Eugene's DIY Den

External bell was working fine. It's an HKC SABB bell according to the installation leaflet, not sure if there's additional model number codes, will check. Internal sounder is wireless, an HKC RF-Echo, what do you meam by "internal sound", the alarm sound?

I have been doing some insulation installation, so cables have been moved around a bit. However if a core broke, wouldn't I know about it? E.g a report of a tamper fault or the bell would sound due to loss of 12V, ground or trigger? Hopefully if an internal sounder is installed, it doesn't disable the external one? That would be silly.

Bell delay is 0.

I installed an internal sounder last year which works fine. However I recently discovered that my external sounder isn't working. When I do a bell and light test 0#9, it checks out ok. I can't remember whether I disabled the sounder when I was working on the panel last year, is there a setting in the menu which enables external bell, internal sounder or both? I can't seem to find it. The external bell timer is set to the default 15 minutes.

55 seconds by default according to the manual, however the panel starts beeping a few seconds after loosing power and when I enter the code it tells me about the fault. I may have changed the setting or maybe this is the reporting delay before an SMS is sent?

In the SMS - Phone options menu: Report alarm yes Report system fault yes Report device yes Report test yes All the others are set to no. Ok, they don't mention it in the GSM unit installation manual, I'll check the panel manual.

I don't get any SMS notification on mains failure.

I've just installed a HKC GSM - Q unit in my panel. SMS options allow the reporting of "System Faults". I thought this might include mains failure, but it doesn't when the option is set to "yes". Is a "system fault" loss of battery power to the board and some other things?

On older "dumber" panels, would it have been less than this?

Yes, I'm in Ireland. I presume firmware upgrades can be installed via an RS232 serial connection to a laptop or similar, but you have to be a professional installer to download them from the manufacturer's website. I'm curious though what constitutes an alarm condition on a sensor. I.e how long contacts have to be open in order to trigger the panel. If this was relatively long, it could make the panel more immune to transients. A magnetic contact/ PIR contact would probably open for 100ms. A transient could be shorter, but the software might detect it if it's scanning everything rapidly. On a couple of occasions with my old panel, a zone triggered with the panel armed when I pulled out a mains plug. The alarm cable was quite close to the mains cable though.

Not sure, it's two years old. Why do you ask?

I notice since I installed my new SW 10-70 panel, I haven't had any false alarms. Separate tampers for each zone, so the sum of series resistances is less (11 sensors plus junction boxes, bell box, keypads etc). Maybe the immunity against transients spikes and bad connections due to tarnished tamper connections in junction boxes is better?

Just belt-and-braces.

Set the PIR up on a zone an excluded it from my part sets, so all's well. Thanks for the help!

So are points 50 to 59 then already mapped/hardwired to zone 5 and any point that activates, triggers an alarm on that zone? The manual is very confusing about this and talks about "mapping a point onto a zone".

Ok, I sort of understand this. I think I'll just add the two PIRs in the zone space above the 10 hardwireable zones (keeping the remaining unconnected ones as spares). So presumably once the PIRs are setup as "logical"/wireless zones, I can walk test them? Also what's the advantage of using points rather than zones?

Yes I added it as a point, but firstly can I add it to my existing wired zone (I want to be able to turn off all PIRs, wired and wireless when partially arming. I know I can have separate zones for wired and wireless PIRs, but I'd like to keep them together) and secondly if I add a second PIR, how can the two PIRs be grouped together as a single zone?

I added it to point number 50 (the first one)., and it now triggers an alarm ok. The mystery is how to add it to a zone. James Wilson above suggests it can be a point or a zone but not both, but the instructions suggest that points can be added to zones. Maybe that's just an error. They also say that the reason for this is to conserve zones, suggesting that each added RF device would be on a separate zone. However later they say the device can be on any of the 70 zones (it doesn't have to be one of the physical 10 zones on an unexpanded panel). They talk about "mapping" onto zones, but there's no mention of this in the installation manual (only mapping outputs).

I selected ADD&Id:RF Points from the ADD & ID RF Devices menu and it scanned and found the device and it now has an RF ID (told me to close the tamper also which I did). Is there another sub option in that menu where it asks what zone to assign to?

Yes, my local friendly electrical store.

So I just go to the options for that point and assign to a zone there?

It's assigned to/into/as a Point. The blurb that came with the sensor suggested "it would be best to add and ID your RF-PIR's (sic) into Points (of which there are 40) first before you assign them to zones". Neither the manual for the panel nor the PIR manual show how to do this.

...and secondly if I have a zone configured as a non-EOL type (two wired PIRs on it currently), can I add a wireless PIR to that zone?

I have setup a wireless PIR and as recommended, added it into a point. How do I now assign it to a zone?

Ok, I suppose that's the idea of the walk test to check whether the panel is responding to sensors, rather than arming and checking for an alarm on each sensor. I've just installed my wireless internal sounder. In the menu, I discovered there's an entry/exit setting in "options". Is this for generating a tone on entry/exit?