Rule-Based Voice Announcement

[Brent Wallace]

Can anyone tell me any reason(s) why the following rule set would not result in VM239 being announced when Back Door (Zn 1) becomes not secure?

WHENEVER Back Door (Zn 1) BECOMES NOT SECURE
THEN SET Close Door (Counter 1) TO 30

For every second that the back door is open, the counter will be decremented by 1.

WHENEVER EVERY 1 SECONDS
AND Back Door (Zn 1) IS NOT SECURE
THEN SUBTRACT 1 FROM Close Door (Counter 1)

If the counter ever reaches a value of 0 (meaning the door has been left open for 30 seconds), the M1 will announce “The back door is open” which has been programmed as Miscellaneous 1 (vm239).  Also, the counter is set back to a value of 30.  This will allow the system to announce the message again if the back door continues to be left open.  The message will repeat every 30 seconds until the back door is closed.

WHENEVER Close Door (Counter 1) CHANGES TO 0
THEN ANNOUNCE Miscellaneous 1 (vm 239)
THEN SET Close Door (Counter 1) TO 30

[Brian]

I don’t see any obvious problem with your logic.  Out of curiosity I coded a slightly different set of rules on my system and it worked fine:

WHENEVER Door (Zn 1) BECOMES NOT SECURE
THEN SET Msg Counter (Counter 1) TO 30

WHENEVER EVERY 1 SECONDS
AND Msg Counter (Counter 1) IS GREATER THAN 0
THEN SUBTRACT 1 FROM Msg Counter (Counter 1)

WHENEVER Msg Counter (Counter 1) CHANGES TO 0
AND DOOR (Zn 1) IS NOT SECURE
THEN ANNOUNCE Miscellaneous 10 (vm248)
THEN SET Msg Counter (Counter 1) TO 30

However, I’d personally utilize an unused Output to reduce the number of lines required to accomplish the same thing:

WHENEVER Door (Zn 1) BECOMES NOT SECURE
THEN TURN Output 37 ON FOR 30 SECONDS

WHENEVER Output 37 STATE IS TURNED OFF
AND Door (Zn 1) IS NOT SECURE
THEN ANNOUNCE Miscellaneous 10 (vm248)
THEN TURN Output 37 ON FOR 30 SECONDS

[Brent Wallace]

Thanks for the reply.

After some more testing, it appears that it is the ANNOUNCE function that isn’t working for me. All my rules that use ANNOUNCE now fail to actually announce anything, although they have worked fine in the past. The rules do everything they are supposed to do when they are supposed to except make announcements.

Interestingly, Zones with Chime selected and set to Tone/Voice mode still work perfectly when they become not secure, both chiming and speaking whatever the message is for that Zone. This tells me the wiring and and Elk-73 speaker are ok.

I must be messing up a setting somewhere but I can’t figure out what or where.

[Brian]

Check G14-G18 in the GLOBALS section and make sure you have “Output 1 maximum output volume non-alarm voice” set to a non-zero value.  Also look at G19-G25 to see if anything is unchecked.

[Brent Wallace]

Took a while to get back to this but I can close it off by confirming that all above rules and logic work fine. As was suggested, it was simply an unchecked Global setting: “Enable alarm messages”.

Thank-you Brian.

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