Help diagnosing weird Elk behavior this am

[IVB]

As mentioned initially in this thread, my elk went a little nuts this am. I checked out the log, also remembered one other thing i'll list below. I'm sure it's probably operator error, but any help diagnosing this would be much appreciated. Wife is pretty bugged that the whole thing went nutsoid, so i'm hoping to resolve it all very quickly.

The log is 99.9% boring, just a bunch of ethernet troubles (happening for months). 4 minutes after arming, the motion sensors all started freaking out. Then, 10 minutes and nearly 100 log entries later, there's a "control over current trouble" entry.

But, here's something else I remembered: Last night the Elk was reporting low battery/over-current. I hadn't done anything elk related but I did do some a/v stuff so I went to make sure that no wires got moved. I turned off the elk and turned it on, then just had "Low Battery". I did the user menu thing and it only showed .8A being drawn.

I figured that since it was on A/C power, low battery wasn't the end of the world and life was fine. This am has me wondering though, whether the Elk is inaccurately reporting the load, and whether it's running out of juice somewhere and I need to put that 2nd power supply in that I have.

Any clues? Does that log entry of "control over current trouble" mean anything? How about that "Low Battery"?

 

[FrankMc]

Hi IVB

Maybe your batttery is on its way out ...I assume the ELK M1 does a dynamic battery test every hour or so..???........How many sensors have you connected to your Elk ..??
i wonder how much the current draw will drop if you disconnect the battery ??? can you test this.......??...Im suspecting battery trouble although its been a long time since i serviced alarms and i could be way off track......

HTH
Frank

 

[IVB]

I have about 30 total sensors currently hooked up, plus 2 keypads, 3 zone expanders. I'll go check that draw.

Dang, just put in that order with AO today for something, should have just added a battery "just in case".

 

[Spanky]

If you had a low battery warning and marginally drawing too much current on the power supply, this could explain why the motion detectors triggered alarms. If the PTC overcurrent protector powering the motions opened up while armed, the motion detectors could go into alarm causing the massive alarm that you witnessed.

An "Overcurrent" in the log indicates that a PTC protector opened from overcurrent.

 

[IVB]

As always, 1001 thanks for the rapid support for an end-user.

When I checked the Elk 2 days ago on my "overcurrent" warning, it said 0.8A being drawn. Is it possible that I have so much stuff that only .8A was being drawn from the Elk PS and the rest from the battery? Furthermore, over time the battery drained until yesterday am when it just died, so the PS was left to provide everything and hence failing?

 

[cliffs]

Time to add another power supply and standby battery. I think if you
total up the current drawn from all the sensors it is more than the Elk will provide. For longevity don't load the power supplies more than 50%.

In my last house I had to add another power supply and battery setup because of the current I needed.

Cliff s

 

[Digger]

I think..... that the M1 PS can provide a consistant 1.5 A in standby and an additional 1 A in alarm without drawing on the battery at all. So 0.800 A is not an overload.

I am only guessing but you might have had a short or near short on the battery leads causing the charger to be overloaded at the same time the batteries were being drained. Based on the information you provided that is the only thing that comes to mind at the moment.

I could be TOTALLY wrong (probably) but you might want to check your battery leads and connections etc.