Can't respond to Lynx 5100 system announcements

I have a Lynx 5100 system that has a standard phone line for speaker phone, a WiFi communicator for normal central station monitoring and a 4G GSM communicator for back-up central station monitoring. I also have the Z-wave module and many Z-wave devices that are controlled through the Total Connect application.

Everything works and I really love the features of this system. Well, everything works except for one small annoyance that I need help with.

When I set up my system, I included my cell phone and my wife’s cell phone in the follow me option. When a system announcement like an alarm or a low battery notification is sent out, the panel utilizes the land line to contact our phones and tries to relay the message to us.

The panel successfully dials our phones using the land line and when we answer the call with our cell phones, the system announces “system message, press * to play”.

The problem is when either of us try to press the * button on our cell phones, the panel doesn’t recognize the response and just repeats the message. Then the panel attempts to make contact again for 7 times for me, then 7 times for my wife because it assumes we haven’t receives the message.

Since I have the Total Connect application, I can immediately log in and check the event history to see the exact message so I know if it is an emergency or not. However, the barrage of relentless phone calls that we cant respond to is very annoying.

The questions:

  1. Are our Samsung Galaxy phones not able to send touch tone responses when a call comes in? I know I can communicate with touch tone responses when I dial out to a business.
  2. Is there a setting that I missed that allows touch tone response on the panel? I can dial out and here the touch tones on the speaker phone.
  3. Is there a setting to set the number of attempts to 1 instead of 7?
  4. Is there another forum that might provide specific help for this L5100 panel? When I contacted Honeywell for assistance, all they say is to contact your installer. I was the installer. My Monitoring station technical support also can’t help.

Thank you for your help

I have an HAI system that works the same way. I can call into the system to preform functions and the system can call me on certain events. I could also pick up any phone in the house and control the system (I think by pressing * several times). Unfortunately, a couple of years ago that one feature just stopped working. Any time I would call in, the system wouldn’t respond to the DTMF tones I was sending it. Even if I picked up a local phone and tried to access the system, it wouldn’t pick up. With talking to HAI tech support, we figured (but couldn’t prove without sending the board out for testing) that a surge on the phone line more than likely fired part of the communicator. Granted, your system is a completely different manufacturer, but I wonder if a surge on the phone line messed something up.

What happens if you call the system from a landline? Same problem?

I forgot to add this part of the equation:

I can call my system with our cell phones by letting the phone ring once, hanging up, and redialing immediately. The system answers and says “System. Enter code”.

I CAN use the SAME CELL PHONES that can not respond when I receive a call from my system to SUCCESSFULLY CONTROL THE PANEL using touch tones when I enter my code and follow with “1” to disarm, “2” to arm away or “3” to arm stay.

What I know:

  1. I can make an OUTGOING call from my cell phone and communicate using touchtones with both businesses AND my system.
  2. My panel CAN receive and understand touch tone commands to arm and disarm the system through the landline.

What I don’t know is:

  1. Is my Samsung Galaxy S5 cell phone not able to send touchtone commands when receiving an INCOMING call? (Samsung was no help)
  2. Is my panel unable to listen for touchtone commands when it makes an outgoing call? (Honeywell was no help)

The next step of the process of elimination is to set my follow me number to another brand of cell phone. However, I had a Blackberry before my Galaxy and I did experience the same problem. My Blackberry also could not get my system to respond to any key press when I received a system announcement.

For #1, try calling yourself from your landline and see what happens. If the phone doesn’t send out the tones or you think the tones aren’t working, I did see a couple of DTMF apps you might give a try. At least that would answer that part of the question for you.

#2 is going to be tough to prove. Maybe if you hooked up a buttset to the phone line and listened in, you might be able to figure something out. Worst case, use the buttset to send the panels tones after it has called you.

Just wondering, are you an end user or installer? Honeywell may not be too receptive to an end user. Some companies are funny about that.

[quote] For #1, try calling yourself from your landline and see what happens. If the phone doesn't send out the tones or you think the tones aren't working, I did see a couple of DTMF apps you might give a try. At least that would answer that part of the question for you.

[/quote]

Very good suggestion. I don’t think I ever actually tried this until just now and the results are:

  1. When I call my cell phone from my landline to simulate my system calling me, I CAN NOT hear touchtone responses on my landline receiver when I depress the number buttons on my cell phone. I do sometimes hear a VERY short chirp when a number is pressed, but it is not consistent and I can’t tell if the tone is different for different keys. The * and # keys never seam to emit a tone when pressed.

  2. When I call my landline from my cell phone to simulate calling a business with automation prompts, I CAN hear the touchtone responses on my landline receiver when I press any key on my cell phone. It is a short chirp, but longer than example #1. Most importantly I can hear the different distinct tones that different keys emit and every time a key is depressed a tone is emitted, including the * and # keys.

This would tell me that more than likely the problem is not the alarm system panel but the capability of the cell phones being used. All the phones I have ever used evidently only can send out touchtone sounds when the cell phone CALLS OUT.

Would you be kind enough to run this experiment with your landline and cell phone and reply with the results.

Thank you for helping me narrow down the problem.

