Customer ServiceDSC PowerSeries NEO HS32-119CP01 Alarm System Kit Unboxing Review
Review and unboxing of the DSC PowerSeries NEO HS32-119CP01
Hi, everyone. Andy here with alarmsystemstore.com. And today, I'm going to unbox and review a system from DSC, the PowerSeries NEO. The kit, in particular, I'm going to review is the HS32-119CP01. So, let's go to the table, and we'll have a look.
Okay, this is the DSC PowerSeries NEO. This is a kit HS32-119CP01. And as you can see, this is a version 1.3. And like I've mentioned in previous videos, we do purchase from our distribution centers on a weekly basis. In fact, usually multiple times a week, so nothing sits on our shelves long. So, everything that we have is gonna be the latest firmware. So, without further ado, I'll open this up and show you what you get in this particular kit. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the features of the system because we have another video that goes over this DSC PowerSeries NEO in greater detail as far as the features of the various panels. There are three in the series. This one features the HS2032 mainboard. It's what's featured in this kit.
So, what you get out in this kit is the main cabinet here. And then, I'll put the rest here. Okay. You get, of course, a 1640 power transformer. Just wire that in with a 18 gauge 2 conductor wire, and it wires into the mainboard. And we do have a video on that as well. In fact, we've got several videos in production right now on this system how to program it, how to change access codes, how to troubleshoot trouble conditions. There are several videos. So, I'd encourage you to hit the subscribe button below this video. And then, click the bell icon next to it to get notifications. In that way, you'll get an email whenever we publish a new video.
So, anyway, the next item you get is a 12-volt 4 amp backup battery. So, if you have a power failure, that will keep you up and going. Then in the cabinet, you get a 15-watt dual tone siren. And, of course, you can add additional sirens to the system or strobes. This happens to be an indoor siren. There are outdoor sirens available. This is just what comes in this pre-packaged kit. And then, I'll set this aside for a second and show you the main board here. This is the main board. It's an HS2032. It's what comes in this kit. And the HS2032 features eight hardwire zones and it is expandable up to 32 hardwired zones through an expander module. The part number on that is called HSM2108. And you can fit those expander board. They're fairly small. And, in fact, I'll show you various punch outs in this cabinet on the sides along here. It is pre-punched to hold up to four of them.
Now, I found over the years that four gets a bit crowded. So, I generally wouldn't put more than a couple expanders in this main cabinet just because that gets to be a lot of wires, obviously. But anyway, it will hold up to four of those on expanders. This board features two programmable outputs. Programmable outputs, I won't go into detail about those. But surprised to say that you do use those for like two wire smoke detectors. We'll use one. There's a number of uses for them, actually. You can use them to trigger other things based on system events. But, probably, the most common is for two wire smoke support and it's expandable up to 38 of those. Again, they're similar modules like the zone expander modules that expands that capability. Most people don't end up expanding that. But, you know, usually, just a couple is sufficient for a typical installation.
This 2032 board also features up to four partitions. And a partition, the easiest way to think about it is if you're familiar with like a hard drive, you can partition a hard drive in a computer so that it looks like a totally separate hard drive. It's the same principle here. Basically, a partition can be controlled independently of another one. An example is I have a multi-partition in my home. In fact, I have a detached shop and, of course, the main house. And sometimes you want to have one armed and the other one disarmed. And by partitioning the system, you can do that and control them independent of one another, you know, via separate keypads. So, it has up to four partitions.
Also, this board features up to 500 events that are logged. Everything from armings, disarmings to troubles gets logged, and that can be viewed through an LCD keypad. And then, it overwrites after you hit 500. It overwrites the oldest ones. Features up to 72 user codes, and that is generally more than anybody needs even in, you know, a small business. So, plenty of user code capability there.
This is their middle line system, by the way, and it's their most popular of the NEO series. And this kit is our most popular because of...you know, it's the most popular board, obviously, like I just said, but also it comes with the most popular keypad. And I'll show you that in a second. So, that's it for the board.
