Help! Oh and Happy new year!


  #1  
Old 12-31-08, 05:37 PM
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Exclamation Help! Oh and Happy new year!

Hello all, and as the sub says.. Happy New Year!

I have a bit of a problem, in my country most installers are well... slacks to put it one way and the installations are quite honestly disastrous. They have perfected the art of leaving things half done so you have to call them back all the time. So I have taken the installation to my own hands.[End of Bitterness]

So I have just installed an DSC 1832 control panel and a 5500 programmable lcd keypad. It works nice and dandy thus far with 4 motion sensors and 1 magnetic door sensor. My problem comes along when I try to connect the expansion board: a 5108 v2 I believe.

1. When I connect it I get an output voltage of 8 volts on each zone terminal/common, while on the main board I get around 6v when the zone is not connected but drops to 2.4v when I connect a zone. when I connect a zone to the expansion board it still reads 8v. and therefore the zone always appears open.

2. How do I check what software version I have installed on my control panel?

3. Do I always have to use a different partition when using and expansion module?

Thanks for the help!

Luis
 
  #2  
Old 12-31-08, 06:52 PM
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Did you use the zone resistors? If the main control is set to need them (the factory default) the expender will need them.

Don't get hung up on the voltages. The expander board simply supervises the zone with a different voltage range.

No you don't have to partition the system when you add an expander board.
 
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Old 12-31-08, 09:56 PM
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new troubles

Thanks for the first reply. Now i have another problem. I took off the resistors and disabled EOL resistors. Suddenly all the motion sensors appeared open and i get a very very low voltage (mV)instead of the average 2.4... Did i fry the sensors?

Also my control panel is continuously to select a partition in spite the fact i got rid of them. Thanks again and in advance.
Luis
 
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Old 01-01-09, 07:44 AM
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Did you set your keypad as "global"? (which doesn't mean what most people _think_ it means...)

The correct keypad address should be 1x, not 0x.

If you previously installed resistors, you need to remove them, since you turned off the resistor requirement.

Again, the voltage measurements are meaningless.

Your alarm loops should have a resistance of 5.6 k ohm (+/- 10-15%) if you use resistors; and should be a simple closed circuit if you disable the resistor requirement.
 
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Old 01-01-09, 08:20 AM
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If the sensor is neither at that resistance nor as a closed circuit it means that the sensor is damaged then? Thanks for the patience!
 
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Old 01-01-09, 08:59 AM
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Im getting reading of 330 k ohms across motion sensors...
 
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Old 01-01-09, 09:34 AM
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Are you trying to read across the alarm contact or the power input? Motion detectors are just a fancy relay, when all is said and done. There is no intelligence in them.

Simple test: Just disconnect the wires from the alarm contact at the motion detector end and short them together. If the zone closes, the odds are that you just wired something wrong at the motion detector end. Do _not_ do this with the power connection.

You are working with 12vdc. It is very difficult to actually damage one of these things. I think you are just having trouble wrapping your head around the idea that these are just simple, normally closed circuits.
 
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Old 01-01-09, 04:19 PM
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Turns out the sensors got fried after all... Not sure how but the power arrives to the sensor the led lights at spark-speed and there it goes off... It seems the the relay may be down. Hopefully I'll have better luckwith the next batch.. Thanks for all the help... Tommorow i'll re attempt using the expansion board
 
  #9  
Old 01-03-09, 08:54 AM
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A new question... I have a napco alarm system from about 20 years ago tha could double the number of zones from the panel by adding a resistance eol so you in fact get two different readings. Is this possible/recommended with the dsc 1832? Is it better to get expansion boards? Thanks!
 
  #10  
Old 01-03-09, 06:38 PM
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I prefer expander boards, personally, but if you only need a few more zones, the zone doubling trick works just fine.
 
 

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