I tried it both ways. Called my cell from my landline and called my landline from my cell. Both times I could hear the tones just fine. And I have a Galaxy Note 5. Looked through the settings on the phone and other than the DTMF Long/Short setting, didn’t see any other settings. I have it set of “Short” for what it’s worth.

Weird.

Where in your settings menu on your phone can you adjust the length of the DTMF tones? I’ve searched through every setting on my phone and have found no adjustments to touch tone sounds.

I uploaded a DTMF app to my phone and thought that I would be able to open the application during a call and use the app to generate the tones I need. When I open the app alone, I can generate clear and loud tones. Although I can open up the app during a call, the volume of the tone coming from the app is greatly reduced and can not be heard through the phones microphone.

I now know the problem is our phones. I just need to find out how to generate tones when a call comes in.

Phone settings are not under the setting icon, go figure! Open up the phone app and select the dial pad. At this point there should be some way of accessing the settings. On mine, it’s the “More” button in the upper right, then select “Settings”. Scroll down and DTMF Tones is the second from last option. Of course there are a bunch of other options, maybe there is something there that’s preventing your phone from sending the tones properly.

My Galaxy S5 and my wife’s Galaxy S4 both do not have the DTMF setting option. I have looked at every menu and submenu on both my phone and my wife’s Galaxy S4. I have googled and read forum posts about this until my eyes hurt.

My menus don’t have the same list of options that I’ve seen on other S5 owners post. Perhaps it’s the T-Mobile carrier firmware…

I just tried another experiment that actually confirms our cell phones ARE NOT the problem.

I called my wife’s cell phone from my cell phone and had her press keys on her phone. I could here long touch tones very clearly on my phone.

My wife called my cell phone and I pressed keys on my cell phone and she could here long touch tones on her phone, too!

Both of our cell phones are capable of sending out touch tone responses on INCOMING calls. Evidently our cells phones DTMF settings are set to long tones as a default and wouldn’t need to be adjusted anyway

That means the problem is IN MY HOUSE and is either my alarm panel, my phone modem or my phone lines that are preventing DTMF tones from being heard on outgoing calls from my landline.

I can call my landline and hear short touch tones on my landline receiver from incoming calls, but when my landline calls out I can not hear touch tones on my landline receiver, except for very short blips (and only sometimes).

I will try to narrow down the problem and report back.

Are you on a true POTS line (meaning telephone company copper wire) or on a VoIP line (meaning cable TV or fiber) for your landline telephone service?

We have a modem for our phone that connects to our cable provider. We get Internet, TV and phone service through the same coaxial cable that was originally just for cable TV.

The original alarm system that we had only contacted our monitoring station through the phone landline, so the phone line from the street needed to go into the panel first and then be distributed to the phone jacks in the house. This allowed the panel to seize the line and be able to call out even if a phone was taken off the hook.

My L5100 alarm panel uses WiFi and GSM to call the monitoring station, so the phone line going into the panel is basically a speaker phone and a means for the panel to call out with system messages.

I have disconnected the phone lines to the alarm panel (BYPASSING THE ALARM PANEL) and the results of the tone tests on my landline receiver are the same.

SO NOT THE ALARM PANEL.

I disconnected the line that comes out of the modem that connects to the phone jack that connects all phone jacks in the house to the modem. I plugged in a single phone into the jack in the modem (BYPASSING THE HOUSE WIRING) and ran the same tests and the results are the same.

IT’S GOT TO BE THE MODEM. Somehow it is filtering DTMF tones from coming into the house.

I have placed a service call with my ISP and explained the problem to them. They will be making a service call. We’ll see if there are some settings on the phone modem that need to be tweaked. I do not have access to any settings.

I will post the results.

Ok, yeah, the modem could definitely be your problem then.

Several years ago, when I was still working in the residential market, we had a customer switch from his traditional telephone service to a VoIP service. He had some new box that plugged into his network that gave him phone service through his cable internet. He needed us to come out and properly wire his alarm panel for line seizure with his new setup. When we ran some communication tests after wiring it all up, the central station was not receiving any of the alarm signals we were sending out. After trying to change some setting the the panel, slowing down the dialing, changing formats, etc, we couldn’t get it to work. Talking with tech support we found that this new technology was really built for voice transmission and data transmission was iffy at best. After we had explained this to the customer, he claimed the problem then was our equipment, threw us off the job, and told us he was switching to a company that could get him working again! In our defense, he was a bit of an arse to begin with and he already had it in his head that his new VoIP was flawless and going to put the phone company out of business. The technology was still new at this time and the industry was just realizing the issue.

I believe there are ways around this issue now - I’ve been out of the residential side of things for a long time. But yeah, a call to your ISP might be a good step. If not, you may need to call a local alarm company that does residential and is aware of the issues in your area and the work around.

My ISP replaced the telephone modem and that fixed the problem. Right out of the box with no adjustments the touch tones could easily be heard on my landline receiver when I called my cellphone and pressed the numbers on my cellphone keypad.

When I removed the cover from one of my motion sensors, the panel called my cell phone with a system message and I was able to respond by pressing the * key and I was told the zone that was being tampered with. Of course my monitoring company called me at the same time…

Thank you Lambda. I am very appreciative of your suggestions.

Glad it was a relatively painless fix!