Color convention when using cat5 for motions/temp sensors etc.

Hi All,

I have my ELK installed but meed to connect the motions and some temp sensors (ZTS).

I plan to use cat5 to connect these items since i have it around.

Is there any convention to the wire color coding? I want to be as consistent as possible.

Also to conect some SP12F speaker i used cat5 and ganged 2 x 4 conductors to create a higher guage connection. Basically i took all the 'white/xxx' wires and put them together and then all the solid colors and put them togethers. The questions now is if the 'whites' shoudl represent the positive or the negative?

For conencting the temp sensors I followed ELK's databus color scheme where 'Brown' is positive and 'White/Brown' is negative and then i used the solid green for the signal (solid green corressponds with the actual installation instructions). At the same time however it seems that for telehony the white/blue wire is actually positive so there's no apparent consistency.

To make things worse for HV (120v) the black is the 'hot' (which i wold consider positive) and the white is neutral (which i would consider to be the equivalent of negative in DC world)

When using 16/4 to connect a pair of speakers on the red/black pair the black is obviously the negative, but on the white/green pair which is the negative?

Can any tell me what they did, point me in the direction of some sort of standard or provide guidance is some sort of way.

If there are no standards maybe we should as a community come up with a convention of some sorts that new members can reference. At least within the community we would have less confusion when helping each other out.

MavRic said:

If there are no standards maybe we should as a community come up with a convention of some sorts that new members can reference. At least within the community we would have less confusion when helping each other out.

Click to expand...

My 2 cents -

Follow ELK convention for power
Blue pair shall always be used for phone when possible
Whites shall always be negative.

Monk said:

MavRic said:

If there are no standards maybe we should as a community come up with a convention of some sorts that new members can reference. At least within the community we would have less confusion when helping each other out.

Click to expand...

My 2 cents -

Follow ELK convention for power
Blue pair shall always be used for phone when possible
Whites shall always be negative.

Click to expand...

I don't know if it is the convention but this is what I do:

White is always ground. In 12V systems negative is usually tied to ground so white is negative for voltage.

white/blue - phone or audio or RS-485 data
white/orange - power
white/green - second audio or dry contacts
white/brown - second power or dry contacts

For dry contacts white is usually the common and green or brown the no or nc connection.

ok, so far the concensus seems to be that 'white' represents negative/common. I guess for whiteblue being positive for telephone is just the exception then. Does it matter for a phone anyway how you connect?

MavRic said:

ok, so far the concensus seems to be that 'white' represents negative/common. I guess for whiteblue being positive for telephone is just the exception then. Does it matter for a phone anyway how you connect?

Click to expand...

Now a days I don't know of anything that really doesn't work when reversing polarity for phone wires - back when touch tone was first coming in, some phones would not dial if the polarity was reversed - you could answer it and have dialtone, but no touch tones from the keypad...

MavRic said:

ok, so far the concensus seems to be that 'white' represents negative/common. I guess for whiteblue being positive for telephone is just the exception then. Does it matter for a phone anyway how you connect?

Click to expand...

This is why I said white is ground. A phone line uses a positive ground system so the white wire is Positive. In an alarm system the 12V negative common is tied to ground so the white wire is negative.

ok..i am not that familiar with the details of phone systems, but there at least appears to be some consitency on the usage of white then.

I have drafted the following convention for myself, comments woudl be appreciated:

When using cat5 single conductors:
----Use the brown pair for power
-------- Brown is +
-------- White Brown is -

When ganging up conductors in a cat5 cable:
---- When using pairs (i.e using cat5 for motion sensors), I havent had to do this yet, but I'm sure it's coming:
------- Green pair is ???? (am thinking this should be the ZONE INPUT, i.e. equal to green in a 22/4 cable)
------- Orange pair is ???? (am thinking this should be VAUX +, I.e. equal to the red in a 22/4 cable, orange is similar to red so easy to remember)
------- Brown pair is ???? (am thinking this should be VAUX -, i.e equal to the black in a 22/4 cable, brown is the darkest color in the cable so closest to black)
------- Blue pair is ???? (am thinking this should be the NEG/COMMON, i.e. equal to the yellow in a 22/4 cable)
Brown and Blue coudl easilly switch, some might consider blue the darket color. What i do like here is that for example for a ELK temp sensor you only need 3 conductos (VAUX +, VAUX - and ZONE INPUT), so using the above method the Blue pair would remain usused following the logic it shoudl be reserved for telephone wherever possible.

