Interlogix Simon XT: Using Phone Line Monitoring

Hey DIYers. I'm Jorge from Alarm Grid. Today we're going to be going over using phone line monitoring on a Simon XT system. So the Simon XT does have a phone line connection, and it also has cellular connection. Now usually we would always recommend cellular over phone line just because cellular is 99%. You're going to get the full connection. It's very hard to be cut. Phone line-- if somebody just cuts the phone line to your house, and that's all your system has, it's never going to be able to send out any signals. The cellular connection also allows you to do interactive services. By that I'm talking about alarm.com. So if you are looking to have the cool features, the alarm.com application where you can control everything over your phone, you can do that with the cellular communicator installed. With phone line, you don't have those options. The only option you have with the phone line is just basic central station monitoring. Now, the main reason we try to stay away from phone line is because it can be tampered with. It can be cut-- the communication can be cut to the panel. There are other reasons such as, unreliability. So sometimes the signals that go out are dirty, so it takes a little bit longer than the cellular connection. Now we understand if a phone line is all you can do, by all means, you can certainly do phone line on the system. But if you have the option to do a cellular, we definitely recommend doing that over the phone line. And for cellular there is actually AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile. And if you're in Canada there's also TELUS. So just keep that in mind. I'm going to go ahead and show you guys the actual phone line connections in the Simon XT now. So first thing you do to get phone line monitoring is you want to make sure that the company you're signing up with even offers it. For us, we do have phone line monitoring. It would be our Bronze Plan. And if you guys want to find out more, just visit the monitoring page, or give us a call and we'll be able to help you out. Now, the second thing, after you've signed up and you've confirmed that the monitoring company does do phone line, you want to go ahead and wire your system up to the phone line. Now, you're going to want to use full line seizure, which basically if this system starts to dial out and someone's on the phone, this has priority. So once the alarm goes off, they start sending out a signal. It's going to take over all the whole phone line. It's going to seize the phone line, and is going to make sure that it sends a signal out. Now if you get the Simon XT, it comes within RJ31X jack. That's what you're going to need for the full line seizure. Now I'm going to show you the two connectors in the inside. To open it up you just press the top two buttons. The top will swing down. Let me go ahead and take it off the little latches here. Now here, you have the RJ45, and here, you have an RJ11. The RJ45 is what you're going to use with the RJ31X. All right. So now, I'm going to show you guys just a brief little overview on how we're going to use the RJ31X and the cable to connect it to the RJ45. So if you have the Simon XT, it should have came with your RJ31X and with the cable needed. First thing you want to do is go ahead and get the RJ31X open. Now, you're going to take the ring and tip wire that are going into the demarcation on the house where the phones go, where the phone line cables plug into on the house, the little D-mark. And you're going to take the ring and tip, which are the red and the green, and you're going to connect it to the top two. So it's going to be the top two away from the port. There's two. The very top two terminals, the furthest ones, you're going to connect the red to the red, and the green to the green. After you connected the red the red, the green to the green, you then connect the bottom two side wires. The ones that are to each side of the actual port right here. You're going to take two wires going from here. It's a gray and like a maroon. And you're going to wire these to the D-mark on the house. So these are going to go into the ring and tip onto the house, and the previous wires that were on the ring and tip on the house are going to go to the top two here. And then after you get those wires plugged into these terminals you go ahead and close everything back up. You plug one end of your cable to the RJ31X, and then you plug the other end of the cable into the actual Simon XT. I plug it in to my RJ45. The port should say line right above. And then after that you have wired in the RJ31X, and your panel is ready for phoneline seizure. Meaning that if you're on the phone and the alarm system rings this has priority over phone calls over the landline. Because you don't want to be on the phone the alarm rings, and then the alarm signal does not go out. So you want to make sure that you use this in order to set up phone line seizures. So the panel has priority over the whole landline. So you make sure you wire everything in. You connect it to the RJ31X. You connect it to your phone line connector in the wall, and then you have your whole system programmed-- or you have your whole system set up for the phone line. Let me go ahead and get this back on there. Now, after you've wired in and you've got everything wired in for the phone line connection, the next thing you need to do is actually program the central station phone numbers. To do that you do need to get into programming. So you're going to want to make sure that your installer code or dealer code. So first thing I'm going to go ahead and do is to get to that option we do need to go into system programming, which to get to that you use these up and down arrow keys. You're just going to go ahead and scroll down until you see system programming, hit OK. Enter in your installer code or dealer code. I'm using the default 4, 3, 2, 1, because my panel is defaulted. So now I'm in system programming and you're going to see, we have access codes. What we want to get to is going to be phone numbers. So I'm just going to hit the down arrow key all the way until I get to phone numbers. Once I'm there, I hit OK. And it's going to give me phone one, phone two, phone three, phone four. And then there's a downloader number. The ones we have to worry about are phone one and phone two. So if you're doing central station monitoring, your central station numbers are going to go in phone number one, phone number two. For three and four, these are if you want the system to call your personal phone. So if you have a cell phone, if you have a work number or anything like that you can have the system dial out that. So you want to make sure phone number one and two is for central station numbers. And phones three and four I would use for personal numbers. After you've programmed all of that in you then need to enable and pick and choose what you want reporting. So to do that I'm going to go ahead and hit Status to back out, and then I'm going to hit down until I see Reporting. I hit OK. And then I'm going to head all the way down until I see my phone numbers. Now let me see. Now usually, when you go into reporting, it would show you the phone numbers. So since I don't have any programmed in, it's not going to have anything, but this is going to be for every whatever. You're going to be enabling reporting codes for certain numbers. So for the central station, you're obviously going to want to enable the alarm, when the alarm goes off, any low battery, any trouble issues, any sensor low batteries, anything like that. That way central station can go ahead and notify you in case you ever are away from the house, and they'll be able to verify with you if everything is OK and if the system is running and basically, acting the way it should be. So after you've enabled all the reporting options for the phone numbers, for the central station, or for your personal phone numbers, after that would just be the testing. So I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to back out all the way. I'm just going to hit Status all the way out to the home screen. System low battery. And next thing you would do is test the system. So if you have door sensors, window sensors or anything alerting into the panel, you're going to want to go ahead and hit arm. Make sure that you've told your central station before that you're going to be testing it because if not, you don't want the police showing up to your house on a false alarm, and then possibly charging you some fees. Again, it depends what city, county you're in, but certain places do have fees. Now, after you've tested and you've confirmed, you should be all set for phone line monitoring. Again, if you guys do need to find out more about the cellular monitoring, we'll be more than happy to help you out with that. If phone line is the only option you guys have, that's perfectly fine as well. We'll go ahead and help you get everything set up. You can actually view all of our plans on our website, alarmgrid.com. And you can also email us if you have any questions. Our email is support@alarmgrid.com. If you found this video helpful, make sure you hit Like underneath. Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and hit the little bell icon to enable notifications so whenever we upload your content you guys do get notified. I'm Jorge, I'll see you guys next time.