Eircom Phonewatch alarm - failed sensor

Tenshot

Hi folks,

We have a house rented out to tenants down the country, with an Eircom Phonewatch Alarm which has been out of contract for a few years. It's still used as a standalone alarm.

The front door sensor has started giving trouble, and the tenants are reporting that they are being disturbed 4-5 times a night with a beeping sound which they can only stop by pressing Disarm on the remote. This happens even when the alarm isn't active.

I plan to visit on Saturday to try and resolve this, and would like to avoid multiple trips if possible. From a previous visit, I have some photos of the failed sensor and alarm panel. At that time, the panel was reporting a "front door sensor failed" voice message when I pressed Status.

Can anyone identify the manufacturer and model of this particular brand of Eircom panel? I know most of them are HKC but couldn't find a HKC panel that matched this one.

Also, the sensor is wireless. I presume if I replace it, I need to program in the new sensor to the panel. How straightforward is this? (A weblink to the appropriate user manual would be enough to get me going, I think.) Also, can anyone identify the sensor type from the photos, so that I am replacing like with like?

The tenant says they have replaced the battery, but it is still alerting. Presumably, they got the right kind of battery, but I will double-check. Do all wireless alarm sensors take the same sort of battery (12V mini alarm battery), or are there different battery types?

And finally, as a last resort, how easy is it to temporarily disable a zone/sensor if I need to just get the beeping to stop until we get out someone to sort it out?

Thanks for any assistance folks. I'm comfortable working on electrical stuff, but no specific alarm experience.

Photos follow:

altor

Hi Tenshot,

The alarm is a simon panel. These contacts have given problems in the past thats why there is a new type on the market. If you have replaced the battery in the sensor with the same type battery as in the photo its more than likely the sensor is faulty. It is very simple to replace plus learn the new sensor back in if you have the paper work off the alarm.

altor

Tenshot wrote: »

]

Just noticed the battery is upside down

Tim M-U

big enough sensor for what is is..

2011

Tim M-U wrote: »

big enough sensor for what is is..

Yeah, welcome to wireless!

altor

Tim M-U wrote: »

big enough sensor for what is is..

Generally they are bigger than wired components but it looks a lot bigger in this photo, it is only a contact for showing an opening of a door or window. The shock sensors are twice as big.

Tenshot

Thanks for all that detailed info Altor (and also for the PM) - really helpful! I've tracked down the full install & user guides for the GE Simon panel now, and it looks straight forward enough once I track down the paperwork for the alarm (that may yet prove to be the tricky bit!)

From reading the diagnostics in the manual, the status beeps go off every minute, unless silenced for four hours by pressing Status. So the tenants have presumably been living with this four-hour reminder to press Status for the last week or two -- I'm not surprised they're getting fed up by now!

Hope to visit this afternoon and get it all sorted. If it's as simple as inverting the battery, I'll be delighted. (I've asked the tenants to try that in the meantime, waiting to hear back.)

indie armada

if it turns out to be a faulty sensor or you cant get that one to work post back up and someone will sort you out with one. ive a few knockin around here and im sure altor has a few also. i got the batteries for those sensors before from an alarm wholesaler on the northside but they were silly money at the time. anyway if yer stuck gimme a shout and ill post one down to ye.

ps the batt is deffo upside down........there is a little + in the top right hand side of the battery cradle to indicate the polarity........altor was on the ball with that one.

altor

Tenshot wrote: »

Thanks for all that detailed info Altor (and also for the PM) - really helpful! I've tracked down the full install & user guides for the GE Simon panel now, and it looks straight forward enough once I track down the paperwork for the alarm (that may yet prove to be the tricky bit!)

From reading the diagnostics in the manual, the status beeps go off every minute, unless silenced for four hours by pressing Status. So the tenants have presumably been living with this four-hour reminder to press Status for the last week or two -- I'm not surprised they're getting fed up by now!

Hope to visit this afternoon and get it all sorted. If it's as simple as inverting the battery, I'll be delighted. (I've asked the tenants to try that in the meantime, waiting to hear back.)

Thats exactly what it will do, drives people mad. If you drop the lid on the panel, enter your user code, option 42 is the volume control. Bringing it down to 1 should make it more bearable. There is no way to get into engineering to delete the sensor without the engineering code. It is easy enough to default to factory settings but you would need to know what your doing to reprogram the alarm. Hopefully it wont come to that.

If you need any help, just ask..

Tenshot

Made it out there this morning (tenants were out all day yesterday). Unable to track down paperwork -- I thought it was in the house, but it turns out not, so will need to search for it again.

Battery was in the correct way when I arrived (Tenants had inverted it) and panel was reporting "Front door sensor alarm". Opening the front door made status report "Front door sensor alarm. Front door sensor open." so the magnetic element attached to the front door was working okay, it was the vibration sensor that was faulty.

