Learning Paradox System Programming

Looking for a little guidance towards materials to learn programming of Paradox alarms.

I work in security but work mostly with DSC products and would like to pick up some additional knowledge wrt Paradox systems.

Installation guides are great and all, but a little help wrt necessary sections and orders of operations from pro’s would make a huge difference!

I’ve used ‘Application Notes ‘ available online for DSC learning over the years as well as making cheat sheets of essentials for new hires.

Does anyone here know of any similar resources or maybe might be willing to share their own versions?

Thanks in advance,

Kingcyp

submitted by /u/kingcyp
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January 7, 2026
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Want security cameras but I know nothing

I’d like to have 4 or 5 cameras on the outside of my house. But I don’t want a paid subscription. Nor do I want cloud storage. I just want to be able to download videos if there’s a problem. Ability to view on desktop and/or phone a bonus. Are there r…

January 6, 2026
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Can someone explain alarm.com?

I work for an electrical contractor and we get subbed for a lot of alarm work and have a handful of customers of our own, we use a monitoring service for the alarms we install (Bosch and Honeywell). Today a customer asked if we were an alarm. Com dealer and I said we weren’t. He wants to change from our monitoring to them. I said I’d look into it for him and called them. They said that they weren’t a monitoring service just pathway I guess. So, I guess if we were a partner, we’d charge our basic monitoring fee without alarmnet and add the marked up alarm.com service? Plus he’d have to buy the SEM as well? Does it do something that total connect doesn’t do? He’s currently IP and cell reporting with us. I do his remote alarm work with software if I need to, I would lose that ability I’m assuming. We really don’t care, we charge enough to cover monitoring so it’s not a revenue stream for us or anything. Just excited to get the facts straight before I report back to him.

submitted by /u/greenskycity
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January 6, 2026
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The value of having Cameras & DVR/NVR

There was a home break in a few houses away from me – a few nights back. I’ve got 7 cameras (Dahua N53AJ5Z & N53CJ6Z) on my house, in addition to my 2 Ring Doorbells. Apparently I’m the only one on the block that has something other than Ring cameras, and the cops came knocking asking to review my footage (and ultimately having the electronics squad come to grab the recordings). The quote from the cops was to the effect of “We don’t even bother with Ring camera footage, its useless”.

This alone proves the value of having “real” cameras on the house. I’ll admit that at night they don’t do the best – but they certainly are better than what Ring provides.

My suggestion – spend a few $K and put some cameras on the house, it is a good deterrent and may actually be useful when needed, vs the cheap Ring/Arlo type stuff.

submitted by /u/aguywiththoughts
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January 1, 2026
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Affordable 400m Perimeter Security for hybrid Home Assistant / Security devices (100mx100m Plot)

I need to secure a square 1-hectare garden (100m per side). The perimeter is fenced but has a trees and bushes which makes motion detection tricky.

I am a Home Assistant user and want a solution that is either fully local or a hybrid that exposes sensors/streams to HA.

Requirements:

  • Affordability: Can’t afford pro-grade buried cables or $1k thermal cameras.
  • Reliability: Needs to distinguish between a human climbing the fence and a tree branch moving in the wind.
  • Connectivity: What is the best way to bridge 100m+ distances? Point-to-Point WiFi? LoRa?

Constraints: > I’m looking for hardware recommendations (Cameras, Beams, or Pressure sensors) that are DIY-friendly and HA-compatible. If you had to secure 400 linear meters of fence on a budget without constant false alarms, how would you do it?

Looking forward to your suggestions!

submitted by /u/_ReeX_
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December 28, 2025
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IMy android cell phone was hacked and I’d been backing it up

My cell phone was hacked and I’d been backing it up in some kind of automatic mode to my first gmail account. Would the hackers already have access to hack the next phone if I download my contacts from that gmail account into a brand new android?

Should I just make a new gmail account and back up a new cell phone to that one? Leave the old one on my old computer and buy a new one?

It takes a bit of planning, so am asking for help to work the order of this out. A factory reset done by a tech wasn’t able to completely clear it, and the tech warned me in advance this could be the case. I do not want to accidentally load old hacker crap back onto my new cell phone when I get one. I plan to get another android.

{EDIT: My hacker bump keyed my door lock and ran in with a flash drive that had a gps tracker on it that would heat my phone up, so when they got close, it was like fire. I turned around to see my hacker behind me in my grocery store line. During this period of time, I also heard sounds like ‘ooga-ooga’ car horns, piano keys, shuffling of cards, lots of beeps, phone calls that never ring through, a voicemail that never shows the dot let you know there is a voice mail, much more. The orange “recording” light would come on when I spoke a sensitive topic. So yes, it’s a deep level hack and the phone tech was correct to say that a deep factory reset may not even work. When the phone company tech of a high level went into my phone, he confirmed it is still hacked.

The download of the CVS files has been one of the more helpful suggestions. thank you.
Still accepting other suggestions, thanks!

submitted by /u/ramblecrazed-
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December 26, 2025
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Switching from BI to Scrypted

Hi. I want to make a switch from BI to Scrypted for 24/7 NVR and detection. My hardware is a SFF ThinkCentre M920s with Intel i7-8700, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD + 4GB HDD + 6GB HDD and Windows 11 Pro. I have six 5442 (v1) cameras (planning to add 2 more), which docnot have a built-in AI, so I would need to rely on the software for AI detection. I also have Home Assistant running on a RPi 4, that I want to integrate with Scrypted. I also have a 2 spare laptops – one with Intel Core i5-1135G7 (no external GPU) and other with i7-8750H (GTX 1060 GPU). Also an old NUC with i3-7100U.

  1. Is my hardware good enough for Scrypted? I’ve noticed that most people use a mini PC, so maybe the laptops or NUC with an externam drive would be better?

  2. Would you run it on Windows or Proxmox?

  3. Would I need Scrypted + Scrypted NVR or just the NVR version?

  4. Will I miss out on anything coming from Blue Iris?

submitted by /u/magnumpl
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December 9, 2025
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