Wireless Alarm System: Power Cycling

Hi, DIY-ers. This is Michael from AlarmGrid. And today, I'm going to be showing you how to power cycle your wireless all-in-one alarm panel. Power cycling is a type of reset. It's a power cycle reset. It's very simple. You're powering your system off, and then you're powering it back on-- the full power cycle. So there are a few reasons why you might power cycle your wireless alarm system, or any alarm system, really. Maybe you're installing some hardware. And when you're installing hardware, such as a cellular communicator, you don't want to have your system powered on, because you could damage your system. We've learned about that before. And another reason, maybe your system's actually experiencing some technical difficulties. Maybe it's not responding correctly. It's glitching out. And much like you would reboot your phone or your computer, you can reboot your alarm system. And hopefully, when you power it down and then power it back on, it's working properly. So this is a less extreme type of reset than doing a factory reset, which will clear all the settings, but that's a different video. So power cycling, though-- now, there are two ways that you normally do it on a wireless system. One way that works on virtually any alarm system-- wireless, wired, anything-- is just to cut power to the system, and then restore power to the system. You cut AC power and its battery backup, and then you restore power, and that is the power cycle. Many wireless systems will also have a menu option for performing a reboot or a power cycle, whatever they call it. So I'm going to show you both of those today. I'm going to show you two different systems, actually. So we're going to start on our GC3E. And I'm going to show you the traditional way of performing a power cycle by cutting power and then restoring power. And there's a few things to keep in mind when you're using a wireless system. So let's first of all show you that the system is powered on. Pressed a button, and you see we get our beautiful 7-inch display screen of our GC3E system right here. And so what I want to do, I want to open up the panel so I can cut power. I'm going to need to cut battery power and AC power. And for powering down, it doesn't matter which order I go in. But then when I'm powering back on, I will go in a specific order, and that order is battery first and then transformer-- AC power second. So let's cut power to the system. Let's open it up, first of all. And see, it came easily off the wall mount there. So we have a Honeywell LT cable in this case, so I can cut AC power by unplugging this connection right here. And you're going to see the system is still on its battery backup, although it does say power lost. Now, if you didn't have a Honeywell LT cable, what you could do is you could unplug the transformer. I'll show you what a transformer looks like. It can be something like this, although it can vary between different systems. See, something like that right there. But you would just unplug that from the wall. If it has a screw in it, you would need to undo the screw, obviously, to be able to get it out. Or if you have a hard time accessing the transformer, you can also cut power at the circuit breaker. It really doesn't matter. Just cut AC power. We did that by unplugging it from there. If you have yours wired into the terminals, don't undo the terminal connections. That's kind of a no-no. Stick to either the circuit breaker or unplugging the transformer. Or if you have a barrel connector, like we did with this, then that works, as well. But we're not done yet. We need to also undo battery power. So we're going to unplug the connection right there. Most wireless panels have something similar, something that plugs into a port and then you take it out. So you can see our system is completely powered down now. We have done half the power cycle. Now we need to do the other half of powering it back on. And so I'm going to do battery power first. I am holding this system upside down for some reason. But let's do battery power. And you see the system doesn't turn on on battery power alone. It's only going to turn on once I do AC power, so let's restore AC power. We're going to take our connector, and we're just going to plug it in, like so. And then let's get our panel back onto the wall mount here. Kind of a little bit low there. Let's see if I could get it. There we go. And you see when I restored AC power, the system came back on, as well. But that is best practice on a wireless system, is to do battery power first when you're restoring power, and then-- battery power first, and then AC power second-- so restore power at the circuit breaker, plug the transfer back in, what have you. Battery first, AC power second, and then your system will power back on. It won't power on on battery power alone. And that is the traditional way to do a power cycle. The other way is that many panels will have a Menu option where you can do a power cycle reset. And this is going to vary between different systems. I'm going to be showing you on our Lyric controller today, but if you're using a different system, then you can refer to its manual. And not all systems will have this. Some won't have a menu option, in which case you would have to do the process that I showed you first. And that's why I showed you it first, because it always works. But this is another way if you have a system with a menu option, which most of the new systems have something. But you can do a quick little reboot like this. So I'm going to show you on the Lyric, just for variety's sake. We're at our main screen of our Lyric here. We're going to choose Security, and then we're going to choose Tools. And then I'm going to enter in the master code, which ours is at the default. You usually do change this code, but we have ours at the default of 1234. And then we're in what's known as the Master Tools menu, or at least I call it that. I don't know if everyone else does. But we're at the Master Tools Menu and then we're going to choose Advanced. And you see we have Reboot. We're going to click on that, and it's going to ask us if we're sure. And we are sure, and we're going to click Yes. And then it's going to begin rebooting. It's going to reboot. Let's take a quick look at it here as it performs the rebooting process. You see it does power down and it will power back up. Let's watch. OK, and you see it came back to the main screen here. And we are still at system standby, but it's going to go through the rest of its rebooting process, which will only take a brief moment. But that is how you do it through the menu option. And again, that will vary between different systems. So refer to the manual for your system to see, first of all, if it has that option, and second of all, how to do it. But if you don't have the menu option, then you can always do the traditional way of cutting power and then restoring it. But that is how you power cycle your wireless alarm system. Again, that's useful if you're installing hardware. Keep your system powered down. Install the hardware, and then power back on. Or as a troubleshooting step-- very common practice to power down the system, power it back on to see if that fixes the problem and gets your system to respond the way that you want it to. And remember, if your system is armed, power cycling usually won't take it out of its armed state. So you can't try to cheat your system by powering it down to see if it'll be disarmed. When you power it back on, it'll still be armed. But that's a different story. But that is how you power cycle your wireless alarm system. If you have any questions about wireless alarm systems, or wired alarm systems, or about alarm monitoring services, send an email to support@alarmgrid.com. 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