lighting strike: elk m1 in a weird state?

jon102034050

Active Member
Hey all!  I believe I had lightning strike near my home recently - myself and my neighbor both lost a random assortment of electronics. I'm still trying to sort through what got fried and what was OK, and am struggling with my Elk M1. Immediately after the strike, it complained of an ethernet failure and the keypads were beeping. I power cycled things multiple times, but had no success. I ordered up a new m1xep and swapped it in and the error went away after power cycling, yay!  But, now I realize something else may be goofy on the panel itself or something now as I'm unable to connect via ElkRP.  It give me an error "System did not respond. Connection may have been terminated"
 
I've validated that nmap shows it's listening on ports 21, 26, 2601, and ElkRP is able to find the m1xep, but I cannot connect.  On a possibly related note, the panel is now making a ticking noise every 15 seconds that sounds like a relay.
 
Thoughts on what to do? 
 
The ticking relay sounds like it might be the line seizure relay for the phone line.  Do you have a phone line connected for central station monitoring?
 
When you do a Find in RP2 to find the XEP, does it display both a MAC address and an IP address, or just a MAC address?
 
RAL said:
The ticking relay sounds like it might be the line seizure relay for the phone line.  Do you have a phone line connected for central station monitoring?
 
When you do a Find in RP2 to find the XEP, does it display both a MAC address and an IP address, or just a MAC address?
 
No phone connected, i'm doing monitoring over IP. 
 
When ElkRP finds it, it shows the IP, MAC, and Port 2601
 
The clicking is probably the phone line relay.  I'm thinking some of the configuration settings in the M1 may have been messed up by the lightning strike.
 
Here's an old post that discusses this.  http://cocoontech.com/forums/topic/9547-elk-relay-clicking/#entry83053
 
For the XEP, it's possible that the new XEP is faulty on the serial port side.  But more likely, it is a messed up serial port on the M1.  Hopefully just some config settings and not fried hardware.
 
Do you have a backup in RP2 of your configuration from before the lightning strike?  It might be worth doing a factory reset and then reloading the saved configuration to see if that helps.
 
If you have a serial port expander attached to the panel you could try temporarily moving the XEP to it.
 
Mike.
 
mikefamig said:
If you have a serial port expander attached to the panel you could try temporarily moving the XEP to it.
 
Mike.
 
I'm not sure if the XEP will work on a serial port other than port 0.  It seems like something would have to be changed in the M1 configuration to send ethernet traffic through a different port, but I don't recall seeing a way to do that.
 
RAL said:
The clicking is probably the phone line relay.  I'm thinking some of the configuration settings in the M1 may have been messed up by the lightning strike.
 
Here's an old post that discusses this.  http://cocoontech.com/forums/topic/9547-elk-relay-clicking/#entry83053
 
For the XEP, it's possible that the new XEP is faulty on the serial port side.  But more likely, it is a messed up serial port on the M1.  Hopefully just some config settings and not fried hardware.
 
Do you have a backup in RP2 of your configuration from before the lightning strike?  It might be worth doing a factory reset and then reloading the saved configuration to see if that helps.
 
Hm, I may have a backup of the config, but it may be a little old. I'll take a look at factory resetting the M1 in the elk documentation. 
 
I redid my OmniPro 2 phone stuff wiring last year.  I configured it all from scratch and did get annoyed with the constant clicking sounds from the telephone relays in the panel.  I did have the panel in test mode for some 2-3 days while doing this.
 
Advice is just do it all from scratch.  It is time consuming but less time consuming than trying all of the diagonostics.
 
I have seen many posts here on the forum relating to lightning damaging all sorts of stuff especially alarm panels and really it is difficult to predict the path.
 
pete_c said:
I redid my OmniPro 2 phone stuff wiring last year.  I configured it all from scratch and did get annoyed with the constant clicking sounds from the telephone relays in the panel.  I did have the panel in test mode for some 2-3 days while doing this.
 
Advice is just do it all from scratch.  It is time consuming but less time consuming than trying all of the diagonostics.
 
I have seen many posts here on the forum relating to lightning damaging all sorts of stuff especially alarm panels and really it is difficult to predict the path.
 
you mean just start replacing all components (like the panel, etc)? 
 
I definitely get what you mean if that's what you're saying because there are all sorts of weird things going on. The keypads seem to function okay, but I've also had some very erratic behavior from my speakers as well. I hate the thought of spending all this money over again, but I'm also concerned if things are in a half-broken state, is there any risk of fire from the components? 
 
you mean just start replacing all components (like the panel, etc)?
 
Baby steps.
 
The Elk panel is modular such that the issue can be related to only one module whatever it is.  Replacing one module is not terribly expensive.
 
It is more about the time spent in diagnostics to fix.
 
A few years back a newbie automator friend installed a new alarm panel and he lost the ethernet interface card with the first storm (in FL).
 
The quick and easy replacement only worked until the next storm.  The panel was in the center of his single story home.  He added grounding which he did not have and the problem went away.
 
is there any risk of fire from the components?
 
Personally no.
 
pete_c said:
you mean just start replacing all components (like the panel, etc)?
 
Baby steps.
 
The Elk panel is modular such that the issue can be related to only one module whatever it is.  Replacing one module is not terribly expensive.
 
It is more about the time spent in diagnostics to fix.
 
A few years back a newbie automator friend installed a new alarm panel and he lost the ethernet interface card with the first storm (in FL).
 
The quick and easy replacement only worked until the next storm.  The panel was in the center of his single story home.  He added grounding which he did not have and the problem went away.
 
is there any risk of fire from the components?
 
Personally no.
 
Thanks pete - you're the best. 
 
pete_c said:
you mean just start replacing all components (like the panel, etc)?
 
Baby steps.
 
The Elk panel is modular such that the issue can be related to only one module whatever it is.  Replacing one module is not terribly expensive.
 
It is more about the time spent in diagnostics to fix.
 
A few years back a newbie automator friend installed a new alarm panel and he lost the ethernet interface card with the first storm (in FL).
 
The quick and easy replacement only worked until the next storm.  The panel was in the center of his single story home.  He added grounding which he did not have and the problem went away.
 
is there any risk of fire from the components?
 
Personally no.
 
I factory reset the elk, but still have the same issue. The M1XEP gets an IP, but I cannot connect. I'm ~99% sure the lightning ran through my ethernet cables in the house because it fried 2 POE switches and most POE devices in my house. I have a feeling it fried the old M1XEP and flowed from there into the Elk M1 and fried the RS232 port, but its hard to confirm this...
 
Anyways, I've ordered up a new (used) M1G from ebay. Hopefully it'll be here soon and I can continue testing.
Thanks for the help all!
 
Did you try to connect on the insecure port? I had an issue not too long ago with my father's system where I could not connect on 2601 or 2101 until I played around with the XEP for a bit. I used the jumpers to go back and forth between static and DHCP, verified everything was being found correctly with the diag tool but it just wouldn't connect. After some back and forth I was able to get in on 2101, update it and was back to normal.
 
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