---- When using quads (I know this may not be the greatest idea, but i had to do a run to ELK SP12F speakers and since the cat5 has no other purpose i decide to create the larges guage conductor by agning 4 conductors togeter)
--------- All the White/***** conductors together is - NEGATIVE
--------- All the solid color conductors togeter is + POSITIVE


When using 22/4 single conductors:
----For 2 wire devices
------- Red is + (or connects to the zone input)
------- Black is - (and connects to NEG/COMMON)
---- For 4 wire devices
------- Red is + (and connects to VAUX +)
------- Black is - (and connects to VAUX -)
------- Yellow/Green is the signal/relay pair
---------- Green connects to the zone input (or at least ELK's Zone Temp Sensors uses this method)
---------- Yellow conencts to the NEG/COMMON

For xx/4 speaker cable:
----- Red is Speaker 1 (generally LEFT) + POSITIVE
----- Black is Speaker 1 (generally LEFT) - NEGATIVE
----- Green/White is speaker 2 (generally RIGHT)... which one is POSTIVE and which is NEGATIVE?

I've attempted to create the above using some sort of logic and a bit of creativity. Comments and examples of alternates would be much appreciated

My intentions are to create a cheatsheet for myself and any future owner/electrician/LV contractor should something happen to me.

So far i've followed all the above, except for the 4 conductor ganging of cat5. When looking at the ELK SP12F there is a white and a black white. At the time I thought it was logical to connect the white (which is in fact the positive for the speaker) to the cat5 whites and the solid colors (darker) to the black. But having learned now that white generally represents negative/common/ground I will go change this since it's easy to get to. (They are recessed in the ELK KP2 backboxes). I'm sure not use if I could have just used the blue pair in the wiring from DBH to the keypad for these speakers, eventhough they're small speakers I wasnt that comfortable using just a single cat5 conductor..(24 guage IIRC).

ok, after doing some searching I've also found the folowing convention for OnQ ALC wiring:

TX+ = White / Blue
TX- = Blue
AUX COMMON = Brown
AUX ON = Orange
AUX OFF = Green
12 VDC = White / Brown (for the hubs)
Ground (for 12V) = White / Green (for the hubs)

The use of brown for power is obviously not consistent between ELK and OnQ ALC. Guess we just need to be carefull.

ok...thanks to electrons help i found the following recommended method as well.

For speaker wiring:
Black = Left Speaker -
Red = Left Speaker +
Green = Right Speaker -
White or Yellow = Right Speaker +

ok,, thanks to sic0048 and his pointer to the following Link I can now add the following:

When using cat5e cabling for telephone:
T1 = White/Blue (Line 1 Tip) - Connects to Green at the Telco NID
R1 = Blue/White (Line 1 Ring) - Connects to Red at the Telco NID
T2 = White/Orange (Line 2 Tip) - Connects to Black at the Telco NID
R2 = Orange/White (Line 2 Ring) - Connects to Yellow at the Telco NID
T3 = White/Green (Line 3 Tip)
R3 = Green/White (Line 3 Ring)
T4 = White/Brown (Line 4 Tip)
R4 = Brown/White (Line 4 Ring)

I will soon try to clean up this thread and put all the above posts in one place...whenever i find some time.

While it's all low voltage and 'if you do it the same at both ends, it doesnt matter' it sure helps to have some sort of guide and to have some consistency amongst us cocooners such that assisting each other with (remote) troubleshooting is easier.

This is a great thread, it needs to be added to that 'mega thread' I'm working on Thanks for posting all this info!

For powered sensors (motions, temp, glass break), I'm using:
Brown - +12
Brn/Wht - ground
Blue and Blue/Wht - Sensor contacts

I've wired the tamper sensors using the 4-state wiring diagram as detailed in the Elk documentation so I don't have to burn an extra input for each tamper sensor.

For non-powered sensors, I just use Blue and Blue/Wht.

For RS-485, I use the ELK standard of

Brown - +12
Brn/Wht - ground
Org/Wht and Grn/Wht twisted together - Data B
Org and Green twisted together - Data A

I haven't gotten to the speaker portion yet, so I'll take some recommendations.

signal15: any particular reason you ended up using the Blue and Blue/White for the sensor contacts?

I personally avoided them since I saw them being used for phone. Not that it's likely i will run alarm and phone over the same cable...but who knows about the future.

I agree with the brown white/brown for the 12v since that follow's ELK's standards.

MavRic said:

signal15: any particular reason you ended up using the Blue and Blue/White for the sensor contacts?

I personally avoided them since I saw them being used for phone. Not that it's likely i will run alarm and phone over the same cable...but who knows about the future.

I agree with the brown white/brown for the 12v since that follow's ELK's standards.

Click to expand...

I did that because the orange and green pairs are normally being used for data on the RS-485 bus. And the connection to sensors is not a data connection. Plus, I don't have any regular phone stuff in my house, everything is Polycom VoIP phones which just use a network connection.