ths is a DSC alarm PC5010, but I've read everything online about it, and I don't think the answer is there.
The phone line was disconnected for quite a while, ever since I went from DSL to fiberoptic (N years ago.) and so I had codes 3 and 4.
3, no connection to phone line
4, failure to communicate with, basically, the monitoring company**.
Moving the phone wire got rid of 3. Is there an automatic periodic check-in that will try to call the monitoring company and that will resolve the code 4?
If you've read everything online, then you probably saw this, but anyway...
"If the communicator fails in an attempt to communicate with any of the programmed telephone numbers, this trouble will be generated."
If the Communicator Disable option is selected the panel will not attempt to call central station Communicator Disable .................................. Section [380], Option [1]
(I have no clue where Section[380], Option [1] gets set.)
Can you delete all programmed telephone numbers?
Also, if you read everything, then I guess you read this thread:
Yes, I did see that. But I still appreciate your calling it to my attention.
That's trouble 4. It hints or maybe says that if I initiate a test, and the test goes through, which I think it will, that would remove the trouble. But I'm not sure I can run a test myself because of the trouble code. Catch-22? I was hoping that it would automatically, maybe once a day**, try to communicate and that would remove the 4. I reconnected the phone line yesterday around 9, but I don't want to wait until 9 just hoping that will happen. It no longer knows what time it is, but it shoudl know when 24 hours have passed. **No, writing this finally reminds me that it was the monitoring station that calls me. No, she just
I think that's for people who don't have monitoring at all. I think it's different from Trouble 4.
Not until I know how to put them back in!
An awful lot online is for newer hardware, and this starts out exactly like mine (good find) but then it goes to the adapter and router. I guess this has a small advantage that during the weekly** test, it wouldn't interfere with my being on the phone, but during the couple years it was running the test, I never bumped into the alarm, and never heard my phone ring either. Strange. Maybe my alarm calls them, 'cause if they called me, I'd hear the phone ring. And they note it and call/email me if my alarm never calls. That must be it.
Also, if a burglar could get to the phone and put in some extra numbers before the alarm "dials", that could stop it from reporting the break-in. I tried that once when I didn't know how else to stop it. Using the internet would prevent that.
If the phone is interrupted, it probably tries again, but maybe it can't if he leaves the phone off the hook. But I don't have a million dollar house and around this part of town, the burglars are not that skilled. (I actually get crime reports for my n'hood and there are no burglaries. Over the last 39 years there have been 2 strings, and in the 4 years befoe I got here there was another string. They caught 2 or 3 of the 3 who did this. There probably** have been a few individual or isolated burglaries in addition, but I've been getting the crime report for 10 years and I don't remember any. Certainly not the last 3 years. But I still want the alarm.
**There certainly was one isolated burglary, my house, the first summer I was here 1983. It worked out well, but it was still a burglary. Details later
I used to use the alarm daily when I went to work each day and I wasn't paying for, or having, monitoring. Now that I'm paying, I pay for the whole year but only use it when I go out of town, and I haven't gone out of town for 3 years. I pay through my friend's alarm company and he gets a cut, so that's good. Do you have any idea how much goes to the monitoring company and how much to my friend? 10% to him? 50%? 75? He gives me a bargain rate -- I forget how much. I didn't ask for it. He does me loads of favors and I don't know what to do for him in return. He likes doing favors for people but they are still favors I should try to do more than say thank you. I just did my will and I thought of leaving him money, 2000, 5000, 10,000, but that seems almost insulting to him. Do you think that would be, could be true? He has his own business, and though he doesn't get rich, he seems to do okay. And his wife works and makes a decent living, and they have no children, but that last thing is no reason for me to be off the hook.
**I just talked to the monitoring company and I think it's weekly. I got the alarm compan to turn them off because I always failed, because the phone was not connected.
I managed to guess my Master Code. It's not the default, and it's suprising like the exit/enter code. Maybe soon I'll remember why.
I only today, after reading this stuff off and on for 10 years, think I figured out what to do with a number like 380. Maybe I'll get back to you on that.
Even if you have the whole manual and read the whole manual, these burglar alarm manual are so cryptic. When I installed my first alarm, myself, I had to read parts 10 or 20 times.
