Alarm.com DSC Neo TL880 Activation Troubles That You NEED To Know

Hey, guys. Hayden here again from Alarm Systems Store. And today we're going to be talking about common issues during activation with the TL 880 alarm.com communicator for the DSC Neo. And there's a few common issues that we run into whenever we're trying to activate our customers. And essentially I'm going to cover what those common issues are. And generally they are related to either enabling the communicator, having your installer code set to the default or a wiring issue between the main board, the daughter card, and the communicator itself. So I'm gonna bring the camera over here and show you guys how those four issues. All right. So we'll cover the easy stuff first. first thing you're gonna, you're going to want to check is the, option to enable the alternate communicator on the neo as well as the installer code. And those are generally easier as well.

You can just do it right on the keypad. So I will run you through that real quick. Basically you need to go into programing for both options. So *8 plus the installer code and the option to enable the communicator is section 382 option five. So type in 382. Scroll to the right until you see the five there. And it's going to say alternate comm. This needs to be set to a Y. So if yours is still an N you need to hit star. Change that to a Y. And that will allow the system to recognize that there is a communicator attached. If we back out of that, we'll just back all the way out. And now we're going to check the installer code. To get to the installer code you're going to hit *8 installer code and then scroll over until you see installer codes. Section 006. Now you're welcome to have whatever installer code you want, but during the activation, it is much simpler to have it set to the default, because that is what the communicator tries to use to get into your panels so that it can sync up. So under option subsections 001 it's going to say installer code. So I always recommend setting that back to the default which is 5555. So if you have it changed temporarily set it back to the 5555. And during the activation the system will be able to allow the communicator to sync with it and everything should be fine. After it's synced and you're logged into your alarm.com, you can come back in here and change this code to whatever you want it to be.

So now that we've covered programing, we're going to talk about the wiring mistakes that we typically run into. it's very easy to make these mistakes just because there are a lot of connections between the main board and the communicator itself. But essentially what you have is your main board, which is connected via a PC link cable, which is this right here to the daughter board for the communicator. And then from the daughter board, you have six wires that run from it to the communicator itself. So essentially the two most common things that we run into is the PC link cable here on the main board. It being put on the wrong PC link connection. So as you can see here, I don't know if you can see the words on it, but up here at the top is PC link one. And then over here is PC link two. The TL880 has to be on PC link 2 and you will see over here it'll say read next to the side that the red wire needs to be on. So generally orientation is correct, but it is on the wrong PC link. So check that first because that one's easy to fix. We just pull it off, stick it on the other one for the other end of the PC link cable. There's only one PC link connection on the daughter board. Just make sure that you have the red wire facing the majority of the board as I do here. And then from the daughter board to the communicator is another big one.

So the connection between the daughter card and the communicator is going to be a six wire connection. Right now I only have four wires because there are two wires that are going to be used for power. You have a 12 volt positive and a ground and a 12 volt positive and a ground. Those ones are easy. You just connect them to each other 12 volt to 12 volt, ground to ground and it will power the device. The ones that are confusing are the RX and TX wires. So if we look here we have TX plus, TX negative, RX plus and RX negative. I know it's kind of hard to see the labels there with the wires in the way, but essentially it's TX plus, TX negative, RX plus, RX negative in order from bottom to top. So what I usually do is I use a positive and negative pair, which is going to be yellow and green for TX. Yellow to TX plus, and green to TX negative. And then on the RX I use red and black where red is RX positive and black is RX negative. And whenever we come over to the communicator, we switch those. So essentially, as you can see here, I have TX positive and negative, RX positive and negative going from left to right as we're looking at it. So the red and black, which are on the daughter card are connected to RX plus and RX negative are going to go to TX plus and TX negative. Keep the polarity the same. Make sure that positive is the positive and negative is the negative. But flip the RX and the TX, In the same sense for our TX plus and TX negative from the daughter card. Those are going to RX plus and RX negative on the communicator. Now double check those and make sure that they are correct if you need to. You are welcome during the activation to send us a picture of what you have going on, email it to us and we will check it. See if there is any visible issues. And generally, like I said, that is the most common thing that we run into is the RX and TX are flipped.

So those are the four most common issues we run into with the TL 880. one additional thing to remember is anytime this happens, your system has not synced with the communicator yet. So you need to give it time to do that. Essentially, if you are messing with wiring, I always recommend powering down the whole system. Change your wiring. When you boot it back up, it is going to sync the communicator to the system. While it's doing that, you may run into a System Unavailable message on your keypad, or you might see some stuff going on. Just let it sit for 15 minutes. After you make any of these changes and it starts that sync process, you might not know it's syncing, but if you've messed with any of these things, just let it sit for 15 minutes. After you reboot. If it was a programing issue, whenever you back out of programing after you've enabled the communicator or if you change the installer code, the communicator will try to sync again. So in that scenario as well, let it sit for 15 minutes, let it do the sync process. And eventually you should see an Alarm.com module okay message on the keypad. If you see that during this process at all, you know at that point you're good. You can go get logged into your account. So on and so forth. So that's all there is talk about. hopefully this helped those of you out there that are having trouble. if you need more troubleshooting help, you can check out our website alarmsystemstore.com. We have a whole collection of DSC neo videos there, as well as some other systems that we've carried. And if you're on our YouTube channel, give us a like and subscribe. All right. I will catch you guys on the next one.