dinostop Posted November 12, 2021 Share Posted November 12, 2021 What are the differences in the system other than price? What would be the reasons to go with one or the other. As for ISY programs is there any advantage of one over the other? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apostolakisl Posted November 12, 2021 Share Posted November 12, 2021 A lot of the features Elk has can be considered unnecessary if you have a stable connection to ISY since ISY can do a lot of those things for you. Elk is a lot easier to program Elk has more esoteric security functions. I have both DSC and Elk at different locations. Knowing what I know, I would still do Elk at home. But at the office, DSC is fine. I am also much more confident in mission critical stuff being on Elk. Elk rules and their execution simply do not mess up ever. For example, my sprinkler is on Elk relays. I would not want ISY/Insteon doing that. If it misses a shut off the sprinkler could run for who knows how long. Elk never ever doesn't fire. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoolToys Posted September 18, 2022 Share Posted September 18, 2022 (edited) I realize this thread is almost a year old, but I will agree. Insteon is about 99.5% accurate. Sometimes going to bed and hitting the "Bedtime" scene, it takes two attempts. My landscape lights and gate relay have been moved to the elk for that reason. Given that Insteon is still in the ER, I am considering a migration to another product. Sadly X-10 and Insteon had the biggest list of built in options. I am not a fan of "Wall Warts" aka plug in modules. I also will agree that for a simple business environment the DSC costs less and is a sold alarm system. I also like the wireless failure notifications better. As you can see in other threads if you have a wireless sensor go out on Elk, you only get an annoyance "low battery" alert on the keypad. It feels like a wild goose chase until you realize the need to use RP2 in order to see which sensor is low. If it dies before you get there, then you just see "short", so you might think it is open. Otherwise, Elk is pretty straightforward programming, although there are a few areas where integrating with the iSY can get confusing because we think of alarms as "Open", "Closed" or "Fault", and the insteon wireless sensors are "on" and "off." If you mix equipment for need cost or availability like me, you may need to think a bit harder to make stuff work the way you want it. Edited September 18, 2022 by CoolToys add last sentence and screen shot 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoolToys Posted September 18, 2022 Share Posted September 18, 2022 Maybe we should put it on the wishlist that the new Elk integration module include zone battery monitoring to allow the iSY, POLiSY or the new eISY to send a notification of the sensor with the low battery. I have had mixed success with that on the insteon sensors. Sometimes they die so fast I never get a "low battery" email. I added "dead battery" and "not configured" notifications to solve that problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimbo.Automates Posted September 19, 2022 Share Posted September 19, 2022 Maybe we should put it on the wishlist that the new Elk integration module include zone battery monitoring to allow the iSY, POLiSY or the new eISY to send a notification of the sensor with the low battery. I have had mixed success with that on the insteon sensors. Sometimes they die so fast I never get a "low battery" email. I added "dead battery" and "not configured" notifications to solve that problem.There's no way to do battery monitoring, but the Elk does send a system trouble for low battery of a zone, which will show up on the controller low battery, but it will not tell you what zone had an issue. That's difficult to test since I'll need a way to force the Elk to report the trouble.Sent from my Pixel 6 Pro using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimbo.Automates Posted September 19, 2022 Share Posted September 19, 2022 Added issue to support zone specific trouble reporting: https://github.com/UniversalDevicesInc-PG3/udi-poly-ELK/issues/86 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apostolakisl Posted September 19, 2022 Share Posted September 19, 2022 15 hours ago, JimboAutomates said: Added issue to support zone specific trouble reporting: https://github.com/UniversalDevicesInc-PG3/udi-poly-ELK/issues/86 I don't have any wireless sensors on my Elk. So, I don't know how they report trouble (ie low batteries). But wired zones can be forced to report trouble depending on what type of zone you assign it and how many ohms you apply to it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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