Key Pad October 27th, 2009
Also known as the Touch Pad, this is the piece of equipment that is mounted on the wall of your home, which you use to arm and disarm your burglar alarm.
It typically will have two basic settings, “Stay” for when you are arming it while you are home, and “Away” for when you are leaving the house.
Normally, when you do the “Stay” setting, your motion sensor won’t be armed, so that you can walk freely around your home.
Also, when you do the normal “Stay” setting, if you open a door the alarm will not immediately go off. There will be a normal delay of maybe 30 seconds. So if you accidentally open the door to let the dog out, you won’t have the siren screaming in your ear right away. You will have time to disarm the system before it goes off.
However, when you desire to do so (for example, when going to bed for the night), most alarm systems will allow you to add an “instant alarm” to the “Stay” setting, so that if a door is opened by a burglar the alarm will immediately go off. On my home security system, the “instant alarm” setting is “Star (*) 9″, for example, but each system has its own. Just ask your alarm installer.
When leaving the house, you will use the “Away” setting. You will push the appropriate button BEFORE opening a door to leave, then you will have perhaps 30 seconds to open the door, walk out, and shut the door.
Then the system say, “Oh, they’ve left the house!”, and will automatically arm the motion sensor.
The motion sensor is one of the most important parts of the system, since it will catch a crook no matter how they come into your home. Burglars have come in windows, drilled through floors from the crawl space, come in heat ducts, and other odd-ball ways. So always make sure your motion sensor is working.
Key Pad