You get of course... I won't open this up, but it does come with the little standoffs. There you can see, that's how you mount this board into the back of this cabinet. Comes with end of line resistors. If you chose to use those, which we do recommend you use end of line resistors. And again, we have a video on that. So, definitely check out our website, alarmsystemsstore.com, and go over to the Resources menu. And there you'll find our how-to videos and our product reviews on this series along with a lot of other videos. So, it comes with the end of line resistors and it comes with the battery cable that plugs onto the mainboard. And then that's, of course, what you plug into your backup battery. Pretty simple. Not much to that, so I'll set that aside. This, aside.
Next thing you get, of course, is the keypad. And I mentioned this as a popular keypad, and the reason why...there's two reasons. And this is just a protective film, by the way. It is a white flip-down door and that protective film. I'm gonna show you that as well. The reason why this is a popular keypad is because it's what we call a full alpha display message keypad. The model of this one is HS2LCDRF9ENG. And it's, of course, full alpha in that everything you do is in plain language here across the top. And you can custom label your zones to plain language. Instead of this saying, you know, zone one, zone two which is pretty arbitrary, you can make this a master bedroom or, you know, hallway smoke detector. Whatever you want it to say, it can be customized.
The other reason this is popular keypad is because it's easy to program the system from. Now, DSC is one of the easier systems that I've ever worked with to program. If you have the right keypad, and that is a full message LCD keypad, you can do it through an icon keypad, which is also kinda tricky for some people because it is an LCD also, but it's called an LCD icon keypad. But it does not display everything in plain language and you kinda have to program blindly when you use one of those. And again, we have a video on comparing these keypads and showing you those differences. So, I won't get into great detail on that. But check out that video and it goes over a much greater detail in the comparisons.
But anyway, this keypad makes it super easy to program from, makes it much easier to know what's going on with your system. If you get a trouble condition, you know, you'll get a yellow triangle here and the keypad will beep every few seconds. And you hit *2 and it will tell you in plain English what the problem is. The other keypads won't do that. They'll give you a code that you have to look up or they'll flash a number. So, those are the primary reasons why this is a popular keypad.
This keypad here also has a built in wireless transceiver in it. Now, another point of confusion for some people, that doesn't mean this is a wireless keypad. This keypad does have to be wired via a four-wire connection to the back of it. However, it allows the system to accept wireless sensors, and the transceiver can accept up to 32 wireless sensors. So, it's really nice. Even if you're not gonna use wireless, you may decide, "Well, I want a keychain remote." Or a popular option these days is a lot of people say, "I wanna add another keypad, but I don't wanna wire it. I want a wireless keypad." There is a wireless keypad available. However, you have to have a wireless receiver, or transceiver rather, that's built into this keypad. So that's what makes this popular, is not only is it full LCD, but it is also RF capable. So, I think that's it for it.
I will go over some of the features of the wireless, I guess, while we're talking about it. It's called the PowerG and it's a new wireless technology for DSC. DSC wireless has always been good, in my opinion, but this PowerG really steps it up a notch. It is two-way bi-directional, like I mentioned. It is multi-channel frequency hopping spread spectrum type of wireless. So, it's much more secure. It's got better range than the previous generation of wireless. It probably is the big key difference between the previous generation of the DSC alarm systems and this new PowerSeries NEO. The wireless was a big leap forward in regard to that.
So, that's it. And like I said, there's a ton...this basically makes this system wireless ready and there is a ton of wireless accessories available for this. Just check that out on the website. You will get, of course...this is just a sticker, goes on the inside door of that keypad. You get a user guide for the keypad. This is a sticker for your control cabinet here. It usually goes on the outside of the door. And this is a knockout cover if you knock out one of the holes in the cabinet and you decide you don't want to have it. This here is the hardware pack for the keypad. It comes with two resistors.
