HKC Quantum 70 - Low Battery

edanto

My HKC is saying 'low battery' and I think I should be able to replace them myself.

I suspect it's the bell box battery (alarm went off a lot last winter - turns out the neighbour chopping wood was causing it), but after browsing through the Engineers menu, can't see a way to find which device is giving the low battery.

Is it possible to see in the Engineers menu which device needs a new battery, or is it time (and better practise) to just replace them all (alarm installed almost 4y ago).

altor

edanto wrote: »

My HKC is saying 'low battery' and I think I should be able to replace them myself.

I suspect it's the bell box battery (alarm went off a lot last winter - turns out the neighbour chopping wood was causing it), but after browsing through the Engineers menu, can't see a way to find which device is giving the low battery.

Is it possible to see in the Engineers menu which device needs a new battery, or is it time (and better practise) to just replace them all (alarm installed almost 4y ago).

If you go into engineer mode, service menu, logs, view logs. Scroll to view different events. When you see RF low battery press 0 and this will show you the device that has the low battery.

edanto

Thanks altor. I reckon I'll have to set the correct time on it though; went through the last 200 logs and they were all either set/unset or 'winter time'...maybe it doesn't log events correctly if the time isn't set? Anyways, I'll find the place to change time and then check logs again tomorrow.

altor

edanto wrote: »

Thanks altor. I reckon I'll have to set the correct time on it though; went through the last 200 logs and they were all either set/unset or 'winter time'...maybe it doesn't log events correctly if the time isn't set? Anyways, I'll find the place to change time and then check logs again tomorrow.

No probs, any other problems let us know.
The time is set in the timers menu.
New events will have the correct time once this is set.

edanto

No joy I'm afraid.

Went into Engineer, to Logs menu, but there's nothing in there about battery even though it still says batteries low at every arm/disarm. Just says engineer here/left/arm/disarm etc. No mention of winter time now that I've set the time.

I've searched through the manual for all mentions of 'battery' and can't see how to find which batteries are low. I thought my best shot would be the RF devices menu, but couldn't see what to do there.

Any pointers pls?

altor

edanto wrote: »

No joy I'm afraid.

Went into Engineer, to Logs menu, but there's nothing in there about battery even though it still says batteries low at every arm/disarm. Just says engineer here/left/arm/disarm etc. No mention of winter time now that I've set the time.

I've searched through the manual for all mentions of 'battery' and can't see how to find which batteries are low. I thought my best shot would be the RF devices menu, but couldn't see what to do there.

Any pointers pls?

If you go into the logs and scroll you should see RF low battery. Press 0 on the keypad will show you the device that has the low battery.
Also if you go into engineer tools menu and scroll you should see system faults. It should also list here.

edanto

Inching closer!

Found the RF Low Battery in Engineer Tools, Faults. I watch it for a second and it changes to Faults Found and then back to RF Low Battery. Can't seem to dig deeper than that though. 0 does nothing. Taking a guess at other buttons, none do anything. Holding 0 just gives lots of beeps.

Definitely nothing in the main log menu.

I've searched through the manual, but can't find info on how to dig down past the RF Low Battery to see which units might have low batteries. Feel like I'm nearly there though!

fred funk }{

It has to be in the main log. Are you sure you're not skipping over it thinking it's something else?

edanto

I've just gone back about 50 events, and they are just arm/disarm, engineer here/left/auth.. and then it starts getting into the Winter time reports from before I set the time right on it. (system lost power completely during some building work and I hadn't set the time after)

panel SW is 1.0.18; would that count as very old? Alarm is only in about 3 and a bit years.

fred funk }{

Go back further. 50 events isn't much at all.

edanto

OK, thanks, will do. Is the event only logged the first time that the low battery is detected?

Last week I went back 200 events, but most of them were "Winter Time", which has stopped being logged now that I've set the time correctly. Maybe I've left it too long, but I guess it all depends how big the log memory is. I'll dig deeper later. It's been giving the verbal warning for a few weeks before I did anything about it, so probably made the problem harder to solve.

edanto

Found it. Event 423 - RF Battery Low SB1 Saab1 - main bell box battery. Now to figure out where to get one. I'm on the way, thanks for all the help.

fred funk }{

edanto wrote: »

Found it. Event 423 - RF Battery Low SB1 Saab1 - main bell box battery. Now to figure out where to get one. I'm on the way, thanks for all the help.

Knew it was in there somewhere. There's a list of suppliers in the stickies on the top of the forum. Any one of those sell that battery pack, it's not cheap though.

edanto

Found out that the batteries in the bell box for this HKC Quantum 70 are just 5 of the batteries that go into the sensors, the CR123a ones.

€2.67 each (incl VAT, delivered, online price) for Energiser ones, which have slightly more juice (1500mAh) than the HKC branded ones (1400mAh).

Looking forward to getting this boxed off, thanks for all the help.

edanto

Just coming back to the thread - all complete, was handy enough.

Put alarm into engineer mode and then can remove bell box cover (one straight headed screw on the side)

Carefully remove battery packs - mine had two, then on the ground open the packs and replace batteries. Each battery box takes 6 CR123a

Quick job [on the ladder, obviously it's taken a while to get it finished!], all sorted. Thanks altor and fred funk for all the help.

Mandshine2004

How do u get the box open? Our battery just went

edanto

First - just to check that you have exactly the same symptoms, you have the same error message and you're certain the problem is the batteries in the external bell box? Obviously there are batteries everywhere with this system!

My bell box (well fitted by altor from the forum here) has 2 battery packs in it, so you might want to make sure you have 10 or 12 of those batteries ready to fit in case your box has 2 battery packs.

Put the alarm in engineer mode. After that, up the ladder, single straight screw at the side of the box to release the cover. Unclip the battery boxes and take 'em apart on the ground and refill with new batteries.