As you may be aware from one of my previous posts, I decided to ditch both of my analog phone alarm companies in favor of digital monitoring using my Envisalink 2DS adapter which connects my DSC alarm panels to my in-home networks and, along with a host of other features, allows my alarm systems to be monitored via the Internet.

Envisalink, the developers of the 2DS, now offer EnvisAlarm: an alarm monitoring service that integrates wonderfully with their free ESP service, which allows users to log in from anywhere to view and control their alarm system details.

However, since my DSC panels were still set up to transmit alarm information via the telephone, I had to disable a few options on my DSC panels that were no longer needed now that I’m monitoring over the Internet with my 2DS. If you’re a new Envisalink monitoring customer who previously used telephone monitoring, you’ll want to following these same steps that I took to disable the phone-related options.

These instructions assume you’re using the factory-default Installer Code of 5555 (which you probably shouldn’t). Insert your own installer code in place of the 5555.

• To disable the phone line: *8 5555 015 7 ##
• To turn off test transmissions (which are no longer needed since Envisalink monitors network connection from them to your 2DS continuously): *8 5555 371 9999 ##
• To turn off the phone dialer: *8 5555 380 1 ##

I relied on the following online docs to help me remember the correct menu options in the DSC panel:

http://www.myalarm.com/manuals_prog/832p.pdf

http://www.mainelectronics.com/pdf/HowToProgramDSCsystem.pdf

So far, I’ve been very happy with the price and service of Envisalink’s monitoring.