Help to clear false 'Fire Trouble' msg (ELK M1G)

[cgull]

I'm a complete beginner with the Elk M1Gold and I need some help! I recently started seeing the text 'Fire Trouble' on my Elk M1G keypad so I decided to finally install the RP2 application and start poking around. The message was covering up the second row on the keypad where the time and temperature was displayed but other than that nothing else was affected by this msg (no beeps/alarms/etc).

I started poking around making very minimal changes (mostly renaming things) and now the 'Fire Trouble' message is on the top row and both keypads beep every minute or so. I'm about to go out of town for a couple days and my wife is not going to be happy with any beeping . I disabled the sound on the keypads so that's at least a temporary solution. The one thing I think I changed to try to clear the message was I set the values for 'Restoral Pulse' under the Communicator section to be '00' for both the Smoke Detector and Heat Detector.

Any advice on how to go about troubleshooting/fixing (or temporarily working around) the problem? I'm completely fine with bypassing the offending sensor for now which is a Heat sensor. The house has hard wired smokes that are independent of the alarm. Also, we haven't been using the alarm so I'm treating it as my playground for now. If I mess things up I can always call in someone to program it for me.

 

[cgull]

If needed I can post screenshots of the RP2 screens...anything to make it easier!



Obligatory Background: I had the Elk installed during construction (about a year ago) and the installer programmed everything through the keypad. Unfortunately the installer didn't have any experience with ELK but didn't appear to have any issues getting it up and running. I hooked up the M1XEP several months ago with the intention to start learning the system and to program basic automation rules but never really got past installing the M1XEP (after connecting it I enrolled it but never connected to it). As far as experience goes, I have no experience with alarm systems at all but I'm very comfortable with the computer (I design and develop software...not that this indicates much in this arena) and am very interested in automation.

 

[nov0798]

Do you have a rule associated with this heat sensor?

Its been awhile, but I have a rule written for a zone in my system, an it says something at the end where * key on the keypad clears the notification, and the beeping.

of course I may be way off on this one.

 

[Sandpiper]

"Trouble" on a Fire zone can be caused by either of two reasons. The first reason occurs after a smoke detector has been set off and needs to be "reset". Also, some heat detectors may need to be replaced after they have been set off. Has you heat detector been set off?
The second reason you can have trouble is because of a wiring problem or loss of power. Check all wiring connections for the detector in the panel and at the device. Check to make sure the end of line resistor is securely terminated at the heat detector.

 

[cgull]

"Trouble" on a Fire zone can be caused by either of two reasons. The first reason occurs after a smoke detector has been set off and needs to be "reset". Also, some heat detectors may need to be replaced after they have been set off. Has you heat detector been set off?
The second reason you can have trouble is because of a wiring problem or loss of power. Check all wiring connections for the detector in the panel and at the device. Check to make sure the end of line resistor is securely terminated at the heat detector.

It doesn't appear that the heat detector went off but I could be wrong. I don't know how hard those things are to set off but that's more likely than something happening with the wiring b/c I haven't messed with that at all. Also I don't have any rules programmed so hopefully that makes things easier to troubleshoot.

I can try replacing the heat detector but is there something else I can try before I do or is there a way to disable it in the controller so I won't keep getting that message?

I think the thing to do now is to disable it temporarily...is there an easy way to do this using the RP2 application?

 

[WayneW]

I think the thing to do now is to disable it temporarily...is there an easy way to do this using the RP2 application?

Set that zone definition to 16 (non-alarm).

 

[Del91574]

The best would be to get RP up and running and then copy the panel so you can see what's involved in the programming easily.

Sounds like a zone was enabled that has no EOLR installed or a ZT changed.

 

[cgull]

I went through the configuration using the ElkRP2 application and configured them as non-alarm as recommended. I wasn't able to see if the actual sensors failed b/c I didn't really know enough to troubleshoot it. Regardless, I didn't really think it was a problem b/c it's a new system and this message just started appearing after I started messing around with the system.

I finally decided to do what I probably should have done first which is restart the alarm panel (physically turn off/on). After doing that, the keypads no longer show this message and it seems to be back to 'normal'.

I have the ELK UPB interface coming in the mail tomorrow...I can't wait to try my first basic lighting rule! First I'm going to add the databus hub and rewire the keypads to use it. It looks pretty straightforward but we'll see :lol:

Thanks for the responses!!!