Texecom Alarm

[rmparker]

Hi all

New here and hello. Hoping for a bit of helpful advice.

First some background, at various points in my life I have worked as an electrician and in IT and data cabling, but never anything concerning alarms. So although I know little about alarms except what I have read on the net and the Gerard Honey book, I am OK with things technical.

Recently moved in to a new house and the wife wanted an alarm. I bought a Yale wireless which was nice and easy to install, but then I found out I could jam the whole system with a car key! So that won't be staying and I want to install a proper wired system.

The texecom range has been recommended to me, so am thinking of installing that.

My questions are:

1. Differences between the Veritas Excel and the Premier range (24 being entry-level model?)

2. It won't be monitored to a response centre as I can't issue a URN, but what do I need to add to make it dial out to several numbers (my mobile for example!)

3. Really need to get the floors down (wife wants carpets) so please could someone advise me on what alarm cable I need to pull in to the different sensors (do they need to in parallel or series?) will be about five PIRs and a few magnetic switches. I have a reel of 8-core and am ready to do it with that.

4. How much easier is it to program the panel via a PC? And do I need to spend extra on the interface / software to do so?

Sorry if this is a bit basic, or in the wrong forum. Any advise on the above, or any other pointers much appreciated. Or is there something better than the Texecom?

Many thanks

Richard

[breff]

8 core to everything, all home run to the panel, if you are fitting the premier run 2 8 cores to the keypad( makes it easier to use the keypad zones).

The excel is a fairly basic panel, max 8 zones but perfectly adequate, the Premier can do so much more.

Premier is easier to program by pc, but the 24 can still be programmed in 10 minutes by the keypad.

If you get the Premier you can add a comm2400 which can text your mobile and tell you where it has activated, but we are finding the sms service is becoming less and less reliable.

Get a Speech dialler, it can be added to either panel and will play a pre-recorded message on activation.

There are plenty available from different manufacturers and the Menvier SD3 even takes a sim card to back up the phone line.

Hope this helps

[fozzies]

Just to answer the series or paralell question, one detector one circuit, is by far the easiest, especially if you go end of line resistor/fully supervised loop as opposed to 4 wire ccts