Elk reprting "Water Alarm...Kitchen Motion", but only in Stay mode?

[Photon]

Are the ground terminals of all your power supplies connected to each other?

 

[IVB]

eh, no. That sounds important.

It's been setup like this for >1yr, didn't have an issue before though (that I know of). Is that relevant?

 

[mustangcoupe]

The alternate power supply is powering the motions but not the expander. ..................
Since the hub + expander are powered off the main board (which is still well under tolerance load-wise), I could just put in that 3rd PS + Battery I bought but never installed to see if that does the trick too.

Im not sure if the power supply grounds would effect anything seeing as though the 2nd supply is only powering the sensors not the expander. But if you decide to add a 3rd supply for the expanders I beleive this will be needed though.

 

[IVB]

Well, some progress in id'ing the reason for my massive motion failures. They all report violated right now again, it's late (1am) but I still went down to the crawlspace to figure out why.

Turns out there's no DC voltage being supplied to the motions. I've seen this happen before, when one of the wires going to them was shorted.

So tomorrow (not now, i'm falling asleep) i'm going to pull out the motion DC wiring one at a time, to see which one is the short. Then i'll re-run the wire to that location.

I'll bet I did something stupid in the attic when I was fishing the new NuVo/TTS wires, which happen to be in a rather close location.

 

[BrettS]

Sounds like you have a fun day in the attic ahead of you It still bothers me a little that this doesn't explain why it only happened when the alarm was armed in stay mode. It could simply be a coincidence and it only happened when the alarm was in stay mode, or it could be an odd reaction to the DC voltage being shorted or open.

In any case, after you get things resolved I would definitely do some testing to make sure that the zones are properly configured to (and actually do) react when the alarm is in other modes.

Good luck,
Brett

 

[IVB]

I think it was a coincidence, as a few times now i've been unable to actually put the alarm into any armed mode due to the short. It is odd that my power-cycling did anything, since I only power-cycled the main & not the alternate power.

There is testing ahead of me, that's depressingly certain.

 

[123]

Be sure to connect the negative terminals, of all power supplies, together. Several Cocooners have mentioned this need including Spanky.

It'd be a shame if the weirdness you're experiencing is because the two supplies do not share a common reference. Having them "float" may have worked in the past but, by adding equipment over time, you may have reached a tipping point.

Even if it doesn't resolve the problem, it is a trivial operation that can prevent future headaches.

 

[IVB]

Even if it doesn't resolve the problem, it is a trivial operation that can prevent future headaches.

Thanks, i'm already re-running 3 wires anyhow from basement 2ndary Elk->1st floor Main Elk , pretty easy to run a 4th.

 

[IVB]

it was the god damn maglock wiring that was screwy! Maglocks, damnit, that was the reason I couldn't arm my system normally for the past 2 weeks?