Reusing old siren with new alarm control box

Jun 19, 2008 3 Replies
H

I am trying to reuse the internal siren of an old home alarm system in my house (ITI caretaker), which has a 4-wire input (red/green/black/ white). Inside the siren there are two speakers: one looks like a regular speaker; the other looks like the one that would generate high pitch sound. To each speaker there are two input wires connected to it. But my new alarm's control unit only shows 2-wire connection (+12V, INT) to an internal siren. (Online installer manual, page 6 diagram:

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My old siren comes with the ITI caretaker system and doesn't have a model number of its own, so I can't find its spec or manual. My question is, can I still connect my old siren to the new control unit? If so, how should I wire it? Another stupid question is that what is a good place to get that kind of 4-colored wires? Radioshack/Fry's? I would really appreciate your expertise. Thanks in advance.



Regards, James


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P

Not 100% sure of the connections in your existing speaker but if 4 wires used for 2 separate speakers it would indicate a sounder similar to a "Twin Alert" which has 1 speaker connected to internal output from panel and the other connected to external output.

Good luck with your upgrade.

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J

The larger of the two speakers is for the siren. The smaller of the two is the "beeper" that the Caretaker used for annunciating arming level, entry/exit delay, chime etc. It sounds like your new panel has a voltage output for the siren so you would need a "siren driver" to connect the new panel to the old siren (which is really just a speaker). You would connect it to the larger of the two speakers. Of course by the time you buy a siren driver and connect it up you could have replaced it with a new self-contained siren probably for less money.

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