From looking at the PCB, I located what looked like a vibration element (small aluminium enclosed tube, a bit like a capacitor, to the left of the main chip in the photo above). I shorted the two pins of this together, and ... everything now working properly again!

(I've glossed over 20 minutes spent experimenting with this, not realising that the panel would continue to report "front door sensor alarm" for as long as I pressed Status, until I entered the disarm code, even though Status was correctly reporting the door switch as on/off according to the state of the door, without entering the disarm code. Only figured that out when I took apart the back door sensor and found I had to enter the disarm code to get it back to normal as well.)

So the tenants are beepless for now, and happy once more, and I've confirmed that the alarm still goes off on entry to the hall (due to motion sensors / magnetic switch). Still need to replace entry sensor, but less critical now, so I'll have a good look for the engineering code.

When I find it, I'll definitely take Altor or Armada up on their offer of a replacement battery/sensor if it still stands; much appreciated guys.

indie armada

firstly there is no vibration/inertia head in that sensor, it is a micro contact only. ive no idea what the component is that you think is an inertia, my guess is it is a capacitor or a chip resistor.
when you press the staus button and the panel tells you the events you should press the disarm button once to clear the info from the log.
at this point if there are any existing faults or open zones the panel will say so, if not the status light will go out providing all zones are closed.
also i found with the simon panel that sometimes when battery faults occur and are fixed, you sometimes have to put the panel in and out of walk test to clear the fault, perticularly if its the back up batt in the panel that you have changed.
ive a couple of contacts here and some batts and ive no use for them so dont be stuck for one

altor

Tenshot wrote: »

Made it out there this morning (tenants were out all day yesterday). Unable to track down paperwork -- I thought it was in the house, but it turns out not, so will need to search for it again.

Battery was in the correct way when I arrived (Tenants had inverted it) and panel was reporting "Front door sensor alarm". Opening the front door made status report "Front door sensor alarm. Front door sensor open." so the magnetic element attached to the front door was working okay, it was the vibration sensor that was faulty.

From looking at the PCB, I located what looked like a vibration element (small aluminium enclosed tube, a bit like a capacitor, to the left of the main chip in the photo above). I shorted the two pins of this together, and ... everything now working properly again!

(I've glossed over 20 minutes spent experimenting with this, not realising that the panel would continue to report "front door sensor alarm" for as long as I pressed Status, until I entered the disarm code, even though Status was correctly reporting the door switch as on/off according to the state of the door, without entering the disarm code. Only figured that out when I took apart the back door sensor and found I had to enter the disarm code to get it back to normal as well.)

So the tenants are beepless for now, and happy once more, and I've confirmed that the alarm still goes off on entry to the hall (due to motion sensors / magnetic switch). Still need to replace entry sensor, but less critical now, so I'll have a good look for the engineering code.

When I find it, I'll definitely take Altor or Armada up on their offer of a replacement battery/sensor if it still stands; much appreciated guys.

As indie said it is only a contact for a front door. There is no shock sensor part in this unit. If you open the front door the status light should come on. If you press the status button with the door open it will show it open and when you close the door the light should go out.

You have broken the contact if you did join anything together, the reed for the contact is in the glass case. It works by closing when the magnet is beside it plus opens the reed when the magnet is taken away.

When the electricity has gone off it will give you a low battery fault. The simon panel needs to be put into walk test to clear the backup battery fault. If you want to test the sensors on the alarm drop the lid, enter your user code, press test, press done. This will let you test the sensors on the alarm. The panel will beep to indicate the signal strength.

Tenshot

altor wrote: »

As indie said it is only a contact for a front door. There is no shock sensor part in this unit.

Hmm... a bit confused now. The magnetic sensor definitely appeared to be working okay -- I could hear a gentle "click" as I moved the magnet in and out of range, and as mentioned previously, the System Status was correctly reporting whether or not the door was open (once everything was re-assembled).

However, regardless of door state, I was getting a separate "Front door sensor alarm" message, every time I pressed Status, and regardless of whether or not Disarm had been recently pressed. (This was before I started modifying things.)

What would cause this message? From reading the manual, there seems to be a separate low battery warning message. (I also noticed that the sensor seems to hold a bit of charge for a number of seconds, because removing the battery, then releasing the tamper switch I had been holding in, still resulted in a tamper alarm going off. Stopped that happening by shorting out the battery terminals with a key, since it was getting a bit annoying!)

God knows what that component I disabled was for -- maybe a simple micro capacitor intended to smooth the output from the reid switches, perhaps, to reduce "bounce"?

