Premier 48 - Wireless Expansion To Shed

[JohnD]

I have a Premier 48 installed in home. This needs to be extended to cover 2 sheds at bottom of a 50m garden. One shed has mains power. Any suggestion please on suitable wireless door contacts and receiver. Is the Ricochet a good add-on to do this. I cannot see much feeback on quality and range for this system.

[PSE]

The Ricochet kit is very good, I've used loads of it for various installs.

Taking the structure of the building into account here, I'm not sure on the 50 mtr range at all.

You may need to add a door contact at a half way point on the run down, to act as a repeater/booster for the signal.

This can be consealed in an IP box with an added microswitch fed from the wired input of the detector for increased tamper protection.

Its not ideal, however I have tried and tested this in the early days, when we gave the product a good thorough testing.

One thing to rember, Ricochet is a self healing mesh network, it will repair itself if the signal is low by diverting through another device,

Because of the distance, you may not have another route available should signal issues or interference occur.

Its quite easy to do, Easy to install and program depending on your control panel firmware, either Legacy or Ricochet mode

All you need is an 8XP-W receiver and your choice of devices.

Depending on the environment, If you decide to go PIR, I would opt for the newer Ricochet DT ( DualTech )

Be carefull on choosing, as these will only work on the newer MT2 expanders with Version 2.0 or above software.

Regards,

Steve

[JohnD]

Thanks for that detailed reply and I'll try out some of your suggestions. I'm still struggling though to understand exactly what is compatable with the panel.

This is a Premier 48 version 9.02 and using Wintex. I can either buy an Elite 8XP-W (MT2 version) or a standard Premier 8XP-W (MT1 version). Are they both compatable with the panel and if so, which expander would be best or is there no big difference when used with this panel. Would a USB-com connect directly to both expanders when used with this panel and what are the differences when using Wintex. Would the Ricochet software work.

Then for detectors - would the Elite detectors (MT2); e.g. Impaq; still be compatable with the Premier 8XP-W or better to use the Elite 8XP-W.

Quite a few questions in there and grateful for any feedback to set me on the right track.

[sixwheeledbeast]

Due to having a older Premier Panel Ricochet MT2 is not compatible.

However the older standard Ricochet will work if it's a Premier 48-168 (Ver 8.15>)

You will need to update Wintex to the latest or at least Version 6 Build 16.

[JohnD]

Thanks. I'm about to buy the bits. Do you think the Elite MT2 detectors (apart from the dualtech) should work with a Premier 8XP-W.

[9651]

Christ, Texe dont half like to make things awkward with backwards compatibly imo

Least with a Gal it normally just 'works'

Never fitted Ricochet, but it sounds a great bit of kit imo love how you can just bung in a device to extend the chain as it were.

[AdrianMealing]

Yes they will, the expanders will work either as MT1 or MT2 depending on which panel they are connected too, the detectors are the same for both with the exception of the DT

[Oxo]

You forget some Gal stuff was not compatible for a bit.

[JohnD]

Adrian, thanks for clarifying. I now have it all up and running with 3 wireless contacts. Overall, the set up was incredibly fast and easy, once you know how, and seems stable with garden sheds and gate within 50m garden.

As feedback for others, this is a Premier 48 v9.02 connected to a Premier 8XP-W and using three Elite Impaq Contact-W. For the 8XP-W, there is only one antenna, not the 2 shown in the install guide. Some little suprises along the way....There is some detector functionailty that requires Ricochet software or an Engineers keypad at the expander to program. Ricochet software would only run using USB-com connected to the expander; i.e. I could not get this to run from the panel.

Wintex (v6.16) can view the wireless contacts for zone programming but Wintex only connects from USB-com at the panel; i.e. it won't connect at the expander. Whilst Wintex can view the expander and detectors, there seems to still still be a software bug in that the expander voltage incorrectly reports at approx 23v. The Ricochet icon within Wintex does not work using this panel.

That's for now.