Add a Wired Keypad to DSC PowerSeries NEO Security System

Hi, DIYers. This is Michael from Alarm Grid. And today, I'm going to show you how to add a wired alphanumeric keypad to a DSC PowerSeries Neo Security System. A wired keypad, it's like it sounds. It's wired to the panel directly, rather than a wireless keypad, which would use RF transmissions to communicate. So this is all wired, connected at the panel. And alphanumeric means that it shows letters on the keypad. And you can get a full English display, which is important for programming the system. Now you may add a touch screen keypad to your Neo system as well, but it's usually a good idea to have a wired alphanumeric keypad around to serve as the main controller. Not necessarily your primary use keypad, but for programming the system and setting up. The initial wired alphanumeric keypad's a good one. And so I want to briefly discuss about the models of keypads you might add. The first keypad that we really recommend you use for the first general setup, it's the DSC HS2LCDRF9 N. So that's your basic alphanumeric keypad. The RF at the end, that stands for Radio Frequency. And it includes a built-in wireless PowerG transceiver for the system. So that way, you can start adding PowerG sensors in addition to wired sensors to the system board. The PowerG sensors are great. They have a two-kilometer range in open air with the Neo system. They offer 128-bit AES encryption. They're extremely secure. So really opens up some doors. So for your first initial keypad, that's really the one you want to go with. If you already have a PowerG transceiver module or maybe you've already added an HS2LCDRF9 N keypad, then additional alphanumeric keypads you might add if you want to have a second spot for controlling the system around your home or business-- you would just add the HS2LCD N, which is the same keypad, but without the built-in transceiver. It's a little bit more affordable. And you can only add one PowerG transceiver to the system. So that's the one you would want to go with if you already have a PowerG transceiver. And I just also want to mention there's also the HS2LCDP. And the P stands for a proximity tag. So you can hold up a little proximity tag in place of entering a code. It's just a cool feature, if you want to do that. So that's another keypad that you can consider adding. So those three are the main alphanumeric keypads for the Neo system. So let's get into it. We have our Neo system here and our keypad. We don't have anything wired up except for the Neo panel, the power connection setup. And the keypad-- we have our panel powered down, first of all. We know we have our AC connections at the panel, but the transformer is unplugged and the backup battery is disconnected. So make sure you have your system powered down before completing the connections. We have a four conductor 22 gauge wire. It's ready prepared. And we're just going to go ahead and show you how you would do the wiring. So the first thing you want do is open up the Neo keypad. And so you take a flathead screwdriver and insert into these holes and just force it out there. Don't be afraid to get aggressive with it. It's just the Neo, after all. And so we have it opened up. And so these are the terminals where you will complete the connection. You have R for red, B for black, Y for yellow-- in our case, white-- and G for green. So we're just going to go in and insert these. We have them loosened up already. So just put them in there and tighten them down. Make sure they're nice and secure, because we have had trouble with these coming loose. I'll try to get my hand out of the way so you can see it a little better there. All right, so we're going to do the red wire into R. R is for red. And we're going to tighten this down. Make sure to get it nice and secure. We're going to check our connections after we're done here. That looks good. And then we take a black wire, B. This is for the ground connection or the negative power. We're using stranded wire here, which is easier to strip and prepare. And that's in there nice and securely. We're just going to go and tighten that down. All right. Next, we have Y for yellow. But in our case, we have the white wire here. So we'll use that in place of the yellow wire and put that into the hole if it wants to go in there. And I guess we'll insert the green one as well. While we're at it, and we'll tighten them down separately. Because we only have one screwdriver, and we can only do one at a time. So we got that one in there, and it looks like the green wire came out a little bit. I'm going to have to once I get the white one secured. We'll go, and we'll get the green one in there. The yellow or white and green wires are for the data connections with panels, so that's how it communicates. The red and black wires are for power. And really, color doesn't matter, as long as everything is going to the proper spot. OK, so we have completed our connections here. And give it a quick tug. They're nice and secure enough. So now we're going to run this wire through the keypad back plate, so that way we can close the keypad. So we have our back plate here. And we're going to take our wire, and we're just going to run it through the back plate. So we make sure you get them all through. There we go. And then we'll be able to close the keypad. Make sure they're facing the proper direction. You want to