Cox Homelife door and window sensors

[fenderman]

These consumer alarm companies always rip consumers off. VIVANT tried to get my aunt to sign up for there alarm and camera ripoff crap. The guy at her door said every thing is free and its about 3000 dollars worth of equipment. You just pay 160 a month. She said do you not see the cameras on my house that my nephew put up. I put up 6 dahua starlights and one PTZ, plus a computer from ebay to run blue iris. A poe switch, an amplifi router, poe cables for less than a thousand. I get so pissed when i hear how these consumer alarm companies rip people off.

The salespeople are outright fraudsters. I had a Vivint guy come to my door. He told me that Vivint makes the alarm systems for honeywell. lol.

 

[coney27]

So I just had the Cox tech come out. Hilariously enough he wasn't allowed inside my house due to COVID restrictions. So he sat outside my front door and talked me through the issues I was having.

First and foremost if you have Cox or Comcast and have the same sensors as me DO NOT touch the tamper / reset button. If you do you will not be able to re-pair your sensor on your own and will have to have a tech come out.

9 of my sensors were reading "communication failure", 8 door / window sensors and one motion sensor.

Out of the 8 door sensors 3 of them could not be re-paired due to my ignorance of hitting the tamper / reset button. This is where I needed the cox tech to come out to my house. He then entered his master tech code into the tablet which was 1937, and then had to enter a rolling password which he obtained from his Cox cell phone. This then in turn allows him to delete the 3 door sensors that i hade ignorantly reset. Once the 3 were deleted from the system new batteries were placed into them and then the tablet was placed into search mode for new devices. The 3 old sensors that were deleted were then re added and paired without issue.

The rest of the other sensors which were not reset apprently just needed new batteries, which i thought i had replaced when they first started dying but apprently used old batteries or did it incorrectly which i couldn't believe.

I had purchased a identical Sercomm sensor from Amazon about 9 months ago thinking I could pair it and replaced one of the failure to communicate sensors. The tech and me tried to pair this Amazon sensor which the system did pick up but could not pair due to a firmware issue. Could be due to just old firmware or incompatible firmware with Cox.

Either way my take away was; do not touch the reset button on the sensors, once the button is touched you won't be able to re-pair the sensor without a tech coming out, you cannot delete sensors on your own without a cox tech, but you can add sensors on your own as long as their firmware is compatible with Cox or whomever.

 

[djernie]

So I just had the Cox tech come out. Hilariously enough he wasn't allowed inside my house due to COVID restrictions. So he sat outside my front door and talked me through the issues I was having.

First and foremost if you have Cox or Comcast and have the same sensors as me DO NOT touch the tamper / reset button. If you do you will not be able to re-pair your sensor on your own and will have to have a tech come out.

9 of my sensors were reading "communication failure", 8 door / window sensors and one motion sensor.

Out of the 8 door sensors 3 of them could not be re-paired due to my ignorance of hitting the tamper / reset button. This is where I needed the cox tech to come out to my house. He then entered his master tech code into the tablet which was 1937, and then had to enter a rolling password which he obtained from his Cox cell phone. This then in turn allows him to delete the 3 door sensors that i hade ignorantly reset. Once the 3 were deleted from the system new batteries were placed into them and then the tablet was placed into search mode for new devices. The 3 old sensors that were deleted were then re added and paired without issue.

The rest of the other sensors which were not reset apprently just needed new batteries, which i thought i had replaced when they first started dying but apprently used old batteries or did it incorrectly which i couldn't believe.

I had purchased a identical Sercomm sensor from Amazon about 9 months ago thinking I could pair it and replaced one of the failure to communicate sensors. The tech and me tried to pair this Amazon sensor which the system did pick up but could not pair due to a firmware issue. Could be due to just old firmware or incompatible firmware with Cox.

Either way my take away was; do not touch the reset button on the sensors, once the button is touched you won't be able to re-pair the sensor without a tech coming out, you cannot delete sensors on your own without a cox tech, but you can add sensors on your own as long as their firmware is compatible with Cox or whomever.

Sad Sad Sad, just their way of holding you hostage in my opinion. I have never heard of a reset button causing them to not be paired, they could have walked you through the repairing process, they just wanted you to spend more money. Trust me don't beat yourself up you did nothing wrong, that just the BS they are telling you. Those sensors should pair themselves after a reset of the reset button. But i digress, thanks for letting us know and i'm glad your back up. Now we can inform someone else who has this issue with cox/comcast.

 

[coney27]

Sad Sad Sad, just their way of holding you hostage in my opinion. I have never heard of a reset button causing them to not be paired, they could have walked you through the repairing process, they just wanted you to spend more money. Trust me don't beat yourself up you did nothing wrong, that just the BS they are telling you. Those sensors should pair themselves after a reset of the reset button. But i digress, thanks for letting us know and i'm glad your back up. Now we can inform someone else who has this issue with cox/comcast.

I agree about being held hostage but the bundle I have with cox the homelife alarm comes "free". Its always nice to have a secondary layer of security to compliment the cameras I have around my house.

I'm going to buy an additional Bosch motion sensor and see if I can get it added to the system on my own.