Honeywell VISTA-20P Ademco Control Panel, PCB in Aluminum Enclosure

After my second home was broken into, and the front door left open for who knows how long, I decided I wanted an alarm. After much research, and not wanting to deal with contracts, salesmen and high monthly fees, I ended up with this panel and a totally expandable professional system that texts me when the alarm is disarmed, armed, fire, trouble, flood, and of course if a break-in occurs. The basics of the system are the 20P panel, the 15P would be fine for most,unless you have more than six wired zones, the EVL-4 Eyezon IP communicator, which requires a hardwired connection to the router, and mounts inside the cabinet, 12 volt back up battery, required as it drives the siren as well as power failure back-up, siren, and don't go for anything less than the 6160RF keypad. The RF denotes that the keypad is capable of receiving and transmitting to wireless devices. Even if you don't think you'll want or need wireless, once you read up and see all the endless possibilities of the wireless devices and sensors, you'll be glad you spent the little extra to go RF. If you don't own a drill, wire strippers, or maybe even a soldering iron, and willing to roll up your sleeves and learn a little about all the well thought out and time proven nuances and actually read the manual-then this is probably not the system for you. Just looking at the manual and all the options are a bit overwhelming, but once you dig in, only a few of the actual programming prompts need to be changed. Each zone needs to be told how to react to the sensor, but just read and check out a few youtube videos. You don't need to be a computer programmer or rocket scientist-Just be willing to invest a little time and energy during the install, and you won't need to touch it again unless you want to do some upgrades and enhancements, which I'm sure most techie types will be fascinated by the possibilities. I'm working to install an electric water valve in the main water line, so the water is shut off when armed in away mode-no flood worries!

So my Journey began with an old Brinks / ADM system that got reset and I couldn’t find installer codes to recover. It was 25 years old anyway. I wanted to keep my existing wired sensors including C0 detector but I also wanted to be able to expand the system by adding zones. The Vista 20 P was just the thing. I was able to replace the old Brinks BHS3000 system by simply swapping the boards within the enclosure. Yes they were the exact same housings. This kept me from having to pull back all the wiring and feed them into the new enclosure. This allowed me to simply disconnect each wire, one at a time, and re land it on the Honeywell board. Took me a total of 20 min. For good measure the enclosure door was a perfect swap so all the labels are correct. That was the easy part.... Then came programming. With the included manual and quite a bit of help from YouTube, the system is now working. It takes a bit of patience to learn how to read the manual. The YouTube videos provided a great deal of clarity. I used a 6160RF key pad to allow for wireless sensor expansion and remote key fob use. After About three hours I had it working at least as well as my old system. There are some tricks to it like in zone 1 you have to use one of the included terminating resistors if you plan to use it for a door or window switch. Also if you want the zone chime to work on the doors or windows only, you have to create a “Zone List” which has to be Zone List #03. Spent at least an hour figuring that one out. Wouldn’t have put so much time into that one item but my wife and kids like having the door chimes. Bottom line is the system upgrade cost me approx $140 with one keypad (I’ll be adding more later) and it was actually more capable than what I had expected. Keep in mind it’s designed for a professional installer so don’t expect plug-and-play but once it’s up and running it’s a solid, scaleable system. I’ll write more as I take advantage of the features.

I had no idea this panel would bring me here. By here I mean due to my OCD the level of expansion it offers all for 70 bucks. In just over a year I've nearly maxed it out. All 48 rf zones utilized, 7 hardwired and 10 button remote zones used. With a 20p & a 6160rf you can easily best any ADT or similar system out there. Add a Tuxedo touch and you can get Total Connect 2.0 with Zwave automated thermostats as I do up to 3 along with dimmers and outlets. With a 4204 relay module and some wiring you can open/close your garage doors. Or you could just get the panel, a 6160rf and an 5802wxt panic pendant and keep an aging parent safe with basic phone line monitoring all for less than 250$ I have opted for full Total Connect premium service for 44$ a month that includes texting of sensor events, video events & alarms. It can set my thermostats back, turn all my lights off and lock my door when I press the arm away button on my key fob saving on heating costs. Granted I spent the additional $ for the Zwave enabled devices but still, it is truly awesome what you can do with this 70$ panel. I could go on and on but simply put. This thing is the cat's ass

Works very well as a residential alarm panel coupled with hard wired contacts. Add an RF Keypad (6160RF) and benefit from wireless contacts if you don't want to run wires or it is too difficult to run wires in your application.

Easy to setup panel. Replaced my old brinks pos and was able to reuse the sensors existing in he house