Honeywell 5811: Programming to the 2GIG GC3

Hi, DIYers, this is Frank at Alarm Grid. We're back in the Alarm Grid lab today, and we're working with the 2GIG GC3 system. This is the new Go Control panel offered by 2GIG. You can see the GC2 beneath here. This was the predecessor to the GC3. And now we're going to show you today how to work on programming the Honeywell 5811 door/window contact.

So this is a nice, skinny sensor here, a little bit skinnier than even the DW10. That comes with the 2GIG panel kits. This is a cost effective unit that you can purchase on our website, alarmgrid.com, and add as other peripheral door and window contacts. It has a very skinny depth here. And what's really nice about it is the magnet size is very small. So this usually fits nice and snug on those small, tight areas in the window, and definitely on the doors as well. So you always want to place the magnet on the moving part, whether it be the window or the door itself. And then the sensor, which is a larger unit, has the board inside with the battery. So this is the one that you always want to have on the fixed, either, door jamb or window casing. If you can't do that, technically, you can put this in the moving apart. Over time, this might jostle electronics. It isn't ideal.

So, for today, we're going to show you how to program it. What we'll do here is, from the GC3 home screen, we'll hit the 2GIG icon on the top right and enter our default installer code, which is 1561. If you have already changed your installer code in the panel, feel free to enter that to get into programming. We can then enter system config and then wireless zones. So once this bumps you in here, you'll see, if you've already had some existing zones programmed in like we have, you can just go to the next available slot. We have wireless zone 3 available.

On the right hand side, you'll see the list of all of the settings for the zone. So you can hit Edit Zone or just click in a sensory type here. And this will bring those selections over to here. And now we are in zone 3. You can see wireless zone 3 at the top. The first thing we want to do is select the sensory type. Traditionally, the 5811 is a door/window contact. There's only a few different types that we normally set these to. There may be some exceptions to the rule if you're using this as a monitor zone or maybe for some other specific purpose. You can always shoot us an email about that after this if it's outside of the general rules here. Generally, it's these top 3. Sensor type 1, 2, and 3.

We have entry/exit 1, entry/exit 2, or perimeter. So the entry/exit zones are for doors that you'd be entering and exiting when the system is armed. So this would be maybe a front door, back door, garage entry door, anything that you would come into, enter, before the system is disarmed. And you want a grace period to come in and be able disarm the panel. Generally, entry/exit 1 is your default. 30 seconds on the entry, 60 seconds on the exit. That can be adjusted in programming. But those are usually your primary entry points. Entry/exit 2 can be mapped to maybe a garage overhead door, something that you might need some more time for on the entry delay, so you can map a longer delay for that. And then, lastly, perimeter.

For today, we'll set this up. We already have front door in the program, so we're actually going to set this up as a window today. So we'll set this as perimeter as sensory type 3. Again, if you're using it for a door and you want an entry/exit, you can set it that way. We can now go into equipment code. This is where we can choose the equipment code. So you'll see the 2GIG equipment here first. If you scroll down a little bit further here, you'll start seeing HW. That stands for Honeywell. There's a few different generic sensors put in here. The 5811, actually, is not one of them.

So I happen to know that the 5818 M&L, which is another Honeywell unit, uses the same loop as the 5811. So you can either select that, or you could even come down here and set this up as just an existing door/window contact as 0655. Since I know that the Honeywell 5818 M&L uses the same technology as this unit, and mostly every other door/window besides the 5816, I'm going to just use this as a 5818 M&L.

So we can then move to the next field here as the serial number. Let me just select that there again. So now we've selected the 0470 as the 5818 M&L. We'll move down to serial number. We always like to auto enroll wireless sensors, or any sensor in general, with these panels. It eliminates user error on entering the serial number. And, also, it's just a lot easier. So whether you have this set and installed on your window already, or door, it's irrelevant. You can use a door to open and close it and trip an auto enroll, or you can do it in your hand. For today, we're going to do it in our hands.

So we'll set learn here, on the bottom right. It will say listening. We can fault the zone by removing the magnet from between these two tabs here. And then hit Accept. Now be cognisant when your auto enrolling. It's very important to consider any motion detectors in the area if you already have motions that are installed and put up with batteries in them. If, during that learning period, those motions are tripped and transmit a signal to the panel, those actually will learn in, and you may have errors saving that because it's already programmed in the system, or maybe it's not programmed in the system yet and then you'll have errors in the future.

