Security Installations

Control Unit and Keypad
This is the brain of your alarm system. Modern alarm systems are microprocessor based and many have on board diallers attached to their circuit boards, ie. a means of communicating with a central monitoring station.

The control unit is wired into mains power which is then transformed to 16 volts AC to power the electronic board. This is in turn rectified to 12 volts DC.

The control unit has a back up battery power supply usually a 6.5AH battery which is trickle charged by the controller.

This battery should last 5-7 years. The controllers size is dependent on the number of zones it has, usually 4, 6 or 8 zones are sufficient for most home or small business application. Larger capacity alarm panels can have up tp 300 zones and are available for specialist applications.

One piece of detection equipment should be installed onto one zone.This makes fault finding easy and identifies to the monitoring station which zone has activated. The controller zones have balanced end of line resistors and can be either 24 hour zones, i.e live all the time, or only live when the alarm is set.

As well as zones for detectors the controller also has adjustable exit, entry delay times and siren run times.

While older alarms were keyswitch operated modern controllers are usually operated by a keypad or remotes. For all modern alarms the keypad is an extension of the controller and each model of alarm must have its own keypad. This also applies to remote on/off units (called remotes), and nightarm stations.

Modern alarms have the capability to have more than one keypad operate them and can be partially armed, ie. Nitearmed or Stay Away, and as well, zones can be isolated by the user as required. Access through the keypad is via a PIN number, usually four digits. The keypad can also send Raid/Duress/medical alarm/fire signals and can activate the alarm instantaneously if a panic button is pressed.


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