BTW, I'm still not clear on exactly where you onnected the pgm2. You said
the terminal right next to it, and you also said 12v acc, whatever that
means. What exactly did you short pgm 2 to?
the next terminal. on a 4-wire smoke, PGM2 is next to Vaux or whatever
it's called, the 12V always-on supply for devices.
Nobody is laughing at you, but in the manual it says not to power up until
you have connected all the wiring. Would you have followed that advice had
it been printed in red?
truly i am at fault for messing with it while powered on. yes, it does
say not to. yes, it says "must not exceed" current ratings. i ignored
all those warnings and screwed up anyway. i take full responsibility.
ah, the shortcuts you take when working alone. i think i'll just switch
these two little wires on my smoke detector hot instead of disconnecting
3 batteries and 2 A/C adapters in 2 separate buildings first, shit what's
the worst thing that could happen?
yeah, if it had more dire warnings like "must not exceed... OR warrantee
voided and system destroyed" then i'm sure i would have been more careful.
that said, i have two points:
(1) humans make mistakes. we're talking about accidentally touching two
adjacent terminals on a smoke detector in another building a hundred
feet from the panel. seems like a mistake which might be anticipated;
what outrageous cost to add a fuse to the board? everyone seems to
think this is a ridiculous idea, and prohibitively expensive. huh??
you should be able to rip the wires out of a smoke detector, twist them
together, and just have the alarm system complain, not shut down. it's
*just a smoke detector*! it's not like i was hovering over the system
board dripping solder onto it.
again, what happens if the smoke gets wet due to pipe break, leaking
roof, whatever?
(2) if you can turn off Vacc by shorting PGM2, can you also do it with
PGM1? that's connected to Vacc too. since it seems to be mostly
for a few blinking LEDs-- and such LEDs are often installed on the
outer surface of the building (mine are)-- couldn't you perform the
same sort of attack with the LED? you could walk up to my garage
with a portable drill and hole saw, core out the LED from the wood
siding, then just pull the mess out and zap the wires. wouldn't even
set the alarm off that way!
yes, i appreciate that the *likely* attack is just smash & grab, not
sophisticated. still, if that's all it took...
i'm confused about people's comments re Vacc and the supply to modules.
i thought that the main 4-wire bus supplies the power to all modules. the
Vacc output is another supply, for powering devices. i shorted Vacc, or
overcurrented PGM2, whichever way you look at it, yet my keypads (which run
off the bus) were down, so it looks like *all* 12V was down.
if all 12V is down, then how can any of the modules, including the dialer,
continue to work? all modules get their power from the bus.
my system seemed dead. someone said it probably wasn't actually dead, but
i sure couldn't get any sign of life out of it! the sirens were connected
the whole time and they were silent. everything was silent & black, the
thing was seemingly wedged until a full power reset, including physically
disconnecting the batteries.
--ian
