cable it. We always recommend 18 gauge wire. So you want to stay within 25 to 30 feet and use 18 gauge wire. It can be 18.2. So if you go to your hardware store, Home Depot, Lowe's, they should have it. You can either get a small reel or get a custom piece that you like, as far as after you make your distance to the outlet, you can cut a custom piece off, and then use your red and black leads to connect to the transformer.

I showed you that green terminal block earlier and that's where you would land the custom cable if you powered it that way. Once you have the system powered up, we can then start setting up the system programming, some zones. You can set the date and time, which you can see right now it's shown as 2:08 AM, which it's not. So we can get into that in some other videos.

But you'll see the display here is pretty nice. We have security and weather right on the home screen here. We'll get into the user interface and the review on the system in a moment. But essentially, that's how you would install your 2GIG GC3 self-contained wireless panel.

This unit will use alarm.com, which we are dealers for. And you can feel free to email us about that as well, as far as monitoring service goes. But primarily, this is all you need to do to get your system fired up. If you have any questions on the GC3 install, you can email us at support@alarmgrid.com. And don't forget to subscribe to our channel.