Customer ServiceCD8080 Alarm.com Module Programming for the DSC PowerSeries NEO
How to setup and program the DSC PowerSeries NEO CD8080 Alarm.com Module
Hi, I'm Jason with alarmsystemstore.com, and in today's video I'm going to show you how to do the programming for the alarm.com communicator on the DSC PowerSeries Neo. This is Part 1 of 2. This will only go over the programming. So let's go to the table and get started.
Okay, so this is everything you'll get when you order the alarm.com communicator. Specific model I have out here is a CD8080VZ, which you can see right here, CD8080. Basically, that means it's a Verizon communicator without image sensor support. But whether or not you have the 3G8080, CD8080, or have image sensor support for either of those models, won't matter for this video. It's the exact same process to get it all set up and ready to go.
So, it comes with the communicator. This is the PCL-422, say RS-422 to PC link interface module. So you can see that it's got pins here. That's where you connect your PC link cable to that'll go to the control panel. It's got your terminals here which will connect to your communicator, and then it's got the three holes for mounting on the inside of your cabinet. And again, we'll go over all the details on that when we do the physical installation. This is your PC link cable. So you can see, it's fairly short. So this PCL-422 will need to be right next to your control panel.
We have the manual here and then we have mounting hardware for both the communicator, as well as the standoffs for the PCL-422. Now, the manual itself is a useful resource. You can see it has a wiring guide here, which I'll go over how to do all that in the physical installation portion. And it also has some other information. It has a step-by-step guide. And one of the main areas you'll wanna look at is your status LEDs. It goes over what each LED means and what, you know, the various flashes and things like that will mean. So let's get this cleared off and we'll move on.
So I got the keypad out here. A reason for that is the first thing you'll want to do before you wire the communicator to the control panel and power up is to do the programming. Our reason for that is if you don't have the Neo panel ready to initialize with the alarm.com communicator, it can cause some issues where it won't initialize properly. The only way that we found to fix that, a lot of times is to do a hardware reset. So basically you'll have your system all programmed and then suddenly find your alarm.com communicator isn't talking to your control panel and you'll have to do a reset, start back from ground zero and do all the programming again. So you can do only the alarm.com communicator programming first if you'd like, or you can program your entire system, whichever way you're more comfortable with. For this video, I'm just going to show the couple steps you'll need to do to get the Neo ready to work properly with the alarm.com communicator.
So the first thing we'll do is enter programming with *8, and the installer code default is 5555. And the most important setting you'll need to change is section 382, Option 5. So you can scroll over or just push five, but Alternate Comm needs to be set to Y. If it's not set to Y, it won't look for the alarm.com communicator when it's hooked up and it won't initialize properly. So when you're on Option 5, you can push star to toggle. Or just push 5, it'll toggle as well. So if that's set on Y, you push pound.
The second section that you wanna check is section 300. Now, this one's not as critical for the initialization but it will affect how your actual communicator functions with alarm.com. So you'll go to the section 300, you'll push star on Receiver 1, and you see it says "Phone line." We want to push right so that it says, "Alt Comm Auto," and push star.
So now Receiver 1 is set to Alt Comm Auto. That just tells the system to use the alarm.com communicator for its reporting with Receiver 1. So then you just push pound until you're out of programming. It'll give you this error "Account Code Not Programmed." You can completely ignore that. It's not a big deal because the alarm.com communicator is not going to be using the account code programmed on here. The only time that's gonna be used is if you also are using a landline using the built-in phone dialer. Then obviously you'll need that program. But for the purpose of this, you can just ignore that and not worry about it.
So that's really all there is for the programming. It's pretty simple. But you'll want to make sure you do those couple sections before you initialize the control panel with the alarm.com communicator, otherwise you'll run into some issues. So now we're gonna power down the alarm system and I'll show you how to do the wiring.
As you can see, the programming for the communicator is pretty easy, just a couple sections you have to change. But you will wanna make sure you do this before the wiring. So if you wanna see the wiring, that's in Part 2. If you liked this video, make sure you hit the "Like" button and subscribe to our channel. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video.