I have a DSC 632 Power Alarm system. The main box door has been opened and tripped a zone tamper. How can I restore the sensor?

At present it wont allow me to Arm the system. I have looked through the install manual obtained on the web, and can't find a reference for restoring the sensor. Nothing shows on the LCD at all (LCD5501), and when attempting to Arm etc all I get is a long beep followed by the time displayed on the LCD.

Should I try *8 [install code]

What 3 digits should I enter? and then what??

Normally I have no problems with technical difficulties. This one is frustrating!!

 

If you have wireless devices, the zone tamper could be at a transmitter. If there is a box tamper switch on the panel door, simply closing it, hitting the # key should get you to a normal prompt.

You should not have to mess with programming to clear a zone tamper.

 

I have no green ready light to allow me to arm the system. If I open the panel door again I get the same continuous alarm as if in a full armed condition. This is silenced by entering the master code. I don't then get a green ready light.

Therefore I cannot arm the system?

 

If you are not getting a ready light, they you have a zone open, or a trouble of some type. Have you tried *2? Have you tried # key to return to ready or display what's open? Those keypads use _slightly_ different keystrokes from the full LCD or LED keypads.

 

*2 and *3 don't tell me what the trouble is, it just remains blank. In the install manual there is a feature to lock out the end user from seeing some of the trouble / tamper conditions. This may be the case here.

I have checked the panel cover and the switch is fine as each time I reopen it the keypad registers a trouble light and a continuous alarm sound. It is the main box panel as until a kind Telephone engineer opened the panel I hadn't had any problems. He didn't touch anything else just opened the door.

The installers CODE on the internet points towards 2 factory defaults of 1500 or 5555. Should I try either of these, with *8?

Or as suspected in the first place am I resounded to waiting for and at the mercy of an engineer who will come in for 5 minutes and sting me for £85.00 ($120.00) There are so few parts to an alarm system it is frustrating. Is changing the keypad easy? One that provides a bit more information, and a bit more user friendly would be better or are they all designed to reduce the number of people who look after their own systems?

 

The keypad you have is the "universal" fixed LCD keypad. There is a better one with full alphanumeric. One thing you can try is simply disconnecting the box tamper zone and putting a resistor across the zone terminals (if your panel is set up to use resistors, if not, use a wire jumper).

The problem is that not seeing what you are seeing, we are relying on your description of the telltales. I honestly don't think that you have a programming issue, I think that there's some device in your house that needs resetting/closing.

If you want to try, the default install code for this model is 5555. Most likely it was changed by the installer. There is a way to completely default the panel, but then you have to completely reconstruct the program, and with DSC products, this can be a headache until you get a feel for their programming syntex.

 

With the help of an engineer, the way to fix the zone tamper and to reset the system. The following has to be used.

Master Code and Engineers code.

Sequence is:

*6 [****] (Master Code)
5
*8 [****] (Engineers Code - Default is 5555)
##

There should now be a green ready light if all the zones are closed and working properly.

I hope this may be of use to any one else with the same key pad (LCD 5501) and system. I have also dicovered that the system is the DSC 832 not the DSC 632 as I first thought.

 

_That_ explains much. The 632 (1555) shares many characteristics with the 832 (5010), but there are a number of feature and command differences.

That said, what he _actually_ did was enable downloading for one hour, then put the panel into program mode and then back out.

Any "fix" was done by the person at the other end of a telco line. It is possible that the tamper was set up originally so that it could not be cleared with a local user code (I've seen this done with commercial installations, as a 24 hour latching tamper).