HoustonFirefox
Active Member
Hello All,
In the last few days I've run into an issue with my Elk M1G I hope someone might have some insight into.
My Elk has been running fine for the last 1.5 years with two Elk batteries wired in parallel. Recently I've been getting a LOW BATTERY indication on the keypad. If I left it alone, eventually the display would go dark but the power light on the main control would stay lit. The system would not arm or go into alarm in this state. If I turned it off and then back on it would run for about 5 minutes before going dead again.
Now for the fun stuff. The system can only be powered up with the battery installed. If I disconnect it and try to power up, nothing will happen. If I disconnect the power plug at the control it reads 18.2vac but if I plug it back in with the unit off, it still reads the same. When I turn the unit on the voltage drops to 10.8 vac if the battery is charged and .2 vac if the battery is very low (I think the PTC breaker trips trying to recharge the low battery).
Out of curiosity to see if I might have a bum battery, I pulled the 12vdc gel cell from my APC battery backup and measured 13.8vdc with no load (fully charged). I put it in the Elk last night and performed the load test - All Okay. When I checked it this morning, the keypad was once again displaying "LOW BATTERY".
The power brick for the Elk has a green light on it and "appears" okay but I'm wondering if it is failing since it doesn't seem to supply the Elk under any type of load and certainly is not float-charging the battery.
Any ideas?

In the last few days I've run into an issue with my Elk M1G I hope someone might have some insight into.
My Elk has been running fine for the last 1.5 years with two Elk batteries wired in parallel. Recently I've been getting a LOW BATTERY indication on the keypad. If I left it alone, eventually the display would go dark but the power light on the main control would stay lit. The system would not arm or go into alarm in this state. If I turned it off and then back on it would run for about 5 minutes before going dead again.
Now for the fun stuff. The system can only be powered up with the battery installed. If I disconnect it and try to power up, nothing will happen. If I disconnect the power plug at the control it reads 18.2vac but if I plug it back in with the unit off, it still reads the same. When I turn the unit on the voltage drops to 10.8 vac if the battery is charged and .2 vac if the battery is very low (I think the PTC breaker trips trying to recharge the low battery).
Out of curiosity to see if I might have a bum battery, I pulled the 12vdc gel cell from my APC battery backup and measured 13.8vdc with no load (fully charged). I put it in the Elk last night and performed the load test - All Okay. When I checked it this morning, the keypad was once again displaying "LOW BATTERY".
The power brick for the Elk has a green light on it and "appears" okay but I'm wondering if it is failing since it doesn't seem to supply the Elk under any type of load and certainly is not float-charging the battery.
Any ideas?
