Scantronic I-On 40 Problem

[i-spark]

Hi all.

 

Just joined the forum as it appears to be full of well informed security alarm experts and I'm hoping that someone might be able to point me in the right direction with regard to a problem I am having with my Scantronic alarm.

 

I have a Scantronic i-on 40 with the I-kp01 control panel. The system was installed about 3 years ago and has been working fine during that time. Yesterday when the system was unset (just after being triggered by one of the kids) it didn't make its usual beep. On investigation I noticed that the date and time had reset to 2010. I checked the log and there seemed to be multiple zone trigger entries and also a Keypad 12v fail message and an Auxilliary 12v fail message. I set the alarm and then triggered it to check if it was working, but when the alarm went off the keypad display disappeared and then reset itself. I then went through an individual test in the menu and found that the keypad itself appears to be ok and the internal sounder works fine, however when I tested the external wired bell, the moment the bell sounded the keypad went off and reset. Nothing has changed with or near to the alarm setup since install. I have reread the manuals but there is no particular troubleshooting section for this problem and no explanation of the fault messages. I have called Coopers (Scantronic) directly and spoken to support but unfortunately they offered me little in the way of advice other than to do a generic installation check. 

 

If anyone could shed some light I would really appreciate it. I have some reasonable electronics knowledge and can call on a friend who is a certified electrician if need be.

 

Thx

 

Hugh

[sixwheeledbeast]

It could be a number of things.

I would suggest you need an alarm engineer.

 

Faulty Standby Battery.

Faulty detector or bell.

System Overloaded

[james.wilson]

Sounds like a fault on the bell is shorting something

[datadiffusion]

I had a problem early on by connecting 2 speakers rather than two (big house but no need for a big panel).

It later transpired only ONE is officially supported unlike earlier scanny panels (as every expander

supports one as well, and the 160 / 300 has two separate o/ps)

It was, as you say, quite cryptic at the time as 2 didn't feel like too many and there was no fault

shown as such, just the occasional reset on full test with alarm trigger which I thought was due to the

(non-findable) cable fault.

These panels seem pretty reliable so far (got called to one last month with Software V0. something and

hard plastic keys, reflashed to 4.03 and working fine!)

So check your currents in mA esp the speaker; although it could be the bell.

(p.s you're almost certainly getting the multiple sensor triggers only as the PIRs lost power and therefore went O/C)

[9651]

As mentioned bet the bell is overloading it when sounding. Could be faulty/full of water or whatever. I presume these have poly fuses rather than traditional ones?

[datadiffusion]

Yes they do, check speaker too as I say its VERY easy to overload; they seem to have included a driver/amp

perfectly capable of driving down to low ohms and drawing nearly 600mA when I had my little problem...

[i-spark]

Thx for the feedback. My very limited experience of alarm systems and basic logic suggested to me that it was a problem with the bell itself. One thing that the support guy at Coopers suggested was corruption of the software / system and maybe a default restore would solve the issue ... is that a likely scenario ?. Is it likely to cause this kind of problem ?. The system has been working fine for 3 years or so with nothing being changed at all, I figured that it might be something external that could have failed or shorted. If there was a permanent short on the bell, would that not error somehow prior to going off. Also, would the bell work at all if there was a short (the bell tweets for 1 second prior to restart).

[i-spark]

Oh ... one of the previous posts mentioned the possibility of the backup battery being an issue. Is this battery a rechargeable and does it tend to be an item that is replaced at set intervals ?. If the battery had given up, could that result in this situation ?.

[datadiffusion]

I'll be honest your description sounds like classic amps overload and exactly what I'd expect to see in the log for that from these panels...

 

Check, check and check again is what I'd recommend before you junk the board.

 

Might be best to get a pro in though and they can also update to latest v4.03 s/w

[i-spark]

Ok ... so I called in an Alarm company to check out the problem. After doing various tests it pointed to something wrong with the external siren unit. When a new unit was temporarily wired in, it worked fine. The units were swapped over and on inspection of the old one, there was what appeared to be a dead spider and some kind of fluff or nest like stuff on the back of the pcb. The guy suggested that the unit had done well for the amount of time it had been in use ( 14 years ). The backup battery was also drained so had that replaced as well.