I have a vista 10SE wireless system that came with the house that I just bought. Its currently hooked up to a monitoring company but I' still haven't been able to use it. . Two of my wireless sensors are reporting faults. (Fault 13 kitchen window) and (fault 19 bedroom window). I'm having a hard time getting a technician out because of my work schedule and the alarm company does not send technicians over the weekend. I managed to have him walk me thru some steps thru the phone.

He initially had me reset the whole thing and it worked for few hours and it came back with the same faults. I've tried putting in the code and pressing "off" several times but it does not seem to clear it. He finally had be bypass the zone 13 in the kitchen and reset the system. Again it worked for a few hours and is now back to reporting "fault zone 19 bedroom window". Obviously the fault 13 is no longer showing since its been removed.

Before it was deleted from the zone, I pulled out the cover off the sensor in my kitchen window to check the battery. At the time it did not make any beeping noise at all. The alarm tech is telling me that this is probably a bad sensor. Does this mean that the wireless sensor itself is dysfunctional? The one in my bedroom does make the beeping sound when the cover is removed. I was thinking about purchasing a sensor from eBay and replacing the one in the kitchen and adding it back into the zone. I might do this for the other sensor as well if replacing the battery does not work.

Would this be a good method of trying to resolve it? How do I go about adding a Zone or resetting the system after I replace the battery? Does it automatically register and clear the code after battery replacement? In addition I want to add a second motion detector to the house.. Will this be possible to do? I would really like to try to do this myself if it’s possible. Any help would be helpful. Thanks in advance.

 

Ademco wireless is kinda peculiar in how they handle battery replacement. First, once the battery is exhausted beyond a certain point, the transmitter completely shuts down, so there is no tamper indication once you take the cover off.


Once you replace the battery, and replace the cover, then you have to enter the user code as if you are disarming the system [code + 1 (off)], twice.

You can get the user manual from the Honeywell/Ademco website.

If you don't have at least one 2-line alpha keypad, adding new devices can be a lot tricky (see the post with the Safewatch 2000, which uses the same programming process). It also depends on which version of the wireless reciever you have, and how much of it's capacity is left.

On the whole, I'm guessing that your most likely issue is batteries, right now. If the battery change solves your immediate problem, then you might want to gradually change out the rest of your batteries in the other transmitters.