Re: Datalogger to Test False Alarms on Sensor

["mikey" <someone@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Man, great troubleshooting story... I wish I could think of one I've seen
but none of mine are all that noteworthy but I hope the thread continues.

"Bill" <bill190nospam@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:3qa4npFdbi7mU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Back in the old days... The company I worked for had a customer with a
nasty
> system which had false alarms which no one could fix.
>
> The police department said "fix it now" or they would quit responding. My
> boss assigned me to the job and told me to fix it for free (don't charge
> customer) and price was no object!
>
> So I had free reign to resolve this problem. This system had basically one
> zone for everything. So first I installed a multiple zone system to
isolate
> which sensor(s) were causing the problem.
>
> It was the interior photo electric beams.
>
> Next I built my own monitoring gadget which monitored each device and the
> electrical power to each device.
>
> Then I got a key to the business from the owner and told our monitoring
> center to notify me 24 hours a day if *this* system tripped. Told owner
that
> no one was to enter building until I got there to examine the lights on my
> gizmo. Also told customer how to set my gizmo before leaving.
>
> Well it turned out that the customer was turning off a breaker which
powered
> the photo electric beams. And the battery would last over a regular
weekend.
> But would run out of power on a 3 day weekend!
>
> Actually all the alarms were on the 3rd day of a 3 day weekend!
>
> And every time they had an alarm, the owner would come in, turn on all the
> breakers for the lights... Alarm service guy would get there and not find
> anything wrong.
>
> So the solution to the problem was to tape the breakers which powered the
> photo electric beams and write on the tape "Alarm - Leave on". (Something
> the installers should have done when installing the system.)
>
> Note: These days there are control panels with enough zones so that you
> could have a power monitoring relay for each device on a separate zone as
> well as monitoring each device on its own zone. So no need to build any
> special "gizmo" like I did.
>
>
>