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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 ?

Thanks for the reply. I'm guessing I’m just misinterpreting the attached? Aslong as the company who’s contracted to install the job is Bafe registered that covers it? BAFE-SP203-1-Version-8-0-Guidance-Note-Sub-Contractors.pdf

You don't need to be registered anywhere for anything if the company who is hiring you is registered, your representing them not yourself But would be handy if you have skilz lol

Evening All I have decided to go subbying after 15 years within the industry, and looking for some guidance in regards to installing fire alarms. If you are sub contracting to a company that are Bafe registered, does the sub contractor have to be Bafe registered in order to install?

Trim everything back and reconnect see what happens

Thank you, that's a very good bit of advice. Very logical and obvious when pointed out. Appreciate it

It has to connect to the cloud first though. When its first powered up it doesnt know what day of the week it is let alone the right time. A bit like you when your alarm clock goes off on a Thursday morning after youve been down the pub the night before for pool night

Red light= normally a fuse blown, or no battery connected. Disconnect everything at the PSU if it still shows red then you know its not any of the wiring causing the PSU issue. Check the backup battery. Im guessing from the state of thos connections its not been under a service agreement so the battery is probably over 5 years old and may be pulling the psu down

The potting looks like there is a crack round that varistor looking component, maybe water has got in... I'd still be investigating the Red "fault" light on the supply.