Honeywell L5210: User Codes

Hi, DIYers. This is Frank at Alarm Grid. Today, we're in the Alarm Grid lab again, working on the Lynx Touch L5210 Honeywell system. So we're going to step right over to the keypad and get right into it. First, we're going to press the Home button, followed by Security, More, and Tools. And today, we're going to work on users. So we're going to set up some user codes, also focus on showing you how to change your master code, because this should be one of the first things you do when you power up your L5210. We're going to go into Security, More, Tools. The default master code is 1234. If you haven't changed it yet, that's how you get into the Users Programming menu so we can make these changes today. If you've already changed it, then we'll use that code to get into programming and change any other codes. So we'll enter the master code after hitting Tools. In this case, it's on default on our panel here. We'll go to Users. And so we'll have the master, guest, and duress codes already listed here. The master code, by default, is 1234. The first thing we should do is go into Master, and then click Edit, User Code, and then we can enter a new master code. So enter whatever four-digit code you like. For today, I'm just going to keep it on default, on 1234. We'll click Done, and then we have the master code set with the user code. So we'll go ahead and hit Save. Now, to create a new code-- let's say you want to set up a sub user for another user on the system-- maybe other family members, any other alarm user, if you're in a business environment, other coworkers so you can track to know who's arming and disarming when. This is how you do it. You'd hit Add New at the bottom. The name, you can put in whatever name you want. Let's say we put in Tom here. We'll click Done. It automatically assigned a user number, which will be User 3. The master user is User 2. The installer code is actually User 1. So it's going to hop right to number 3, which is your first subuser. You go to User Code, put in whatever user code you want. We'll just, for today's purposes, do 4567. Done. And then Save. And you'll see now we have the master, the guest, the duress, and now your subuser. After you've set up your first subuser, you can then set up any other subusers you need. This L5210 supports up to 32 user codes, so you'll have plenty of users that you can add to the system. If you like to set up the guest code, we can go ahead and do that. You can click Guest and Edit, and then go into the user code, set a code here, and then done. What you want to do for the guest code to keep in mind-- the guest code has specific settings so that it can only disarm the system when you arm with that code. So for example, this would be something like a babysitter code. Traditionally, older Honeywell systems, they call it the babysitter code. Now they call it the guest code. It allows you-- let's say you have a babysitter at home. You go out for the night, leave the babysitter with your kids, and they go out for ice cream. They use their babysitter code to arm the system to go out to protect the home. When they come back, they use their own code to disarm the system. A week later, you go on vacation. So you have to worry about that babysitter potentially breaking in, which maybe that babysitter is trustworthy, and you would just set them up with a normal subuser code. But let's say that there is a situation where you want to protect the system, and you don't want that code to be able to be used unless that code was used to arm-- that's what you would want to use for the guest code. So just keep in mind that you don't want to give that to anyone that you would like to have access to the system and disarm if you were to disarm or if any other user were to disarm. If you're looking for that type of solution, that's where you would set up a normal subuser, like we did first here. So we'll back out, and you'll see User 3. When you hit Add New, it automatically adds it new as a subuser which is able to disarm any code, including the master code. So that's for users in your family or any other users that you want to be able to interchangeably arm and disarm the panel. So once you're done setting those codes, the last thing here is the duress code. So if you click Duress and Edit-- traditionally, the duress code you want to keep to be something very simple so you can remember it in a situation of duress. The duress code, what it does-- when you use the duress code to disarm, it sends a silent panic alarm to your central station. So if you do have monitoring services, this code is something that, when you enter, it'll send the silent panic. It'll seemingly disarm the panel, but it'll send that silent panic at send the police. So you want to be careful with this code. Ideally, you want to keep it to something simple but not something very close to one of your codes just in case you accidentally press it. Common ones are right down the middle-- 2580. You can set other ones, anything that's easy to remember for you that you will not confuse with your own master code or subuser codes. But basically, this a code that you would use only really when you have central station monitoring. We offer some no contract plans on our website at alarmgrid.com, so you can check those out if you like. But basically, that's a way that you can set up a duress code. We'll keep 2580 in there for now and we'll save it. So now we've changed our master code, we've changed our duress code, we've set up a subuser, gone through how the guest code works. In most cases, it may not be very useful. But it may be useful in certain situations with people that you want to have access to the system at certain times and not be able to disarm any other code. So we can go ahead and now back right out to the home screen. And we're back at the home screen now. And the next thing I would do before moving on to anything else is I would test. So we would want to go into-- if we hit the Home key, go into Security, go to Armed Stay, for example, and try a new code. We could try-- I wouldn't necessarily try the duress code unless you run tests with your central station. If you want to do that, call your central station, put yourself on tests, and then test it and make sure that you're getting the silent panic through. You can call your alarm company and verify that. For the other codes, you can just plug in the code. I kept it on 1234. So we can test it. It's still working here. We are now going to disarm. Enter the code again. We can now try the subuser code that I set up. So we can do Armed Stay again-- 4567. Armed Stay again came through. You can disarm using 4567. And we test that. Our new master code and our subuser codes are now working. So that's how you set up user codes on the L5210 Lynx Touch system. If you have any further questions regarding user codes, you can email us at support@alarmgrid.com. And always remember to subscribe to our channel.