Actually On Topic Question

this may sound crazy, but look for "Cricket bits"

this time of year, we use to have nutty behavior with remote processing unit, (keypads, expanders, remote relays)

each time we found Crickets had eaten the insulation off the wires and moisture was causing high resistance shorts on the circuits..

Never full time, mostly when the air moisture reach a point when droplets formed..

RTS

Hi Rocky,

Not totally crazy!! Just last week I had to disassemble an exterior gate controller that had spider webs and stink bugs on the circuit board and was causing the "Fire Input" terminals to short and locked the gate open.

As for this Ademco unit, that is something that is doubtful since it is inside the house. However, you are right it should be looked at just to verify.

Thanks,

Les

We had a FBII 2-T in a small restaurant that started have odd alarms.. when we opened the panel door, the PCB was covered in (what I called bug spit), a dark goo.. After a complete cleaning with de-grease spray, every thing went back to normal.. with bugs, it pays to seal all access points to the electronics.. paraffin (candle wax) coated, cotton balls tend to do the job, cheaply.. BRK Electronics from Louisville, use to water proof their Glass Breakage detectors with that trick.. (paraffin) .. on another topic, I noticed that Chinese capacitors tend to burst if the air temperature lingers around 30 degrees for to long.. I guess they have some type of water based dielectric in their construction.. .. Trick I've used to locate long wires that have had their insulation eaten away, was to open both ends of the run and apply a hefty voltage/current run through the wire.. (load resistor at one end, voltage/current at other) (try not to exceed the limit of the copper size.. ;-) ) When the copper flexed with the load, the short would show itself.. If your handy with a "Megger", you can get close to the spot where the bad insulation is located.. If not, up the current and follow the smoke... LOL ... RTS

(don't you just love it when the copper turns a bluish tint...)

Lizards can be an issue. One time we lost a 24(+data) Channel T-carrier. We started pulling cards and found a lizard electrocuted and stuck across the encoder card. A new encoder card and 24 customers were back in service.

One of the things I used to see modestly often that causes high resistance problems is wire that seems to have compressed over time. The screws were snug when it was installed, but they seemed to have loosened up. I think the wire just relaxed under the screw terminal plate over time. I once fixed a very expensive environmental monitoring (temperature, ammonia, air flow etc) multi room multi building cooling plant by snugging down all the screws in the various controllers, and resetting the programming to the documented defaults. The plant manager was annoyed when I told him that was all I did. He still paid the bill, and he was still asking me to do more work as I was getting out of the business.

There was a time period in the 2000s when Chinese capacitors had a particularly bad issue with exploding. I saw computer motherboard, VFDs, and other power control circuits with popped Chinese caps. I have not seen or heard much of this with stuff of more recent manufacture.

Rocky,

What I don't know is if the data pair of wires have an issue of some kind would that cause the touch pad to reboot constantly??

Or, what would cause the Tuxedow Touch Pad "if it did not have an internal problem" to reboot repeatedly??

Ruling out a repeated power loss!!

I am trying to rule out all of the other possible issues before I purchase a replacement Tuxedow and find that the same problem happens after replacing the existing.

I know this is not going to be easy................. but!!

Thanks,

Les

Bob,

Lizard I doubt!?!?! Black Snake maybe...... This is Pennsylvania!!

As for loose connection that is one of the things on my "TODO" list.

Thanks,

Les

If you have a 12vdc pulse counter, hook it to the voltage supply, note the number and have homeowner check several times a day to see if the numbers are growing.. If yes, you know what to do.. If no, well crying is not out of the question.... RTS

Honestly Rocky I am really not sure what that will do................. Besides drive me nuts!!!

Since I don't have such a device, then I am OK!!!

Les

pulse counter, one of those things that advance a number on a counter each time the voltage interrupts. they use them at entries with a photo beam to count customer entering or leaving.. in your case, they would count a number each time the power blinks.. which would cause the touch pad to reset... If the numbers grow, that would tell me that something was interrupting the supply voltage.. (be it the wire, the power supply, or as I had happen somebody had wired into the fire power output. (which happened to cycle once each 24 hours) (It had been programed to remain on 24 hours, but somehow that programming was changed during a battery replacement) old systems have bugs that can appear at random with age.. :-) RTS

Rocky,

Ok, I get it. Makes sense, but.................... In a limited mode the customer has already connected his DVM to the power and watched a steady 13.2vdc while the Touch Pad was cycling.

Not 100% that it is not a power cycle issue that can't be seen in this way but.................

Thanks for the clarification!!!

Les

One of my first "professional" metal working projects was to cut and grind some press dies to make recessed center metal cover plates so that people brushing past the photo beams wouldn't wear the plastic lens as quickly at the Calexico port of entry. I used electro-mechanical pulse counters in my control box. An MOV across the contacts of the photo beams protected the relay contacts.

I used to have a couple Radio Shack DVOMs that had a serial port. A few times I left one in the field hooked to a laptop with a terminal program running and recorded data for 24hrs to PROVE that the customer had shitty power and that the problem was not system. (Whatever system it was.)

For some reason ODC59A seems to come to mind. That might have been the part number. Of course Radio Shack still survives in the form of a couple of independent stores that have a stingy selection of nothing (two stores I know of), but that is the last twitching of a dead corpse with a little residual energy reacting to outside stimulus. Even before the death throes they hadn't had real Radio Shack stuff for years.

I think it was Jim who actually helped me find the part number when my first one died and I was looking for another one.

Hmmmmm, Bob, That doesn't even sound vaguely familiar. But hell, it's getting so I can't even remember how to spell memnorie. . Les, I don't know anything about Vistas but I'd go with the capacitor problem. I've got some reeeeeely old Napco panels out there. A few, maybe 50 years, and they've been failing one by one through the years. I'm pretty sure it's due to leaky electrolytic capacitors. you can see some of them leaking on the PCB. These were manufactured long before the China capacitors were around so I think that's why they've lasted so long. .

11 years sounds about right for when the China caps came out. I've still got some Napco 800's, 850's and 854's out there and one Ademco 5600 wireless system I'm waiting for to fail. I suspect they'll all fail because of capacitors. . Other than that, I went on a weeks vacation and when I got back I had 15 either panel upgrades for remote access with Napco Starlink Connects cell radios or installations to do. Seems people are willing to pay the extra bucks per month just to be able to do something new on their cell phones. I therefore highly recommend vacations.

Hi Jim, Let me be the first to say........ "Welcome Home!!" Hope the vacation was Gooooood!!

Yes, I am hoping that when I get there I will be ABLE to see something visual on one of the boards. That would be the best!!

However, with my luck (No Luck) it will be coming up with a guess!!

My plan, will be to first check my storage locker to see it I have an old Vista 20p that I can power up and use it to test the Tuxedo Touch Screen to hopefully verify where the problem is coming from.

Either the Tuxedo itself or the mother board or the wiring.

Then make an intelligent decision from there.

Fingers Crossed!!! X X

Later,

Les

Assuming nothing is defective with the panel or touchscreen that is a classic example of not enough power, I would add a power supply.

Classic stereo equipment made in the late 80's to the 90's suffer from leaky electrolytic capacitors that last about 20-25 years before spilling their guts

Its not a question of voltage but current

Mark,

Yes, you are correct!! However, without voltage there will not be any current!! :-)

I was informed yesterday by Tech Support that the voltage on the wiring for the system Keypads, Expanders, Touch Screen, etc.

Should be as follows:

Red/Black 13.7vdc Black/Yellow 11.3vdc - 12.7vdc Black/Green 0.0vdc - 1.0vdc

I will know more later today.

Les