Force Armable exit sets off alarm if opened during exit delay?

[M1 Installer]

Just wondering if anyone else experienced the following? According to the manual, you are able to “arm, open a garage door, back out, and close the door at their leisure, without creating a false alarm and without a long exit delay time.” I’ve noticed that this only works if you open garage door first, then arm. If you try to arm first like the manual says, then during the countdown, open and leave the garage door open past the expired time, it sets off the alarm. FYI, I have my garage door set to Exit 2, and have the latest firmware. Is this a bug?

[ELK Tech Support]

No. FA means the M1 will ignore the point (bypass) when it is faulted only and allow the system to arm (force arm). The other industry term would be bypass returnable (system bypasses point if faulted when attempting to arm) and it returns as a protection point once it returns to normal. You are arming the system, creating a fault (system doesn’t know it’s you or a burglar) and then closing the point, while the initial trip is causing the system to believe an intrusion alarm is existing. Proper use of a FA point would be to fault the zone, then arm normally and close/restore the point to normal.

[ELK Tech Support]

Gotcha, makes sense. It was just worded incorrectly then in the manual, as I learned quickly I couldn’t arm first then fault the FA point after. I’ve thus changed my behavior, even though it would have been more convenient to arm, walk out into the garage, then open the garage door. I just made my exit delay longer to accommodate.

Thanks for the reply.

[Author]

Posts