get the top of the keypad first. There we go. And then we just snap it back down. And keypad is closed. So now that we have our keypad connected and closed, we're going to connect the other end of the wires to the panel board. Normally, you would run this through the back plate, but we're not going to, because this is just an example and we don't have a door anyway, and nothing else is really set up with the back plate, so it doesn't really matter for our example. But we have our connections here-- red, black, yellow, green. Just match the colors. So we have the red one. It can go in the red port. And we're going to tighten that down. OK, so we have our connections made. A red, black, yellow or white, and green. And everything's nice and secure. So we're going to go and power on the Neo system. So we have our DSC PowerSeries Neo system powered on now. And we have our keypad wired in. So the keypad lights up as soon as we power the system on. So we actually have our keypad already enrolled with the Neo system, but I'm going to go show you how you would go about doing it if you were adding an additional keypad. If you were adding your first keypad, it would actually just say, press any key to enroll, and you would just press a key. And then it would auto-enroll with the system and assign it to keypad slot 01. Keypad slots are two digits. By way you, can have up to eight keypads with the Neo. Some will allow 16, if you have the 128 zone model. But usually, it's eight. But you still get the 16 keypad slots, so you can add it to a higher slot if you really want to do that for some reason. But for auto-enrollment, it's going to auto-assign it to keypad slots. But I'm going to show you how you do that now. So first, we're going to get into programming. We do star eight. And it's going to ask for our installer's code, and we have ours at the default-- 5555. And then this is when we choose a programming field. In our case, we want to choose 902 for auto-enroll. And we can scroll between different selections within the programming field. But in our case, 000 for auto-enroll's fine. So we just can confirm that selection. You could just enter in 000 if you really wanted to. Make sure that you're in there. So then you would just press star, and it would do the enrollment. We have our keypad auto-enrolled now. So that's how you would auto-enroll a keypad. If you wanted to manually assign it, you would access the 902 programming field. I'm just showing you again just to get back-- I did go back out more on the menu than I needed to. But we're 902, and we can select it. Then we'd scroll to 003 for edit module slot. Press the star to confirm. And so we have our keypad here. This is the HS2LCDRF keypad, and it is assigned to 01. If we wanted to assign it to 04, for instance, we could do so, and it does that. We do have a touch screen keypad that is configured with the system, but it's not on there. So we're going to go back, and we're going to assign this back to 01, because I just want it on the main slot. Let's see here. That's fine. And well, we'll keep that at 02. And then we'll assign this to 01. And then there, it's good to go. So we can press star from there, and we'll back out of that using the pound symbol. And if you ever want to check your keypad slots, you can do programming field 860, and that shows that this is keypad number one. Just so you can check which keypad you're on, so that's good. And if you want to assign partitions for your keypad, which is an important step because this is a multi-partition system, what you're going to do, you're going to do this based off of keypad slot. So in our case, we have ours on keypad slot number one. So we use programming field 861. If you're doing programming keypad slot two, 862. Number three, 863, 864, et cetera, et cetera. All the way up to 876 for keypad slot 16. So we're going to do the first selection, 000 keypad partition mask. You can press star to select it. And we have ours set to partition one. Now normally, you can only assign it to one partition at a time. We can scroll through these and see the different partitions. But if you wanted to have it control multiple partitions, you can't really select multiple partitions. What you would do is you will choose the option 00 for global keypad. And that will allow it to control every partition. So then you would have a global keypad. But in our case, since we're only using one partition, we just go on ours to be at partition one. That's generally what you want to do. You only want to use the global keypad option if you have it assigned to control multiple partitions. If you're just using a single partition, just set it to 01 for partition one or whatever the appropriate partition is. Only use that global one if you're going to be doing everything. Then once we're done with that, everything's autosaved. Everything's good. Now we can back out of programming by repeatedly pressing the pound hashtag symbol. And that's how you would enroll your keypad with your Neo system and how you would assign it partitions. So we've shown you how to setup a wired alphanumeric keypad with your DSC PowerSeries Neo. If you have any questions about using a wired alphanumeric keypad with your DSC PowerSeries Neo or have any questions about the Neo or about alarm monitoring in general, send us an email at support@alarmgrid.com. 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