ademco vista 20p

The keypad isn't communicating with the panel

Try checking to see whether the yellow and green wires are reversed, or that they're connected to the right terminals. On some of the Vista panels, I've noticed that if you don't look at the board at just the right angle, it would be easy to wire to the wrong terminals. It sometimes helps to be able to count too. :-)

And don't forget to set the keypad address to 16.

That's the best "point" of all. I believe the 6160's default is "32", isn't it?

or broken, or still have insulation on them.

weird: fired up a 15P saturday and it lit up and wouldn't let me into programming, showing OC, acting weird like the keypads weren't addressed...drove me nuts for half hour...back to basics...remove everything from terms...and measure voltages...weird voltage on AC input...checked the output of the 120vac outlet.... 30 VOLTS? Is that all? Gimme some freeking static. S*it spent another 45 minutes fishing over to another outlet. SOMETIMES THE STOOPID STUFF KILLS YA!

I always insist on a dedicated circuit. It's even in our contract. If the customer can't provide it (i.e. older house, etc.) then we get OUR electrician to wire up a convenient outlet. It saves a lot of headaches. What did you find out about the outlet that was putting out

thats about it

That wouldn't show an OC error, it'd only show a blank screen

I didn't spend time trblshooting the outlet, I just disabled it (removed outlet & capped it off) - there were 4 like that in that room...I think it was for something special since they were all mounted horz. at 5 feet.

Weird. I remember a guy whose dad was a model railroad nut that had some unique looking outlets all over his house. Most of the basement was mountainous terrain with myriad tunnels, tons of switch-backs, bridges... It was all "HO" scale and pretty awesome. I was just a kid but that basement sticks in my mind to this day... :-)