My translator is reporting as active on my panel and is getting bypassed whenever I arm. The translator is also reporting low battery even though I do not have a battery connected. Are these all related? Is a battery required for operation?
Yes, a 12VDC 7AH battery is required and should be installed or you will run into errors. Is your orange LED flashing? Can you describe its activity?
the orange LED was flashing twice every few seconds. however, the translator came off the active list prior to adding the batteries when i placed the cover on.
is it possible to allow functioning of the translator with the cover off?
The cover should be firmly attached for normal operation.
i tested my system and all seems to be working appropriately. on the notifications i receive, why do they say a “pending” alarm is reported for all the sensors? shouldn’t group 13 and 17 sensors send an immediate signal to the central station?
“Pending Alarm” indicates that you have dialer delay active. Dialer delay is a delay period between activating an alarm and when the signal is forwarded to the monitoring station, giving additional time to disarm without action.
You can edit dialer delay on your panel. This support thread describes how to edit it:
thanks
what are SIA limits?
i take it from that link that your recommendation is to have no dialer delay? what is reasoning underlying that recommendation?
Those are Security Industry Association best practices for false alarm prevention. They are industry standards that are generally the default settings for panels.
Dialer Delay is a specific setting which you can choose to disable. We generally recommend disabling as it increases the response time for the monitoring station after an alarm occurs.
If you find that your system is prone to false alarms due to your users’ activity, dialer delay is an easy way of limiting false alarms.
both translators are indicating trouble by two orange blinks every ten seconds. the panel says “tampered” and “low battery” desire brand new batteries being connected. how can i determine the trouble?
the manual says to update the firmware locally to use DLSv5 only - what does this mean?
I do not see those statuses on your account as trouble conditions right now. Have they resolved? Did you perform any troubleshooting to resolve?
If you have the front cover removed, replace it. That is likely the cause of a tamper. There is also a break-away backplate tamper piece, refer to the manual regarding that.
Low battery would indicate that the battery is low. The threshold is 11.5 vdc. If the modules lost power for a time the battery may report low. We would need a bit more context regarding the low battery, when it occurred, and how long it lasted, especially since I don’t see it in history.
The last low battery report for a translator that I see in the account is from 1/31.
Were you testing your alarm system around that time? I also see a power failure report for the main panel that lasted about 10 minutes. I am not sure if this is relevant.
the manual says to update the firmware locally to use DLSv5 only - what does this mean?
DLS 5 is DSC’s downloader software. It sounds like they plan to allow firmware updates for the Hardwire translator in the future, but this requires the downloader software and a pc link cable. It wouldn’t be relevant to what you are troubleshooting right now.
Around 1130 last night I noticed the hardwire translator tamper and low battery notices on the IQ panel. I had tested all the sensors earlier in the day, but that was more than 12 hours prior. The translator covers have also been in place continuously and had not been removed recently. I have not done anything to or with the breakaway backplate tamper piece.
This morning there are no notices on the IQ panel, yet both translators are still blinking orange every 10 sec, rather than green.
As far as I can tell the system seems to be functioning. I just don’t know why the translators are still flashing orange
Can you post a photo of the batteries that you have installed in the translators? Are they 12VDC 7AH?
Have you tried power cycling those translators? The transformer should be unplugged. Then unplug the battery.
Wait a minute, then plug in the battery first, then plug in the transformer. Does the status light go green?
Just power cycled, and still orange.
It only matters if they are flip-flopped at the other end, but I want to call it out because it is not how wires are typically used:
You currently look like you have the red wire connected to the DC negative terminal. Generally you would use the red wire for the Positive terminals. This would be a problem if you have red connected to Positive at the transformer end. Can you confirm?
The transformer, not the battery.
Look at the 18VDC terminals. Red is connected to negative on the board. If the transformer has red connected to positive that would be a problem.
Sorry yeah I just realized what you meant. Yes I had four different colored conductors I arbitrarily used for each of the two translators
Ok, yeah of course the color doesn’t matter, can be arbitrarily chosen, just wanted to make sure it is the same at both ends.
How long is that power cable?