We are getting ready to go out of town for a few days for a memorial service. I have two Centralite V2 keypads set up with HSM, and they get automatically armed when the mode goes to Away and disarmed when either of us is present. We will be having our neighbor check the mail and he is over 70, so we would rather not have to have him deal with disarming the keypad. He also prefers to use the key to unlock the door rather than the keypad. What would be the best way to disarm the keypad for him and then arm it back when he leaves?
For the normal case, I don't want to disarm the keypad whenever the door is unlocked. I was thinking I could set up a rule to do this and then just disable it when we aren't out of town.
For arming the keypad after he leaves, I think I can set up a rule to arm on door locked but haven't looked at that yet.
Is this the best way to do it or are there better solutions? In any case, I will be using the dashboard to keep an eye on things and lock/arm when necessary.
I did that one time for the maid service, and found out I hadn't considered a few things... Namely, they locked the door as soon as they got in the house as part of the company safety procedures. So 90 seconds later, off went the alarm...
Unless you are in a very dangerous neighborhood, keep it simple - leave it disarmed during the day, and armed at night. People stress too much about alarm systems.
I tell my husband that all the damn time! He's always locking the door between the house and the garage. I get it, but people have codes to the garage that can come in. But they can't get into the house! I'm going to get a schlage for it so he stops. The reason I mention this is because we live in a town of 800 people. Not high crime.
That would get annoying. I had to automate the lock on the door to my garage for that exact reason!!!! That's where I stuck one of the Kwikset 916's that I hate the touchscreens on so much lol.
I'm all for keeping doors locked in general (why make it easy on someone). But really - locks and alarms are mainly for honest people anyway. Any thief that wants to break in, always will - regardless of locks and alarms. Happens all the time, every day.
The alarm is just to let you know your stuff is now gone / grab a gun if you're home. It isn't there to stop a criminal. It is barely even a deterrent from a smash and grab home burglary.
If you know what time he will be coming over you could have a rule to disarm the alarm during a set time period. But if he changes the time the next day, then the alarm will go off. Personally I think just arming it night only would be the simple way.
Thanks everybody for the advice! We live in a moderately safe neighborhood, but my husband's truck was broken into a few years ago, so while we are gone we at least want the house locked up. What I ended up doing was pulling the batteries from the keypads...no arming, but we have cameras and z-wave door locks plus the dashboard, so I'm good!
