DSC Power 832 Puzzle (Long)

["Armond Perretta" <newsgroupreader@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Disclaimer:  This is largely a DIY setup, but I hope you will agree that it
has been very carefully done (in major part by alarm pros), and that this is
a serious inquiry.

Setup:  Power 832 5010, 2 LCD5500 Keypads, 5208 PGM board, Escort 5580
board, 5108 zone board, 5132 wireless board.  All window and door sensors
hard-wired, 4 PIRs hard wired, 2 key fobs (in cars) on the wireless board.
No additional wireless sensors.  All programming using DLS 2002 (which shows
no errors).

The physical system has shown no errors since installation in June 2003.
Except for HA programming on the Escort board in the last few weeks that
involved changing PGM 3 to 10 attributes on the main board, there have been
no additional recent changes.  No errors have occurred with the HA (X10)
portion of the system in the 2 or so weeks since the Escort programming
changes.

On Friday 16 Sep in the afternoon I armed the system in "away" mode to run a
few errands.  About 10 minutes after my departure the basement PIR sent a
series of alarms to the monitoring station and I was contacted.  Returned
home to disarm the system and check the premises, but no physical intrusion
observed.  No pets or other persons in this home, etc.

I put the alarm into test with the monitoring company, put the system into
section 901 installer "walk-thru"  test mode, and tried to check the
basement PIR.  At this point the system crashed and I was unable to use the
keypads.  I tried for about an hour to recover, but no go.  Frustrated, I
removed the AC and the battery, vowing to extract my revenge the next day.

On the next day, I removed all wiring from the main board.  The wiring was
unfortunately a bit of a rats nest, following the initial installation (by
the builder's sub), some work by an alarm pro friend (who added the PIRs and
the zone expansion board and got me started with the programming about 2
years ago, and myself (who added the wireless,
the 5208, the Escort, and probably a few other things).

Removing, labeling, and cleaning up the wiring took a very long time, but it
was done with care.  I used a small 66 punch-down board to connect the main
bus wires from all the expansion boards to the main board, and to connect
all the PIR aux wires to the main board aux terminals.  All connections were
tested carefully prior to reinstalling.

While the main board was "naked" I defaulted the panel by shorting the PGM
"1" and the Zone "1" pins.  Following re-connection of all wiring (in
stages) I powered up the panel with no errors, re-assigned the keyboards
(slots 7 and 8), and re-downloaded the panel using the backup from the DLS
2002 software.

All went "per design" and the system appears to be working perfectly,
including the basement PIR that seemed to be the initial culprit.  However I
am a little spooked by this incident, since we tend to go away for days at a
time.  I am now looking at the setup with just a bit of suspicion.

I am (obviously) a DIYer (although a careful one), and I am wondering if the
pros have any constructive comments on what might have happened..

--
Good luck and good sailing.
s/v Kerry Deare of Barnegat
http://home.comcast.net/~kerrydeare