I got distracted by my personal stories and replied even before I'd read the whole url above. While it is partly largely the internet, it had two great "hints". One was to listen on the phone when it's supposed to be calling the central station. I don't even have to plug anything in, because it's the real phone and any extension will work. Though he said it only clicks once and I didn't hear a click. I should have done this before I reconnected the sirens.
But I think I reached the limit of what I can do myself and I called my friend at work and he called my alarm and said it was connected wrong but I there was no way I could fix it bnecuase it took something special. Then a second later he found a video online that he's sending me. So I have until tomorrow to work on it. Then he might want to come over or send someone. Ah, he sent me a whole string of videos. About connecting the alarm to the phone. Afaik there are only two ways, tip and ring or ring and tip, but there's a lot I don't know. If I learn anything, I'll get back to you.
This probably has to do with no longer having DSL and now having FIOS, fiberoptic. Although I don't know why it should, I think this is when the problem started. The alarm phone line was still connected to the DSL box, that the Verizon guy showed no interest in taking with him when he installed the FIOS. I guess they have lots of them they're not using, but aren't there poor children in Mauritius who need a DSL modem?
As to my own burglary(s), in 1983 a friend came over on a Sunday and we went out to dinner for no more than 2 hours. Summer, still light out. When I came home the front door was kicked open. I went in and went upstairs but was afraid to go to the basement. Figure that out. A desperate burglar is no more trapped in the basement than the 2nd floor. I only have one stairway, and he's not going to jump out the window. Maybe basements are scary because of all the vincent price, bela lugosi, Boris karloff movies. Or maybe it is the lack of windows.
Called the police and he went down to the basement, and while he was there my girlfriend turned the light off in the basement! She thought she was turning it on, I guess. I guess there was still some light at
7:30 through the one little window, but I think I'm lucky he didn't start shooting.
Turns out, the burglar was not there and nothing was taken, not the brand new car radio still in the box on the basment workbench, not the brand new ADEMCO home burglar alarm still spread out on my bedroom floor, and not the cookies on the kitchen table.
There was a dog next door, an attached townhouse, that barked aafter
11PM and before 7AM, when they let him out, so I could never get 8 hours of sleep. I think I hated that dog, but I can only guess that his barking scared away the burglar. He must have been afraid the cops would be called because of it.
The next day I didn't go to work and I spent all day installing the alarm. The door and sliding glass door switches were already in.
No one ever got in the house again but 25 years ago one guy stole two broken gas mowers that I'd been trying all summer to turn into one good one. He did me a favor.
And 10 years ago someone "stole" a 10-speed bicycle I got out of the stream. It must have been washed downstream, maybe was left forgotten, or stolen and dumped in the woods near the stream and then it flooded. I guess even a bicycle floats. It was rusty, the brakes didn't work well and the gears didn't work at all, but I liked it because I could keep it outside without hurting it. I tried to ride it but the frame is, what
27" instead of 26? I'm only 5'8" and I can ride a full-size bike but when I was so fat, everything was harder. Anyhow, he took that from just in front of the house and that bothered me a lot, until I saw it standing in front of my gate. He tried to ride it and he didn't like it either, I guess, and what's amazing is that he put the kick stand down and left it standing up.
Since then I replaced the derailleur cables and oiled the pivots and it still doesn't work. I hate to buy new derailleurs for a junk bike. Some are cheap enough that it would be worth it, but are the ones that are that cheap any good at all?
I grew up in NYC. I left my bicycle outside of a Bohack's (look it up) and when I came out it was gone.
I walked home, told my mom and she called the po-po. The conversation went something like this:
Officer Friendly: "97th Precinct. How can I help you?" Mom: "My son's bicycle was stolen from in front of Bohack's on Main St. Officer Friendly: "What size and what color is the bicycle?" Mom: "26 inch, Blue" Officer Friendly: "OK, ma'am. We'll keep an eye out. Thank you for calling." Mom: "Don't you want my name and telephone number?" Officer Friendly: "Oh, yeah, sorry. How can we get in touch with you?"
We knew right then and there that they were hot on the case. ;-)
I see that it closed in NY in 1977. I got to Brooklyn in 1971. Five of those 6 years I bought groceries at Key Food and the other I don't remember but I don't remember Bohack's.
