Wireless Out, Wired In.
Posted by IVB on November 30, 2007
I finally swapped out 3 of my $40 and unstable wireless window sensors for the hardwired $2 and stable variety. I’ll be fully ripping out all wireless sensors, at least the “security” ones, perhaps re-using them for stuff like deck gates where it’s a “non-alarm” zone.
I post b/c I finally used the 54″ long, 3/8″ diameter flex drill bit I bought a year ago to drill through the window. Damn that thing is cool. I used it in a 3-window “bay” that’s pushed out from the foundation, so I couldn’t just push the drill all the way through and pull the drill bit and then wire out the other side. There’s two things I thought were cool:
1) I was able to use my left hand at the middle of the big, just above the hole, to keep it going straight in. I used my right hand to hold the drill, and bend it back about 20 degrees as the window as above the hole and I didn’t want to spend 2 hours taking it out/putting it back in. Good thing i’ve got a relatively high tolerance for pain & heat – I opted to not use gloves or a cloth to hold the bit on my left hand as I couldn’t get a “feel” for when I was pushing through wood studs vs subfloor, and when I had cleared it. For those of you who’ve met me, i’m sure you can picture this; the rest of you, look at what i’ve gone through over the past 18 months to deploy HA – burning the crap out of my hands was a walk in the park 
2) I have one of those long plastic fish wire sticks, but it had a different and harder flex level than the bit so I couldn’t get that through the hole without removing the window. As mentioned before, I couldn’t just push the wire through the bit all the way through since I couldn’t pull the bit out the other end. Hence, I pulled the bit out of the drill, turned it around, and taped 22/2 to the end; piece of cake to push that through the hole all the way down.
3 wireless sensors swapped out, 13 more to go. I’ll have to use the fugly surface mount I can’t do this with all of them as I have a/c wiring below some windows. I’m hoping I can embed 75% of them due to the low WAF of surface mount, but the wife agrees that ugly surface mount is better than unstable wireless or no security, so that’s something.
