Jeremy C

Welcome Andysid. Fairly new here myself and I'd agree with PeterJames, it's a good bunch. Are you in the trade or more on the DIY side?

No worries, hope it goes smoothly. One thing worth setting when you configure the i66: keep the relay hold time short, a second or two, so it acts like a quick press on the A60's open input rather than holding the contact closed. Shout if the gate does anything odd once it's wired up.

Fair challenge al-yeti, I don't know of any for the i-ON. I was talking about addressable detectors in general and should have been clearer, so for virdi it's conventional PIRs on zones. Thanks james for the Risco and HKC examples.

On the battery question: real-life life on Ajax kit depends a lot on the detector ping interval set on the hub. Leave it at a sensible default rather than the shortest setting, because a very short ping interval drains the detectors noticeably faster. Devices in cold spots or outdoors, and door contacts that get opened all day, also go quicker than the brochure figure, so it's worth checking battery levels in the app every few months for the first year to see what your own house actually does.

A quick point for anyone still considering this: if a buried cable has been damaged, a basic continuity test can still pass while the pair resistance is too high for stable PoE. Check each pair and test the camera while powered and streaming, not just with a cable tester. If it drops out under load, treat the cable as failed rather than relying on a passive pair-sharing adapter.

For a temporary prove-out with power isolated, short only what you can confirm is the alarm loop and leave the tamper pair alone so you do not mask a real tamper. Longer term, buzz each pair with a meter while you operate a replacement contact rather than permanently twisting unknown colours, then fit a proper reed/magnet and retest the whole tamper loop.

By bus detectors I mean PIRs built with the panel's own addressable bus interface, rather than a conventional relay-output PIR. They are enrolled as individual devices and report alarm and tamper over the bus, so the panel has to support that exact detector family. A quick way to identify one is that its manual specifies bus addressing and current draw, not just terminals for alarm and tamper contacts. If you add one, check the panel's permitted bus cable length and total current, then measure voltage at the furthest detector during a walk test, since a marginal supply can cause intermittent device faults.

Yes, the AUX Tamper terminals are what shows up as AUX 0 in the log. With a long global tamper chain, a short maintenance-window test of jumpering half the chain at a time should find the faulty leg faster than opening every detector.

For the Fanvil side you mainly need one dry-contact pair into the gate Start / open input: NO and COM on the i66, matching whatever Common you trace back into A60 terminal 20 as Nice said. Green sounding like the old Verso relay legs fits that job once you confirm continuity to that Common. Orange you already proved is the fob path, so leave that alone unless you are deliberately moving the fob input. Brown being unused by the gate when unplugged usually means it was only feeding the old intercom (status / door-open sense or a second relay), not something the A60 needs to run. If you want to be sure, buzz brown back to the A60 end before you cut it. Photocells stay on their own Common in terminal 20; do not share that with the intercom NO/COM.

On the i-ON side, that bus daisy chain is mainly for keypads, expanders and other addressable devices. Ordinary PIRs still go on the zone wiring unless you specifically bought bus detectors that match the panel. Same idea as the O----O----O layout already mentioned, just worth knowing PIRs are not automatically on that bus.

If the PIR LED is dead as well, that points more at the AUX rail itself than just a tired battery. With the panel powered, measure DC right across the AUX + and 0V terminals, then again with the Texecom 1E hold connected. Those sounders sit on the hold permanently, so a weak PSU or a high-resistance joint can sag under load even when an open-circuit battery still reads 12.6V. Also worth double-checking the 1E wiring against the old bell box. Hold and trigger polarity swapped is pretty common after a sounder swap and can leave AUX looking unhappy.

Acusense itself is more about the analytics side than raw night picture, so swapping the badge alone will not automatically fix weak IR. What usually matters more is the newer sensor and how the IR LEDs are aimed for your scene. If night clarity is the main pain, look at the lux / IR distance figures and, if you can, trial one camera on the worst corner before you replace the set. ColorVu-style white light models are another route if you are happy with a bit of visible light at night.

One practical middle ground is keeping the main switch indoors and only putting a small outdoor-rated PoE injector or a tiny industrial 2/4 port switch near the cameras, with a single data uplink back. That way a weather failure takes out less kit. If the UniView unit still has to live in the outdoor box, check the PoE budget at the high end of the temp range too. A lot of plastic switches brown out or drop ports when they cook in a sealed enclosure in summer sun.

At 80m a passive splitter is often the first thing to give up, even if it looked fine for months. Heat, a camera that started drawing a bit more after a firmware bump, or just a tired cheap splitter can tip it over. Putting a locally powered PoE switch at that far end is the right move. Two practical checks when you fit it: 1. Confirm the uplink port from the house is data-only (PoE off on that port if the switch lets you), so you are not trying to power the far switch from the same long run you already know is marginal. 2. After the change, measure DC voltage at each camera under load. If either sits well under ~48V (or whatever your cameras expect on PoE), the cable or a joint is still eating the budget even with the new switch. If voltage looks healthy and a camera still drops, swap that short patch lead next before blaming the switch.

Chrome ActiveX/plugin path is basically dead on Win11. Vendor desktop client (iVMS-4200 / Hik-Connect for PC) is the reliable route. Quick plugin-free check: pull the camera/NVR RTSP URL into VLC and confirm the stream before chasing browser plugins.

Because the doorbell does not expose ONVIF, I would choose an NVR that allows a generic RTSP camera to be added manually, rather than relying on auto-discovery. Test the main and substream credentials in VLC first, then add the working stream on a spare IP channel. The call and ring features can stay in the doorbell app.

Good to hear the installation has worked out well. One useful check after the first few weeks is to review each camera at night as well as in daylight, especially for IR glare, reflections and areas that become blind when lighting changes. That is often where a small angle adjustment makes the biggest difference.

After a long outage the panel can sit in a tamper state that needs the engineer/installer code rather than the day-to-day user code to clear. If a fresh battery does not help and the user code still fails, try the engineer code if you have it, and check the keypad is not in lockout from too many wrong tries.

Worth checking Live View at the same moment the neighbours are on the drive. If Live View still has clear audio but the recorded clip does not, that points more to a Ring recording/setting quirk than jamming. If Live View drops audio too, and it lines up with a particular car being present, try a quick test with that car's key fob nearby while someone else walks the drive. A lot of keyless systems chatter on 2.4GHz and can knock a weak Ring link just enough to drop the audio track while video still makes it.

Hi all — Jeremy here. I spend a lot of time on DIY IP cameras and PC-based recording (RTSP/ONVIF, storage, remote view without opening ports to the internet). Happy to hang around the DIY and CCTV boards and help where I can. Looking forward to learning from the folks here.