You should see where he was living when he died, 50 Beverly Road, Kew Gardens, Queens. I'm sure he was a rich man for many years then but this looks like the home he had when he .... Oops. Google maps too, me to 84-50 Beverly Road, Kew Gardens, Queens, nicely maintained but small duplex. Beverly Road is only 4 blocks long, so maybe this is his house.
formatting link
H.C. BOHACK DIES; HEAD OF 740 STORES; Opened First Grocery Three Years After Arrival From Germany as Youth of 17.QUIT AT 35; HAD 5 STORES Retirement Soon Irked and HeStarted New Chain--Active in Banks and Other Concerns. Starts at $7 a Month and Board. 3,000 Persons in His Employ. In Several Clubs. ...He was 66.
Don't this beat all! At 3AM I was going downstairs and I have a wrought iron banister, and I knocked a couple videotapes off one of the steps, two steps from the top, to two steps from the bottom of the same flight of stairs. Only 6 feet total, and they made a litle noise, especially the one with the hard plastic case, but only a little. Hmmm. That plastic case is similar to the material they give you, a piece of fiberglass maybe, about 4" long x 1" wide, that they give you to test the glass/wood breakage detectors. By pulling one end back and letting it spring against some hard surface.
I have one detector facing the rear of the house (inc. the stairway) and one facing the front hall. But the alarm wasn't even armed because I can't arm it because I have a code 4.
And a couple seconds after they fell the siren went off, wup wup....wup wup... wup wup. I ran to the keypad, since it's 3AM, and by golly I remembered my code and I turned it off.
A couple minutes later, I got a phone call and it was the central station, checking if there was a fire. A fire? The fire zones work even when the alarm is not armed. But I've set off the smoke alarm when cooking and I think maybe it goes waaaah.... waaaah....waaah. And the glass breakage detectors are not the smoke detector. I'm sure I wired them correctly in an Away zone. Well if I did it I did it right but now I think the pro guy who finished the install did that part, made a mistake, and put them in a Fire zone.
But anyhow, if the central station called me, that means I communciated with it first. And he told me there had been a series of alerts or whatever from me all day long, but I know I was still getting the code 4 until 9PM I switched the phone wwires, tip and ring, at 8:30, and afaik it made no difference, and of course, he was getting the alerts all day long. While I had the 4. (They hadn't called me about the alerts because I told them to ignore them until 6PM today.)
Including a power failure alert but there was no power failure, unless he meant disconnecting the phone line for a couple minutes. Hardly the same thing.
So I go check the keypad and there are no trouble codes now.
So it's fixed. ;-)
So I didn't know the glass breakage detectors were in a Fire zone, but I could have filled the house with smoke by cooking a hamburger or some oil on high and forced a communication that way. Somehow that got rid of the 4 I think, but all the tests I did did not.
Why don't you just try? It seems illogical that when it's having a communication problem it would not allow you to run the test. That's exactly the time you most need to run the test.
IDK what;s going on today, but I know years ago alarm companies did not want to use VOIP, they said that modem communication over VOIP was unreliable. I know some alarm companies or monitoring services had their own widget that goes between the alarm telephone output and connects to ethernet on the other side. So it's possible that it's not an electrical connection or a dialing problem, but that.
That was definitely the plan, but there was a bunch of things it wouldn' let me do. That waa partly because there is the installer code, the master code, and the access code. When I wrote this I only had one or two of them.
For sure.
This exists for this system, but I don't have it. It connects straight to the phone line.
See other post at the end of this thread and, soon to be posted, in the lster thread.
Half the knuckldraggers the alarm companies have installing alsrm systems can hardly tie their own shoelaces - and they have them wiring multi-zone alarm systems - - - Just sayin'
A "failure to connect" error is often inability of the control center to connect to the sensor - quite common an "wireless" alarm systems - but also common on normally open alarm loops where the sensor "calls home" to tell the system it is still there (a disconnected wire looks like a no alarm situation - so they need a "self monitoring" function.
I doubr the "failure to connect" has ANYTHING to do with the phone line - again, just sayin".
I think there is a way for the homeowner t o make all these settings, one numeric key at a time, but the alarm company as a screen where they can see what they're doing and do it 10x as fast. So they finished it.
My friend does have major trouble getting good employees. Even though he gives vacation days, health insurance, provides an equipped truck, and whatever other benefits big companies have (though not profit sharing or college tuition.)
Sometimes he has to do installs or repairs himself when he doesn't have enough staff.
