Talking keypads

Honeywell makes a talking keypad that works with there entire line of ademco panels

Yeah... and then you can get AlarmFarce to monitor it and it'll never shut up. I used to have a LeBaron (many years ago) that "talked". It was really dumb. Kept saying "a door is a jar". No... The door was "open". Used to drive me nuts. :-)

The Honeywell keypad has a limited vocabulary and that's its only drawback.

It doesn't annunciate the zone opening in chime mode, does it? I've only played with one 'talking keypad' and found it quite annoying.

know hich door is openiing

Is the Honeywell Vista-20 the best panel I should get for a house?

Is there anything else I should consider?

I want to be able to communicate with the panel via Ethernet or RS232 (prefer Ethernet). I want to log all events (zone open/close) in a MySQL database.

Thanks, John

Check out the Elk M1-Gold

You THINK you want the name of the zone to be announced. That is until you've heard it announce the same fracking zone over and over and over an OVER. I've never had anyone leave any kind of voice annunciator on for more than a few months. Apex used to have it and Street Smart. I used it a few times and then discoverd that people only think they want it.

It's just like when the car manufacturers had the voice announcement that "the door is ajar". It drove everybody CRAZY!!!!!

YEAH YEAH I KNOW, I KNOW ALREADY!!!!!!!!!!!!! SHUT THE F#%* UP!!!!!!!!!!

Now all you hear is a "ding" Which the public seems to be able to live with.

What good is a chime if you don't know what it is chiming about? I recently swapped out the Ademco 6160 keypad for the 6160Voice. I use it with a Vista20P that I recently installed.

In addition to burglary alarm functions I am using it to monitor activities at home and a second remote location about a mile away. When someone enters the driveway I want to know which driveway. When someone approaches the front door I want to know. When someone approaches the back door to read the meter I want to know. I put the zones I want to know about in a list and turn the chime on. When someone enters a zone I am interested in it chimes and tells me which zone. I find it very usefull.

Zeuspaul

HAI, requires the sound board option.

Since you like to homebrew stuff, there is also well documented protocols to talk to HAI boxes.