Is it possible to repair these flashing strobes on a Honeywell Reson8 or must I replace the whole bell box?
From what I can see the strobe tube is soldered direct to the PCB.
So I am not sure if its the driver circuit or the actual strobe tube that has failed.....
S.
Put a meter across the strobe terminals and trigger the alarm see what happ ens if you get a reading at roughly 0.5 - 1hz then it is the bulb, nothing would suggest the circuit. If you do not have a meter since most alarm circ uits work off 12V a car bulb will do. You did not mention if the siren was working or not?
Richard
Since the flash tube is known to wear out, it would be your first suspect.
Driving circuits can fail too. They're not immune. But there isn't a precisely known failure mechanism for those, so if they fail "it's just mother nature at work".
If you look at the circuit diagram for driving a flash tube here, there's really no place for amateurs to play. You need a lab with a
100:1 or 1000:1 probe, to be probing any parts of that circuit known to have high-voltage pulses on them. The output of the pulse transformer, would be difficult to see otherwise (no, you don't test it by sticking your finger on it). The probe expects to be loaded down by a certain resistance, to complete the measurement circuit and provide the exact divider ratio listed on the tin. Maybe it works into 10 megohms.The probes have a canonical form. The red color plus the "insulating rings" hood ornament design, tell you to walk the other way, away from the guys lab bench. If you see someone working with one of these, note where his bench gets power, because when he needs to be resuscitated, you're going to need to make his bench "safe" by turning off the power :-)
A dumb ass in uni, damaged a Fluke meter by attempting to probe a circuit like yours directly. It involved a Xenon flash tube in an elliptical cavity. My hint not to do that, just wasn't effective enough :-/ He put the meter across 2kV. I don't even know if the insulation resistance on common meter lead sets, is 2kV-proof. That's what the ends of the flash tube were charged to. (This was part of a pulse laser.)
Your gut should tell you that the pulse transformer is the second most likely thing to fail in the circuit. If the secondary develops a short, there will be no signal to excite the Xenon tube and make it conduct.
Even dust and dirt, or a carbon mark on a high voltage insulation, could drain enough energy from the trigger wire, to prevent triggering.
Paul
Yes those xenon tubes are not very reliable if that is indeed what they use. There are all sorts of different ways to strobe though. Brian
yes all 3 sirens work....
I have actually got 3 working bell boxes on the house and annoyingly the strobe on the rear bell box stopped working,
Followed some time later by the strobe on the front bell box failing
So the only working strobe is the side bell box!
Are there any bell boxes that now use superbright LEDs instead of xenon strobes now?
S.
Especially not standing up a ladder.
Owain
check what the driving voltage is first
really?
it definitely won't. Could get the op a serious shock too.
If the op doesn't know to make some basic checks I wouldn't recommend working live on potentially deadly voltages. It may have its place but I don't think this is it.
NT
Like the one my Mum got off the disco strobe I was building on the dining room table when she tried to hurry me up putting it away because Dad was on his way. ;-(
Whilst the strobe wasn't on all the time during a disco, I think it might have only used 2 lamps in the 8 years (and it was used at least every weekend).
Cheers, T i m
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