I gave the guy a list of my zones and what kind of zones they were, but I guess it was not enough.
And the guy who did this for me did forget to give me one of those little yard signs that says I'm alarmed. I forgot too but remembered before he drove away.
T he problme now is if someone breaks my glass or wood door to get in, it will be reported to the monitoring company as a fire. I suppose the fire engines will come. Do they start with the water before they actually find a fire? Do they break in the front door if the burglar broken in the back door, or only part-way broke in the front?
I got to get this fixed. I've forgotten what zones the glass detectors are but I think I can bang on things and then look at the memory to see which zone has tripped. Should have done that today.
Yes. After the trainees at the academy finish their entry level "Boot Pulling Up" and "Pole Sliding Down" classes, they move on to "Indiscriminate Hosing". That's where they learn to spray a building with massive amounts of water without any forethought or planning. They just jump out of the truck, hook up the hoses and start blasting.
Of course not. How could they? They are too busy indiscriminately hosing down the building.
So what do they do if there is a fire alarm and they get there and there is no smoke? Do they wait until the fire inside is so big flames can be seen in the windows? I know there are false alarms even when alarm system is set up correctly, but I can't see them waiting while an actual fire grows. What is the proper the proper thing, and what do they do?
It's hardwired. I ran all the wires myself***. 10 years later, after I found the first keypad/control unit smoking** one morning, my friend gave me a newer model which is programmable remotely and locally.
The manual is incredibly cryptic and I'm still looking to see if I can change a zone from Fire to Away, or if the alarm company has special software to do that with. If I ever get the Installer Code, there are a several things I actually can do that I want to do.
**It burned up but I had grounded it properly through a 6' copper rod nailed into the earth. I wasn't aware of any lightning strike near me, but no one notifies me about such things and I still think lightning caused it to smoke.
***The hardest one was the sliding glass door at the rear of the house, and the basement window just below it. IIRC I used one snake to go down from the door channel into the floor, and a second snake to hook on to that one, to pull the wire through the basement ceiling to the laundry room (which has an open ceiling.) And I did it by myself. Just got to town and didn't have friends yet, but it only took an extra hour or less to do it myself. Wireless didn't exist then, but it does now and it's far easier to work with, but I've saved myself 38 years of checking and replacing batteries. And I know wires work. Radiowaves otoh are the work of the devil.
It's fixed except for the fact that the glass-break zone is listed in the settings area as a Fire zone, not an Away zone,
And I don't know what number that zone is. My friend doesn't want to give me the Programmer Code, he wants me to have one of his employees do it remotely, so i'll do that, but I'd rather tell him the zone than risk his making a mistake like the original programmer did several years ago. (Probably not the same guy.)
So how to figure out the zone? I took those two video tapes in their plastic cases, slapped them together, not even hard, and the little red light in the glass detector went on and the siren started, wup wup.....wup wup... wup wup. which is definitly not the burglar noise.
(I've made it do the burglar noise, usually by accident, and it's WhoooOOOOooooOOOOoooo... something like that.)
The videotapes were Best of the Ed Sullivan Show with a lot of musicians, and It Takes Two with Mary Kate and Ashley Olson. If you can't find these two videos, I'm not sure the method above will work.
I turned off the siren, quickly and because it was less than 30 seconds, it didn't alert the central station. And I did * 3 which is memory/history** and it said 7, zone 7. That sounds about right.
**Unfortunately, the history is kept for only one cycle nad it is wiped out if you rearm and disarm the alarm, and I usually make that mistake without checking the history first, and then I don't know what happened***. Maybe today is a turning point on that kind of forgetting.
So I will ask his employee to set zone 7 to Away. To enable * 0, Stay, Away, and Exit, which make for 1 or 2 step exit To enable the Panic and Fire Emergency keys. To enable the Time Display
I milght actually start using the alarm when I'm in town, when it's easier to set.
***After months or years, a neighbor finally told me that my siren was going off in the middle of the day and it was probably when the mailman came. I thought it was the doorbell, and indeed, after I had put in a basment doorbell in parallel and then changed transformers to from 12? to 18? it did set off the burglar alarm. So I put a resistor in the power line to make the doorbell a little softer, and that did it.
But IIRC it was still going off and it was the metal flap on the mail slot in the door that set it off. What did I do about that? Maybe that is what I thought it was firstm but it wasn't.
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