One thing I didn't mention is all the keypads on the NEO has a zone input on each keypad. This is an end of line resistor for that keypad zone input. And there's also, I believe, a PGM as well. But why that's handy is because, let's say, you've got a door right next to your keypad where you don't want to run all the way back to the main panel which maybe 50 feet away. You can easily run from that door to this keypad which is very close by. And then in programming, you activate that zone input. Again, we have a video for that. So, check out the website for that if you decide to use that feature.
And of course, this is a back tamper for the keypad. It just throws a tamper condition on the system if someone was to take the keypad off the wall. Here, we have the user guide for the system. Just your basic stuff, how to use the system, how to set it, test it, so forth. This is just a graphic wiring schematic of the board, what goes where. Different values of resistors like I talked about earlier, and these all are included with the system. This just goes on the inside door. So, this over with that. This goes on the inside door like that. Then we have...I'll first show you this. This is just a feature addendum for the version 1.3. It just tells us what changed. Most people don't care about that.
This is DSC's quick start guide and it's a condensed version of the full manual. They only have the full manual available on their website, which it says here to download the full manual. You do have to be registered to get that full manual. But if you need that, we can get that for you. This quick start guide, while good, is still pretty lengthy. And the full manual, most people don't even like it at all because, I mean, there's thousands of programming locations in this system. And it just is intimidating to look at the full, big programming booklet. Because most people don't have to change but a handful of locations. Primarily, you're zone programming, user codes, you know, labeling, and so forth. So, this is a good start. But I would advise you to get our quick start guide that we have created that's on our website, in the Resources column. And it's only a couple of pages and it takes you step by step.
This isn't quite step by step. This starts out early on. But most of this stuff still doesn't apply to most people. Like I said, there is a default program in place. It's easier to edit those locations than to start, you know, from one and go all the way through, you know, a thousand program locations. So, check out our quick start guide. We have fine-tuned it to where, you know, someone that's never touched an alarm system can program an alarm system, set it up. And it's only a couple of pages long. So, that's it.
This is the main cabinet. I talked about zone expanders earlier. Your main board mounts on the back of this, and this will accommodate four small zone expanders or PGM expanders, two on each side. I wouldn't recommend putting four in here because, I guess, it would be a wiring mess, in my opinion. I would stick to a couple. Because keep in mind, your main board is up here, and then, you're gonna have your backup battery down here. And that is a lot of wires in this small cabinet. This cabinet...and by the way, you can buy additional cabinets to house additional modules in if you need to. And that's the preferred way to do it.
This cabinet size-wise, as you can see, it's about just a touch over 11 on the door. Not quite 11 and a quarter wide. And then, 11 and three-quarters tall. And through the door, it is right just a touch over 3 inches deep. So, not quite 3, 3 and an eighth, roughly. So, that's the cabinet that comes with it.
And I think that's everything for this unboxing and an overview of the DSC PowerSeries NEO HS32119. Of course, if you have any questions leave us a comment below. We do monitor the comments and get notifications, so we'll try to answer any questions that you may have. And like I said, hit the subscribe button, and then hit the bell icon right next to that, and you'll get notifications when we publish a new video. And like I said, I know there is a four or five videos on this NEO series that's currently in production that will be made available here in the next six to seven weeks or so.
All right, that's it for the DSC PowerSeries NEO HS32-119CP01. Hopefully, you found the video of value. This is our most popular kit that we sell from DSC currently. So, check it out. Check it on the website at alarmsystemsstore.com. And you can also click the "Eye" button in the upper right corner of this video and it will link you directly there. And we have several other videos on this system: how to program it, how to troubleshoot, how to add and edit user codes. So, be sure to subscribe to our channel and check out our other videos. And we've got plenty of resources on the website as well. We have a quick start programming guide for this system that I spoke of earlier. So, you'll definitely wanna check that out. It makes programming this system much easier. So, of course, if you got any questions, our phone number is on the website. Give us a ring. We're always happy to help.