Eugene's DIY Den

If remanence is the cause it should be possible to demagnetise using a hand held demagnetising tool.

I replaced three contacts which didn't reliably open every time a window was opened during a test. Tapping some of the contacts worked and they'd open a few times, but would then get sticky again. I'll probably have to replace them in another few years again, that's as long as they last. All contacts that give trouble are on windows that never open. Two theories as to why. One: The few mA of current flows when contacts are closed for months or years causes a build up of material that permanently causes the contacts to grip together. Even if they have stuck together and tapping releases, there'

No, they're just simple reed switches with magnets. Problem is I have 16 of them wired in series, so identifying which one triggered would be a problem. However I have a radiator located under a window behind curtains and if heat was trapped and caused a large temperature increase, this may be the issue if the magnet/contact spacing is too great and the magnet is weakening at that contact. However all the 16 sensors have a gap of a cm or so, but the alarm is installed 4 years and this is the first time I've had a false alarm on this zone.

My HKC10W70 panel activated at 2.30 am and sent me three SMS messages. The first was the the alarm zone activated, the next was "alarm gross" and the third told me I had unset the alarm. What does "alarm gross" mean. I don't think I've ever seen that before on alarm activation. The cause of the alarm activating was a contact opening. Usually I have lots of trouble with these sticking on windows I never open rather than opening spontaneously, even if I replace with new ones.

Managed to get the mobile company to give me a temporary password this morning to login to my account. An agent from the skeleton staff they had on late last night didn't know this was possible and insisted I had to take the SIM out and put it in a handset.

If for instance I had to power down the board and disconnect the panel battery, or trigger an alarm by activating a sensor.

You mean hot plugging the GSM board? What about the the contacts on the SIM being misaligned during insertion?

Quick question. I asked over a year ago about disabling the external sounder when I'm working on the alarm and you told me that this isn't an option in the engineer's menu, but I can just program the ext. bell to be something different. How do I do this? (I can probably figure it out from the diagram in the installation guide, but you guys are familiar with this stuff).

Ok, thanks will try that. Yes, it's an Irish one.

Is it possible for this unit to display codes sent to it by SMS on the alarm panel's LCD or get them relayed to a second handset to avoid this issue?

So I forgot the password for logging into my the online account for my mobile number (I wanted to check credit) and I did "forgot password" which unfortunately sends a validation code to my SIM which is in the GSM unit. So I'm going to have to take it out and put it into a handset to get the code to change the password online. Really frustrating. When I installed the GSM unit after installing my alarm, I think I put the SIM in before I powered the GSM unit up or even the alarm board. Question is can I just pull the SIM out now with the GSM unit powered up or could it cause damage? Is it suffi

So basically this message is normal and not a fault?

So I'm still getting an "entry fault" SMS message when I open my back door and allow the entry delay to time out and the panel to activate an alarm. Is this a normal message, or due to a real fault caused by e.g. bouncing contacts and not a single clean opening of the reed switch? Wiring is good. I get three messages, "Alarm", "Entry fault", "Unset". I only expect two of these. Sometimes I get the problem with my front door too. The door and jamb are stuck and I have to shake the door to get it open, so the reed switch would alternatively open and close multiple times. I think maybe this

There's no movement of the sensors though, they're well fixed. What I'm wondering is what exactly "entry fault" means.

Connections are perfect, I always spend ages making them. No corrosion. Fault wasn't a tamper fault.