Panic Buttons Not Triggering? Learn How Swinger Shutdown Affects Your Alarm System

Hey, guys. Hayden here again from Alarm System Store. And today we're going to be talking about swinger shutdown. And swinger shutdown is a feature that you'll find on most alarm systems. But it is a false alarm prevention and signal management feature that's built into these panels. And I'm working with the DSC neo today. But essentially the main reason that I bring this up is for panic buttons. So swinger shutdown affects your system in a few different ways. The most basic of those is involving regular burglary zones. If your system is armed and you set off a zone, basically it's just going to trigger the alarm system and it's going to send a signal out that there's an alarm and also a signal that this zone set that alarm off. So what happens is after the third time a sensor is triggered and during that arming period, it's going to stop that sensor from reporting to the central station any longer. So that zone won't show up on any future alarms after the third trigger. Now that is for standard alarms. Now with panic buttons, it works slightly differently. So with panic buttons, panics actually stop triggering the system as a whole. After a second attempt, which I'm going to pull the camera over and show an example of that here in just a couple minutes. But essentially, any time you're testing panics, which is the main time we get asked about this, what you want to do is you want to put the system through an arming cycle between each panic trigger.

So let's say I press this button, it goes into alarm, I disarm it, go to do it again. That's the second trigger. After I disarm it again, this panic button isn't going to work any longer. So what I recommend doing is if you're testing panics with a central station, every time you trigger a panic, disarm the system, arm it, let it fully arm, and then disarm the system again. And what that does, is it shuts down any swinger shutdowns that are active for any zone. So, like I said, I'm going to move the camera over here so you guys can see it. But the main thing to take away from this is that swinger shutdown does affect zones differently depending on how they're programed. And what type of zone it is. So if you're working with regular burglary zones, you generally don't have to worry about this because you're going to be arming and disarming the system regularly to test those anyway. With panics, if you happen to trigger multiple panics and disarm the system and continue trying them, it's going to stop setting off the system, which will then also stop reporting, obviously. So it will look like some of your panic buttons aren't working, when in fact they are. They're just following the swinger shutdown rules. So put it through an arming cycle and you should be good to go. So like I said, I'm going to pull the camera over here and I'm going to show an example of this. I'm going to trigger this hardwired panic a couple times until it stops triggering the system so you guys can see it.

But just remember, if you're testing panics, disarm the system and then arm it again and then disarm it a second time. And that will put the system through that arming cycle so that it can be triggered again. So I'll be right back. All right. So like I said, I have just this panic hooked up as our, example, but essentially, like I mentioned, any time you see the alarm memory on your screen, basically you want to arm and disarm the system, clear that off, and that will also clear any swing or shutdown conditions. But what I'm going to do here, I just have this set up as an audible panic so that we can see it on the screen. And I'm just going to trigger that until it doesn't work anymore. And then I'll show you that arming and disarming clears it. So okay, so for our first one you can see there it says systems an alarm zone. One I'm going to disarm it. And then I got the alarm memory star three to view. So that is telling me that a potential swinger shutdown is active. But because these panics the zone panics actually get two triggers. I'm going to go ahead and trigger the second time. Now system is an alarm. Again. So one disarmament alarm cancel I still have the alarm memory because it's been triggered twice now. Now essentially if I go to trigger it again it's not going to set the system off. It is going to say system ready to arm. And then if I press the button, it's showing an open zone up for the panic zone, which is zone one. So there is this swinger shutdown coming into effect with zone style panics like this. You get two triggers on it by default. and basically the only way to get this panic to trigger again is to go through an arming cycle, which I'll do real quick. One, two, three, four. I'm gonna let it countdown am I was finished. I'll be right back.

All right, so the system's armed now, so I'm going to go ahead and disarm it. And now when it says a new alarm memory, basically, that just means we're clear and good to go. It reverted any swinger shutdowns that might be in effect. So now if I go to press the panic button, it's going to put the system into alarm again. So like I said, there are other scenarios where this applies, especially with key fobs. key fobs by default. Use a hold up panic, which we can't see on here. So I'm not going to show this. But essentially if you're trying to test a keyfob with Central Station and you go to set off the panic and it only works once or possibly twice, then it is because of this when you're shut down and you have to go through that arming cycle. So best practice, like I mentioned, when you're testing panic buttons, test one panic at a time, disarm the system, arm it, then disarm it again, put it through that arming cycle, and then go to test the next one. So that's really enforced when you're down. if you're still watching please give us a like and subscribe if you're on YouTube and if you are on our website, hopefully you are finding plenty of useful information. If you have any questions or comments, you can reach us at our chat on our website. Or if you're on YouTube, leave us a comment. Whatever the case might be. And now that's going to do it for me. So I will catch you guys on the next one.