Gardtec 800 Kypad <x> Tamper Check

[Adrian2009]

Hoping someone can help as over the weekend our Gardtec 800 series alarm has gone a bit haywire.

Two nights ago at about 3am in the morning our alarm went off with an error message. Sorry not sure what it was now but when the alarm went off it was NOT set i.e. it was turned off. Anyway after entering the code we turned off the bell and all was fine; the alarm went back to its UNSET state.

Now at this point I should point out that I'd been painting that evening and have continued to do so over the rest of the weekend. Though I can't find any internet posting related to paint fumes we assumed the alarm going off was related to that.

However now I'm less sure. Throughout this afternoon the alarm has been going off intermittently with the error KYPAD <X> TAMPER CHECK. The number <X> seems to change from 1 to 4. The controller is a Gardtec ACE (flip down bottom). What's weird is prior to it going off it will beep intermittently the screen will go haywire - random half joined characters scroll across the display as if the LCD has gone crazy. When it's doing that it doesn't always recognise our user code either - so we struggle to turn it off.

I'm afraid the alarm was fitted by the previous occupants (over 3 years ago) and we've no idea who fitted it. Gardtecs offices are closed for Easter so they haven't been able to help.

I'm over in epping in essex if anyone is able to offer any suggestions or if we need to call someone in has a recommendation.

Really hoping this doesn't go on throughout the night ;-)

[james.wilson]

sounds like you have a tamper problem on one of the keypads.

What equipment you been painting around?

But alarms will always fail when they are not serviced regulally. Also when not serviced you have no-one who can support it out of hours. And you end up in the situation you are now in.

Chances are it will continue, and it will happen again at some point until its fixed.

You need to do 2 things IMO

1. Fix it for now. Either you can do this yourself but be careful not to do any further damage, or you call out a professional engineer/company. Obviously here i would recommend an approved co in your area.

2. Get it on a service contract. This will get it serviced regually to prevent as many issues as possible, and will give you a person to call in the event of an emergency. Approved co's have to offer an emegency out of hours support callout service.

ps there are also some very good unapproved co's out there

James

[Monty]

sounds like you have a problem with tamper faults this side of the system is monitored all the time ie even when not set you could try omitting the noted zones as it may have been set up to omit the zone and tamper then get an engineer to look at after easter week end will be more cost effective

[lawandorder]

sounds like you have a tamper problem on one of the keypads.

What equipment you been painting around?

But alarms will always fail when they are not serviced regulally. Also when not serviced you have no-one who can support it out of hours. And you end up in the situation you are now in.

Chances are it will continue, and it will happen again at some point until its fixed.

You need to do 2 things IMO

1. Fix it for now. Either you can do this yourself but be careful not to do any further damage, or you call out a professional engineer/company. Obviously here i would recommend an approved co in your area.

2. Get it on a service contract. This will get it serviced regually to prevent as many issues as possible, and will give you a person to call in the event of an emergency. Approved co's have to offer an emegency out of hours support callout service.

ps there are also some very good unapproved co's out there

James

I agree with redbull.

The fact that the display is showing keyapd tamper and sometimes shows a 1 and sometimes a 4 coupled with the display breaking up suggests either a faulty keypad or a problem with the cable between the keypad and the main control unit.

The 1 or 4 indicates which keypad is causing the problem but if you only have one kepad this is a data fault of some sort. (IMHO)

[Adrian2009]

Redbull - The room I was painting doesn't have any sensors in it the nearest one is in the hallway outside. Though it is more or less underneath the main Alarm box in the attic. And your point is well taken about service contracts and callout numbers. I have to admit we rarely use the alarm because we've been under the impression our cat will set the sensors off (after reading a bit more about alarms over the last few hours I'm not sure this is necessarily true - I guess it depends on the sensors we have). So getting somone in to service an alarm we view as being turned off never occurred to us. But believe me the difference between an alarm being off and an alarm being unset has been driven home very well this afternoon!

Lawandorder - You're right there's only one keypad downstairs in the lounge (unless it counts the panic button in the main bedroom).

Monty mentioned something about omitting items from the tamper zone - is there a way to do that with the main control panel? If there is I'm afraid I don't know how. When I looked at the control box earlier it did have the option to omit zones but I presumed this was the sensors that make up the alarm when it is SET.

Is there a way to disconnect the control box so the alarm won't go off again until I can call someone out (preferably not at 9pm+ on Easter Sunday!).

[Rulland]

Approved co's have to offer an emegency out of hours support callout service.

ps there are also some very good unapproved co's out there

James

At last-someone who realises that there are 'unapproved' people out there that do adhere to the latest regs and are willing to attend call outs within the stated times etc- Redbull.

