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Two things of note here, if your panel is pulling over half an amp quiescent that seems quite high to me and also if your new battery is dropping to 12v under load I would suggest its not a good battery.

Most likely because you are activating the devices just before or during the setting procedure. Wireless devices will go to sleep for a short period after activation to conserve battery life. If you try triggering a device that has not activated recently you should find the system will respond almost immediately.

I'll see if I can find some charge/discharge curves. Presumably if the battery was sitting on a shelf in a store, it may have self-discharged somewhat. Not sure what the self-discharge rate is for lead acid, but 12.9 V would have indicated that it was fully charged, but maybe not. I guess there's some variability. The panel is trickle charging it at 22 mA. That figure was 38 mA for the 6 year old battery (which I thought was a Yuasa, but it was an Interlogix. I presume these are just badged and there are a limited number of battery manufacturers)

I’m after putting a new 12 V, 7 AH lead acid battery into my alarm panel. Off load voltage was 12.9 V at the battery terminals before fitting. A fully charged 12 V battery should read around 12.8 V. When I did a load test, with the panel and sensors pulling 0.55 A, the voltage eventually dropped to 12.0 V before I stopped the test after a few minutes (the voltage fell faster at first). Float charge voltage for a lead acid battery (and from a panel) is typically 13.8 V. So just wondering since the battery isn't charged in a three state mode by a panel like a normal charger would charge it (constant current, constant voltage and then trickle maintenance charge), how long typically does it take a new battery to fully charge? I've seen figures of 24 to 48 hours mentioned.

Bell delay? Or something?

Ive installed my self but it takes ages before it sets of the alarm and thats me walking by all the IR Beams and door contacts Does anyone know the most likely reason for the lengthy delay before the alarm sounds? maybe 1-3 minutes not timed it yet

Its unlikely anyone here would know it was a primarily DIY product, my best guess would be to change the wireless codes, very early wireless stuff allowed you to set codes so that it did not interfere with neighbours alarms and vica versa

Does anyone know what the switch pack on a infinite prime motherboard is for please

cqr used to have clear plastic & you could see them inside I use to find them inside cables upto 1m or so, I reckon they crawled in, & each time one crawled in behind the they;d move up more ? battery in sounder will last 2yrs or 20 yrs....

Battery not at fault, it was the piezo element. However HKC say the battery should be good for 5 years, and now it's 8 years. However I tested it, and it can still power the sounder for the 15 mins set by the jumper.

I thought something like that may have caused it. Blew the plastic horn out with an air compressor, but it didn't make any difference. There was some corrosion around where the leads were soldered onto the element (it's just a flat disc with a metal plate on one side and a metal coating on the other). Cleaning that didn't do anything either. So I reckon the crystal just cracks and can't vibrate properly.

pizeo's vibrate, thrips / thunder bugs or whatever climb inside stuff & don;t vibrate no more...

That's the one I salvaged the piezo element from, which is working fine now in the HKC one. So does anyone know whether 120 V AC is a standard voltage for these?

Didn't realise it was old bell , bin it now

120 V AC. Presumably that's RMS , because peak voltage is nearly 250 to 300 V. This is the waveform on a scope. Anyway I had a stroke of luck. My old sounder has the exact same piezo transducer so I'm going to use that. Hopefully it's the same voltage, but it looks totally identical. The HKC sounder is taking nearly 200 mA when sounding after I replaced the piezo element, which tallies with the 250 mA peak they give in the spec. Also the 6 V battery is still working fine. After 15 mins of alarming, voltage fell to 5.75 V.

No easy way to unlock it unfortunately the panel is over 15 years old and obsolete, its likely to have unreadable keypad pretty soon its a common problem with old Gardtech's

Most panels have NVM locking but it's down to the installation company as to if it's used. We don't provide defaulting information here as per our guidelines. It can be argued the programming is intellectual property of the installer. Locking would provide protection against others changing the system configuration then blaming the original installer for a FTO. The charge to come out to reset the codes means they have in writing they have transferred ownership of the system to the customer or their maintainer, it's important due to above. As it's a Gardtec 800 I'd say it's well past it's best and for the bin, just replace it and have done with it.

crazy question and i think i know what your all gonna say. but is there a way around the locked engineer code? on other panels you can fully reset everything with a specific link somewhere. just wondering if anyone knows a way on this panel. it's for a charity shop so they cant pay the silly prices the original installation company want to come out and put a code in (£200). worse case would be a new panel, but i was hoping you guys might beable to help out. i have done the option 1 9 #REMOVED#, which reset the engineer code back to #REMOVED', but when i try to get in it says its locked. Thanks in advance for any help guys. Phil

The piezo side is quite high voltage id be cautious. Just get a new one

Yes, that worked. The next thing is to open the transducer to see if anything can be fixed, probably not. Also I'll put a scope on the sounder output on the board to see what has happened. A cheap meter shows 77 V instead of 120 V, but that's possibly because the meter has a limited bandwidth. Alternatively one of the drive transistors/MOSFETS may have blown.

I'm thinking I need to connect 0V from the power supply to SAB Hold, because that's actually the negative power supply to the sounder. Then connect 0 V to to External Bell -, because that seems to be Trig - on the schematic.

I've taken my sounder off the wall and I'm checking it on my workbench. It's powered from a desk power supply set to 12 V, connected to the external bell input terminals. I would have thought it would activate with the back tamper open, but it didn't. I closed the back tamper for 4 seconds and opened it and it still didn't activate and tried the same with the battery connected. Shouldn't all of these tamper conditions and also open circuit holds activate the unit? If a burglar cuts the cable, shouldn't the 6 V battery activate it, or is it only edge triggered (i.e when the tampers were initially closed when the sounder was powered down and then opened that triggers it? ) In this case, how can I generate a false alarm? Which terminals do I need to connect?

There are two problems I think. When the panel is powered down and the battery disconnected, the sounder is barely audible, suggesting the battery is at fault. With everything powered up, the sounder volume randomly increases and decreases and has a "scratchy" sound, like when the volume control on a radio is bad. So like you suggested previously, possibly the piezo element at fault too. I'm going to open it up today.

Electrical part only right.....

your document appears to have a requirement for the installation work to be undertaken by an electrical contractor with nic eic or similar ?