Stairwell Warning

I now travel a lot for work and family stays home, so a new home security system will give my family peace-of-mind while I’m gone. But, my family will be 1st time users of a home security system and the family morning routine will need to change with new “protection” provided by a home security system.

I’m installing a new GC3 in my 2-story home (no basement); GC3 panel located at top of stairs. All bedrooms are on upper level (no sensors). Lower level (ground level) to be protected by DW-10s & PIR1s with PAD1s at entry doors. On lower level, there will be no glassbreak sensors because, during the night, heavy fabric drapes cover the ground floor windows.

Our bedtime “arming plan”: while the family is sleeping upstairs, panel to be set at ARMED AWAY. “1st one up” in the morning will change GC3 panel from AWAY to STAY and go downstairs.

Concern is that “1st one up” may forget to change panel from AWAY to STAY before walking down the stairs and could trigger a lower floor PIR at the bottom of the stairs. Ideally, to avoid a siren and a monitor station callback, something would alert her/me/kids that the system is still armed as AWAY while we walk down the stairs in the morning.
I’m thinking of installing a dedicated zone, a hard-wired PIR (to prevent 3-minute battery-saver reset delay), at the midpoint of the stairwell. When panel is armed for AWAY only and that PIR senses movement in the stairwell, it triggers a unique “chime” response at the panel (only this zone configured for “Sensor Report Off” to CS) to remind us to turn around, go back upstairs to the GC3 panel, change the “Armed” panel setting, then start down the stairs again. So this stairwell PIR would only provide an audio reminder under an AWAY only arming plan and would be inactive during the STAY mode

Q1 – is this a good solution for the scenario described or is there a better solution?

Q2 – Considering that the hard-wired PIR is protecting a confined space (midpoint of a stairwell), what are the best features to look for in a hard-wired PIR?

Thanks!

Our bedtime “arming plan”: while the family is sleeping upstairs, panel to be set at ARMED AWAY. “1st one up” in the morning will change GC3 panel from AWAY to STAY and go downstairs.

You cannot change from Away to Stay arming without disarming in between. So the individual would be disarming, then rearming stay.

I’m thinking of installing a dedicated zone, a hard-wired PIR (to prevent 3-minute battery-saver reset delay), at the midpoint of the stairwell. When panel is armed for AWAY only and that PIR senses movement in the stairwell, it triggers a unique “chime” response at the panel (only this zone configured for “Sensor Report Off” to CS) to remind us to turn around, go back upstairs to the GC3 panel, change the “Armed” panel setting, then start down the stairs again. So this stairwell PIR would only provide an audio reminder under an AWAY only arming plan and would be inactive during the STAY mode

The only way I can think of to make this work would be to utilize the open collector outputs. See the diagram below. The open collector can be programmed as activated when armed, (not specifically away) so anytime the pir in the diagram is activated when the panel is armed, the buzzer in the diagram would sound.

Could you set up a PIR in stairs to have ‘entry delay’ like a door sensor?

Yes, for 2GIG Panels you would program the sensor as (10) Interior with Delay.