Wired Alarm System: Resetting

Hi DIYers. This is Michael from Alarm Grid, and today, I'm going to be explaining how to reset your hardwired alarm system. And when we say reset an alarm system that's a pretty broad term right there. There are actually two types of resets that you can do on any alarm system, whether you're wireless or hardwired. Today we're going to be focusing on hardwired systems, such as Honeywell VISTA system, DSC PowerSeries system, and Interlogix NetworX system, what have you. There are two types of resets that you would do with your alarm system. There's a power cycle reset and there is a factory reset or factory defaulting, factory default reset, whatever you want to call it. But, like I said, two types. And first we'll focus on power cycle reset. So that's basically just turning your system off and then turning it back on. Power cycling-- completing the full power cycle. There are a few reasons you might power cycle your system. It can be a troubleshooting step. If your system is glitching out, not responding properly, then you can try the power cycle reset, give it a nice little kick, and then when it reboots, then hopefully it works properly. Maybe you've done this also on your phone or your computer. If you were having a problem on your computer, for instance, you might do a reboot. So it's the same thing on your security system. You would do a power cycle. Now for a hardwired system, there usually isn't a menu option to do the reboot. Maybe there are in some systems, but the typical way that you do the power cycle reset is that you manually power it down by cutting power to the system and then you restore power. So the way that you do that-- the system has two ways that it receives power. It has its battery backup, and it has its primary AC power source. So I'm just going to show you on our Honeywell VISTA system here. You see we have our Tuxedo keypad that is connected with the system, so that's what we're going to be paying attention to, to see if the system's on or off. So as far as cutting power, it doesn't matter whether we do AC power or battery power first, we can do either one. In this case, I'll start with battery power. So we have our backup battery down here. It's this black box here. So we cut the red wire from it. We just kind of grab onto it, and it slides right off. That was pretty easy. Usually, I have to tug on it a little bit harder than that to get it off, but it seemed to come right off there. So we've cut battery power, and now we're going to cut AC power by undoing the Honeywell LT cable that we have connected to it. I'm sorry, there's a lot of wires in the way here. But you see we do have our barrel connection that goes to the panel. Now, you don't want to cut power by undoing the terminal connections. That's a no-no. What you want to do is you either want to cut power at the circuit breaker. You can unplug the transformer from the wall outlet. We have a transformer right here just to show you what it looks like. So maybe you can find where the transformer is and you unplug it. You might have a screw plugged in, so you might need a screwdriver to take it out, if it is secured with a screw. But in our case, we're lucky enough to have a Honeywell LT cable. So we can just undo the barrel connection like that, and you can see that our system is powered down. We don't have power to the system anymore. That's why the keypad is also shut down. So to complete the power cycle, we have to power the system back on. And what we want to do is we want to transform our first. So AC power. So we'll just plug this back in, just like that. And the system will power on, on AC power alone. So you see it is starting up. And we'll go ahead, and we'll reconnect the backup battery. Just take the red wire, the positive wire, right into the terminal and there we go. It's plugged back in. It's receiving backup battery power as well too. Of course if you cut AC power by doing it by unplugging the transformer, plug the transformer back in. If you cut power to circuit breaker, flip the switch at the circuit breaker. So whatever you did till you get power restored, just go ahead and do that. But then, you can confirm that your system is powered back on. You see, ours is doing the startup process. But that is how you do the power cycle process on a wired system. And I said the other type of reset is a factory reset. That's a little bit more extreme. That's going to clear all the settings as though the system were brand new from the factory. You were starting fresh. So that's going to vary between different systems, how you go about doing that. So refer to the manual for your system. If you do need to go through that method, if you're getting rid of the system, then that might be a reason you do it. But it's more rare that you do that. Usually you would try a regular power cycle first to try to fix the problem. A factory reset, you're going to have to reprogram your entire system because it's going to wipe out all the zones. So those are the two types of resets for a wired security system or really any security system. And that is how you would go about performing a reset on your system. There's that power cycle reset that I showed you on the VISTA system, and then there's also the factory reset that pretty much any system is going to have that's going to clear all the settings. And that process is going to vary between different systems. So that is how you reset your hardwired security system. If you have any questions about security systems or alarm monitoring services, send an email to support@alarmgrid.com. 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