So just be sure, after you enroll that, to verify the serial number. It's listed right on the back of the 5811. It's also located inside. So if you've already mounted this on a door window and you don't want to remove it, you can actually use a flat head screwdriver and just simply twist and pop the unit open. And once this is open, you can leave the back plate mounted to the door or window, and you can actually view the serial number right there on the back plate. So if you have installed it, it's a little easy trick there. Snap that shut. And we can confirm 0514623 is listed right here. That's also on there. So we're good to go on that. We know that we have the proper serial number.

All of the 5811 contacts will use loop 1. OK. So there are some sensors that the 5816 will use, other loops, including loop 2. For this one, we know it's loop 1. So, equipment age, we can skip over it. We know it's a new contact. Sensory loop, we'll see down here as loop 1. We can just click in there to see, yeah, select it on loop 1. The next few things here are important.

Transmission delay. We always want to disable this. It depends on your alarm company. They may want to disable it. At Alarm Grid, we always want to disable transmission delay so that we know when you have an alarm. There are other security measures that can be put in place, including verification phone calls. We allow for four verification phone calls before dispatching. So you can use those measures to verify false alarms rather than simply disabling transmissions.

The issue with disabling or delaying your transmission of alarms is if you have an alarm and disarm before that transmission delay expires, your alarm company will never know that you had an alarm. And if you reach out to the alarm company to discuss the matter, they won't be able to pull up any of that in their logs. And that's because there's a delay period that holds that signal until that period is expired. If it's delayed and cleared before that transmission delay expires, then basically the central station is never notified. So, for that reason, we like disabling the transmission delay, so that the signal goes out immediately as soon as there's an alarm.

Now, if there's an entry/exit period on this and it's not set on perimeter, then you still have that delay period to get to the panel and disarm. So rather than enabling the transmission delay, we recommend you just elongating that entry/exit period so that you have more time at the panel. And that can avoid false alarms right there. So always disable transmission delay, if possible.

We have the voice descriptor here. This is the name zone. So we can go in to Edit Voice Descriptor. We've shown you this in some other videos. For this one, we're going to use this as a window. So I'll just put this in as our first window, since it is our first. We'll put first and then window. Now you don't necessarily need to type the whole thing. Once you get going here, you see, on the white bar, you have window listed right there. If you select anything on that white bar up above, that's in the library on the panel and is actually able to voice announce out of the keypad.

So our next selection here, we'll actually just jump right down to sensor chime and come back to reporting and supervision in a moment. On the sensor chime, it's important to choose those descriptors in the library in that white bar, so that if you do enable voice, whether you do a voice only, when this magnet moves away from the contact and the window opens, it voice announces first window. Or you can even do something like a-- Ding dongs I usually keep for the doors. You can do a chime number one with voice. That means it will chime and use a chime number one tone with voice annunciation. So we'll leave that there.

We'll bounce back to sensor reports. That's located just underneath the voice descriptor there. And, now, we always want to enable this, whether you have central station monitoring or not. It's always important to enable this. If, in the future, you enable central station monitoring and you then want these zones to report out, instead of going back to each of your sensors and manually enabling this, you can enable it right when you set it up. If you don't have central station monitoring, there's nothing to report to, so you don't have to worry about it. Again, sensory reports, we'll always keep enabled.

Same with supervision. In another video, we discussed supervision and how, basically, there are supervisory periods where the system will look for this device and check in every supervisory interval. If this isn't there to ping back and say, hey, I'm here, that's when there'd be supervision trouble on the GC3. That would report out to the central station. You can get text and emails on that through alarm.com as well, if you have that service. It is just a way for you to make sure that this is reporting and in good communication with the panel. The only time that you'd want to disable supervision is if you have a device like a panic or some sort of sensor that would potentially leave the premise purposefully. But this sensor sits on a window, will never want to leave the premise. So we'll keep that enabled.

So that's it. We already set the sensor chime. We have everything all set here. So we'll hit Return to System Configuration, hit the back key, and then we have our summary screen here. You can see it sets a perimeter as a window so that, as soon as this is opened when the system is armed, it's an instant alarm. So we discussed the entry/exit 1 and 2. This perimeter is an instant alarm. There's no entry period or exit period. So as soon as this is opened, the alarm is triggering. And as long as we have that transmission delay disabled, it's immediately sending that signal out to the central station.

So now we can back out. We'll hit Save. And now we have our new sensor. Once this restarting security process completes there and it says ready to arm, we can open this. You can hear the chimes and it'll show first window on here as an open sensor. So it says system not ready because this is currently faulted. We put this back. And now it says system ready to arm, and we know that this device is working. So we can go install it. After you install it, it's always important to then fault and confirm proper placement on the door and window to make sure that it is faulting after installation. If you have any other questions regarding programming the Honeywell 5811 door/window contact with your 2GIG GC3 panel, you can email us at support@alarmgrid.com, and please describe to our channel.