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Monte Carlo

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Posts posted by Monte Carlo

  1. For those that have never seen them, allow me to introduce you to "The flag cell" (1st picture) They are like a "Torch battery" only much bigger, and were 1.4v (I think some were 1.5v ?)

    Some alarms ran entirely on these, no power supply, just a bunch of these in the panel. (2nd Picture) Over time when power supplies were used for the panel, they still relied on (What is now known as) End of line cells, these were often found in the most obscure places (Which always took ages to find) but were always to be found in these custom-made battery box holders (3rd Picture)

    The pictures are not all from the same house, but there was one person who refused to upgrade her alarm and she used to supply the batteries for us, and no, we are not talking late 70s, one was still working  in 2001 (When I took the picture)

    Believe it or not, these cells are still made today (2022) and they are £17.40 each

     

     

    Flag cell.jpg

    Flag box.jpg

    Panel.jpg

    • Upvote 2
  2. From new, the "something under the coin cell" was infront of said cell.

    The holder is round, and the cell is held in place by a "clip" under this clip was a thin piece of plastic that said remove before use. The clip was actually a terminal that connected to the -ve of the cell, so If there is nothing there..................

    But if you want to check, keep the panel powered up, and flip the cell out, just don't lose it.

  3. 50 minutes ago, Mark_T said:

    as in the event of a fire alarm I think it would be helpful to see the location with a quick glance.

     

    Not really, as it is an intruder alarm, not a fire alarm, so that means it does not comply with any fire regulations whatsoever. When intruder panels first started  having a "Fire" option, I did think it was a good idea, but now since I have seen too many smoke detectors in the wrong place and not enough sounders, I do not think they are a good idea, as the customer is under the impression they have a fire alarm, which they do not.

  4. 15 hours ago, al-yeti said:

    It's a trigger tho not supplying current ?

     

    I see. (Correct me if  I am wrong ?)

    You are thinking that as the panel terminal is listed as "Trigger" you are saying "When the trigger operates what ever it is connected to (Strobe in this case) will operate, and in so doing it will draw its current from the supply to the device (Sounder in this case) not draw its power via the trigger?"

     

    It is possible to do as you say, a typical example is the Master blaster, 12v is used to trigger it, but it draws its current from the mains supply it has.

     

    ..............Back to the Odyssey X. It is up to the designer of any sounder how it actually works, so short of getting one and testing it, we will never know for sure. Back in the day, when you had to make your bell box up (And it had a real bell inside it ?) and you bolted the strobe on too, the strobe often went back on its own pair (It only needed one wire, but often a pair was used) they did draw quite a lot of current 500+mA

    But one thing is for sure, some panels they have outputs (The Galaxy does) some (few) have triggers. I suspect that they are all OUTPUTS meaning you can draw upto X amount of current through them.

     

     

  5. The original strobe (Xenon flash tube) did draw a lot of current for what it was, in some cases this would be too much for the "output" transistor so it was suggested a relay be used, but with most modern strobes being LEDs, it is not a problem. (And even then, most bell box xenon strobes were feeble)

  6. Not required. We used masking tape and varnish on lead foil which had no sticky side. What a performance that was ?, clean the window with meths on a rag, mask the area, apply varnish wait for it to go tacky, then apply foil, then varnish again. When this stuff came out, it had adhesive on one side, so it was just a case of clean, stick and done, no varnish required.  One customer complained, no varnish, went back, varnished it (Customer is always right, even when they are wrong) week later had to remove all foil and varnish (Good old window scraper) someone put a key across the foil, nice gouge out of it. He was paying by the hour? Never did use varnish again, ever.

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