I appreciate it-And no I'm not being sarcastic!.

Richard.

[Guest RJBsec]

Did you do any sanding down, paintstripping, using a stanley knife etc prior to painting ... anything that could have damaged/pulled a cable?

Omitting a zone will not stop a tamper fault, it needs to be taken out of use by an engineer to prevent tamper faults.

[Adrian2009]

RJB - I did do some sanding down of the skirting boards, windowsill and door frame and I have to admit I don't know where exactly the alarm wires are running it's all hidden behind the walls but I didn't experience any problems when I did the work a couple of days ago.

The control box is right beside our front door and I'm thinking the internal tamper protection might have worked it's way loose - is this feasible? The last time it went off was a couple of hours ago so I'm being careful not to make any unnecessary movements near the box incase it goes again! Not really sure what else I can do at this stage.

I believe I have the master code which may or may not also be the engineer code. Am I right in thinking that if I had the engineering code I could enter EN (engineering) mode and the control box tamper alarm will not go off.

Would I be right in thinking that in that state the alarm wouldn't work but neither would it go off at random intervals i.e. its a state I could leave it in until I called out an engineer after the holidays.

[chexsec]

In my opinion this is a bit more complicated than a conventional tamper fault. On the 800 series the number of keypads is programmed by the engineer. If this system has only one keypad then the message "keypad 2 tamper check" should never appear as these messages are generated within the keypad and single keypad system will have the onboard jumper set at 1.

The random characters across the display are another clue. You must have got paint or water or something wet inside the keypad.

Take the cover off the keypad and dry it out, it may be ok after that, otherwise a new keypad will be required.

Edit:

Beat me to the mouse button

The master code is not the same as the engineer code.

As you refer to engineer mode as EN it sounds like you have an led keypad. If you need to replace it do yourself a favour and use an LCD they are interchangeable and make the 800 much easier to work with.

The alarm will not work in it's present state but you could try forcing a keypad tamper by removing the kepad cover this will stop repeated tamper faults (or should do, but remember this keypad is not behaving as it should)

Before anyone says it. I know........how can you have "keypad 2/3/4 tamper check" on anLED keypad........

[Adrian2009]

First let me say thank you to everyone for the prompt responses.

As I mentioned earlier the control panel seemed to react badly to vibrations. If I walked past it the vibrations from the floor appeared to cause the display to start scrolling random characters and it would omit the occassional beep.

Shortly after my last post (10:30ish) my wife came home and the control panel decided to go haywire again. After about a minute of beeping and random characters being displayed the alarm went off again. Unfortunately this time the control panel simply wouldn't accept our User code and allow it to be turned off. When the random characters were scrolling the code doesn't seem to be accepted.

Obviously this was a bit of a problem.

As I didn't appear to have many options I opened and closed the control panel to check if the tamper spring or keypad was out of alignment, but to no avail.

My wife being slightly less tolerant of the situation than I decided more decisive action was required and decided that as we can't get it turn off we might as well disconnect the bell (the one inside the house - not the one outside). This turned out to be worringly simple to open up and pull out the wires - silence followed. It seems only the internal bell had been ringng not the external one, the control panel was still not accepting our code, displaying random characters and omitting fairly quiet beeps but we thought we could probably live with that.

Of course it was not to be that simple as about 30 seconds later the external bell triggered. Seeing that we'd gone this far (and the keypad was still not working) I decided we might as well go all the way. So turned all the power off to the house, opened up the main control unit, disconnected the mains supply and the backup battery from the unit. Crossed my fingers and then about 10 seconds later silence...

... though it solved the problem I did think turning off the alarm was just a little too easy. It really shouldn't be you know. I had read earlier in the day that doing the above would disable the alarm but my understanding was that the alarm should still continue for about 20 mins after you did. In this case that didn't happen at all.

We decided to keep the power to the house off until the morning incase there was a seperate mains power supply to the bell. It was quite late and we felt our neighbours had been disturbed enough. As it happened there wasn't.

Chexsec - I have to admit I don't know if the keypad is LED or LCD, I don't remember seeing the EN menu option but I had read on one of the Gardtec pdfs that this would be something to look out for (it may not have been applicable to my model though). I never did have the chance to find out if the option existed or not. In terms of water or paint in the keypad it's unlikely simply because the room being painted was on the opposite side of the house on a different floor and before it first went off no-one had touched it for a while - I think it may simply be coincidence and one of the components within the unit failed.

So anyway thanks again to everyone that helped.