Using a Phone Line with an Interlogix Simon XTi & XTi-5 Alarm System

Hi DIYers, it's Joey from Alarm Grid. And today, we're going to show you how to connect a phone line to a Simon XT, and XTI5. Now I have an XT mounted right here, and I have an XTI5 in my hands, and I'm going to open them both up so that you can see where the phone line connection goes on the system. To begin, yes they are compatible with phone lines. Let me start with the XTI5. As you can see, they're both going to have this, kind of, front bevel edge or bottom of the system cover. On the XT, it's just this outlying ring. You take this off, here's your panel. On both of the panels, you have these little clips right on the top. Take your thumb and just stick them in there, it'll be able to pull out and hinge the panel down. And as you can see, you have your phone line connection right there on this side of the system. If we open up our XT, you'll see that it has the exact same connection, and that's where your pots connection goes into. So that's where the phone actually connects. This connection here, you're going to have to set this up with what's called an RJ31X. Now this is the box that is an RJ31X, and it uses a 8 pin cable to connect to the system itself. This is what comes in the box with the system, so if you do buy one of these, it will get shipped to you in the panel box. So you just plug-in your 8 ping connector to the RJ31X. And then on the other end, this is going to plug into the line connection on your Simon. Now what the RJ31X is going to do is if it's installed correctly, the phone line is going to come into the house and it's going to go into the RJ. This is then going to pass the phone line to the Simon system. The phone lines then going to come back out of the wire to the RJ, and then it's going to go from the RJ to the phones in your house. The reason that this is an important device if you are using phone line connections in your home, is that if the system does have to signal out, it needs to cut the line to your house so that you can't make any calls when it's sending an alarm signal. Phone line uses analog, so if you do pick up the phone and you start talking when the system is trying to communicate, it won't be able to signal out, and your alarm could potentially not get the central station. So if you do have a phone line connection in the house, it can work without an RJ31X, it's just that it's highly recommended that you do have one so that the system can shunt the line when it does need to signal. There is one important fact that I need to mention about VoIP, or voice over IP, is that because there is no real copper lines in the ground anymore, there isn't any regular analog communication when it comes to home phone lines. The issue that this creates with alarm systems is that as the phone line connection does use analog to signal out, it requires a certain amount of data on the line to be able to properly signal that. Voice over IP, it continually adjusts the packet size or the amount of data that the system gets in real time. Which means that your alarm system can work just fine one day, and then another day when it's trying to signal, your provider may squish down the amount of data that you get, and it won't be able to signal out. This can create a major issue because you could potentially knock a dispatch on an alarm. So phone line communication, it's not recommended as it's not super reliable. You could potentially have a failed signal, but you can use it if it is available in the house. The best way that we recommend to use phone line communication is using it in conjunction with another communicator as a backup. So on this system, you can use alarm.com with cellular. If you had the cellular connection in the system, and you had phone line also setup, it would use both those communication paths in the event that cellular went down, it could use the phone line, acting as a redundant method of communication. That's the recommended path, but if you do only have a phone line and you want to use that to monitor your system, you certainly can do so. Just be aware that there may be a possibility that an alarm signal may not get to central station. So now let's show you how to set up the programming for the phone line communication in our XT. Just going to unplug it right here. I'm going to close the system up, and then I'll put the bevel on to make it look nice. All right, so on our system, we're going to click on the gear first. And then we're going to press the down arrow, down arrow, the down arrow. And you'll see right here, it says programming. So we're going to click Enter. And the default installer and dealer code for the Simon systems is four, three, two, one. So it backed you out. As you can see, if you don't interact with the menu, it will jump you out to the main home screen. So let's go back in-- down, down, down. Enter programming, four, three, two, one, OK. Now these are the two options that you're going to need to set up your phone line programming-- phone numbers and reporting. If we click on phone numbers, these are the phone numbers that you can program into the system for it to dial for your central station. So if you do get the system activated by an alarm company, they'll tell you, or they'll be the ones to set up the central station numbers in these slots. After that's set, if you go into reporting, and you go to reporting options, this is where you can set the different reporting codes that the system can send. And if we go back one, and we you commodes, it's recommended that for any of the phone numbers that you do have programed to the system, that you set out to all CID. But if you do need to set it to a specific report, communication mode, you can adjust that right here in this menu. After you have it set, you just click Save. As long as your phone numbers and reporting codes are set up in the system, the system should work over the phone line that's connected to it. So to explain how the RJ actually works, let's open it up and take a look. So the cover comes right off of it. I've already pried it up, and as you can see, there's a bunch of wires on it. Now in your house, your phone line, if you have an older phone line or if you see the phone line coming into the house, it's going to come in on a two wire connection. This is normally on a red and a black wire, and this is coming down into your demarcation area. The red and the black wire are your phone line. So what you're going to do is you're going to disconnect those from the connection that feeds out to the house or to your phone system, and you'd wire them to the red and the green terminals right here. What that's going to do is it's going to allow the phone line to come in through the RJ and go out of the Jack into the alarm system. If we had this plugged in, this four wire cable, going back and connect it to our alarm system, this is going to feed the phone line through the RJ into the system. Now this has multiple pins on it, and what that allows it to do is the phone line to come back through the wire, back into the RJ. And if you connect the phone line connection to the house, to the brown and the gray terminals right here, this will feed the connection back out to the house. This way, if the alarm system does go into an alarm, it's going to shunt the connection to the House so that they won't-- so the phone line won't work in the home, but it will still allow your alarm system to signal out because the RJ has provided it with that phone connection just for itself in that situation. That's how to set up a phone connection for a Simon XT or XTI system. If you did enjoy the video, feel free to subscribe. If you want to be updated when we post future videos, click the notification button, or click the Update button below and it will send you notification when we do so. If you have' any questions about alarms, alarm systems, or monitoring, head over to a website, www.alarmgrid.com, or give us a call at 888-818-7728, or send us an email to support@alarmgrid.com. Thanks for watching and have a great day.