I guess the real test will be if I get a call from the tenants tomorrow to say it's broken again! I gave the casing a good few thumps after I put it all back together, to make sure I hadn't accidentally jogged something back to life with all my fiddling about, and it remained stable (which is to say pretending it was working okay again).

As the old saying goes: beware of programmers with screwdrivers...!

indie armada

the reason why the status was saying front door alarm was because the last event that caused the system to activate was the front door and it was just stored in the log until you cleared it by pressing disarm.
or it could just be the system telling you of the tamper on the front door from taking on and off the lid.
the sensors must have a cap in them cause i remember an engineer tellin me over the phone to short out the batt terminals when i had problems learning sensors.

altor

Tenshot wrote: »

From reading the manual, there seems to be a separate low battery warning message.

It could be the battery in the control panel. It will say system low battery if this is what it is referring to.

If it was a low battery in one of the sensors it will tell you zone 1 front door low battery or what ever zone and name of the detector.

Tenshot

altor wrote: »

It could be the battery in the control panel. It will say system low battery if this is what it is referring to.

If it was a low battery in one of the sensors it will tell you zone 1 front door low battery or what ever zone and name of the detector.

What I meant was that if the issue was related to a low battery, I would have expected to get a specific low-battery warning -- since I didn't hear that, presumably the battery is fine.

(Both the sensor battery and the control panel backup battery were replaced quite recently, so happy that they're not an issue.)

I think armada is on the money: the "front door sensor alarm" I was getting was just a ghost of the original failure.

As I was writing this, I pulled my mail and -- tenants report that though it was working fine after I left (about 2pm), it failed again at 2am. Crap!

So looks like I'll be needing a replacement sensor after all; I'll pm to discuss :-(

altor

Tenshot wrote: »

What I meant was that if the issue was related to a low battery, I would have expected to get a specific low-battery warning -- since I didn't hear that, presumably the battery is fine.

(Both the sensor battery and the control panel backup battery were replaced quite recently, so happy that they're not an issue.)

I think armada is on the money: the "front door sensor alarm" I was getting was just a ghost of the original failure.

As I was writing this, I pulled my mail and -- tenants report that though it was working fine after I left (about 2pm), it failed again at 2am. Crap!

So looks like I'll be needing a replacement sensor after all; I'll pm to discuss :-(

Yes he is correct 100% The way it works is when the status light is on you listen to the events reported to the panel and then press disarm to acknowledge you have listened to all the events.

The event your getting is a supervisory alarm meaning the sensor is not reporting to the alarm at the time specified.

If you need a sensor let us know..

indie armada

altor wrote: »

Yes he is correct 100% The way it works is when the status light is on you listen to the events reported to the panel and then press disarm to acknowledge you have listened to all the events.

The event your getting is a supervisory alarm meaning the sensor is not reporting to the alarm at the time specified.

If you need a sensor let us know..

its just one of those things with the simon, its a great little system but can take some people a while to get used to each button having 2 or more functions and then with the front face down a complete differant ball game. its like they tried to simplify it and in doing that made it more difficult..........amybe thats why we used to sell so many fobs :rolleyes:

altor

indie armada wrote: »

its just one of those things with the simon, its a great little system but can take some people a while to get used to each button having 2 or more functions and then with the front face down a complete differant ball game. its like they tried to simplify it and in doing that made it more difficult..........amybe thats why we used to sell so many fobs :rolleyes:

I agree but most users only use it to set/unset the alarm. Simple enough if your shown how to. The engineer side to the panel is not meant for the and user but that too is easy when you know how. The keyfob was always a good seller but not very secure if in the wrong hands.

Tenshot

Just to close off the thread:

indie sorted me out with a replacement sensor (thank you!) and I headed back down the country on Saturday, sans engineering code, to reprogram the system from scratch.

Turned out to be surprisingly straightforward. The installation manual had the key sequence to reset to factory settings, and after that, it was just a matter of going through all the sensors one at a time, adding them back in. The only slightly tricky bit was figuring out how to open the cover on the motion sensors to trigger them to be added, and remembering to choose an appropriate zone for each sensor. (You'd be lost without the installation manual to hand, for that.)

I left all the other settings at default, except for the siren timeout which I bumped up from 4 minutes to 15 minutes. No dialler to configure, since the alarm is not being used in monitored mode; I might set that up again in the future.

So thanks again to Indie & Altor for their help getting this sorted! Tenants are finally sleeping all the way through the night again :-)

indie armada

glad you got it sorted. once the sensors are programmed into the right groups, ie 10 for exit entry, 13 for the sensors, 17 for the access pirs and so on you should be fine. there are a few other options you could of changed if you defaulted the panel but the fact its not monitored it shouldnt cause any hassle.

delly

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