Reviving A Dead Panel – Tech Talk #9
If you get an email notice or a phone call from the central station of a Low Battery from the Panel, it will likely be dead within 24 hours turning your entire security system into a wheel chock. Emergently you can replace them with (4) readily available D size Alkaline 1.5 volt batteries until you can source or order a set from us of the SAFT D size (LSH 20) 3.6 volt lithium-thionyl chloride (Li-SOCl2) high energy density batteries.
When replacing the batteries in a dead head-end panel (or any battery-operated device) always observe polarity! If your panel has been dead for over 24 hours, you will have the additional requirement of forcing all the peripheral devices to re-establish their RF connection to the head-end. After the panel has been dead for over 24 hours, the peripheral devices (cameras, keypad, prox tag reader, and siren) stop making the effort to “find” the dead panel and need to be stimulated to do so. Start with the keypad: all you do is press the right or left arrow key and you will see the keypad red LED briefly rapid flash while it gets reconnected. The LCD keypad display will then show date, time, and panel status when it is connected to the head-end panel, and ********xx********* when it is not connected. To save time, get into the Maintenance menu and then select Range Test to test all the other devices. If a device test shows Radio Problem instead of 1/9, 2/9, 3/9 etc., then you MUST manually trigger that device.
The prox tag reader can be triggered by presenting a prox tag to the reader, the LED on the prox tag reader will rapidly flash as it reconnects. Each camera has a button located between the Fresnel PIR lens and the camera lens that can be quickly pressed and released with a small object to rapidly flash the camera LED and reconnect. Lastly, the siren/strobe has a very small hole located on the left lower side of the housing that you stick a pin through to trigger a switch to cause the strobe light to rapidly flash, reconnecting to the panel.
Don’t forget to correct the date and time as discussed earlier in Videofied Tech Talk #1.