Honeywell/Ademco Wave2 two-tone siren - recap, sch, pics

[redwire]

My garage alarm siren was sounding a bit quiet and the tone was weird, like mixed with another tone.
Powered up it draws about 14V 300mA with a spike to ~1A briefly during the low pitch yelp, seems normal.

Teardown reveals only two electrolytic capacitors inside, so I replaced them. 100uF 25V for the warble ramp, and 47uF 16V for decoupling.
The old ones tested OK sort of? - 100uF reads 68uF (-32%) ESR 0.80Ω, and 47uF reads 41uF ESR 0.87Ω as well so it was a bit confusing if the caps were to blame.
The tone caps are green film caps I left alone. Newer versions of this siren are more SMT but the same 6-transistor circuit I think.
I checked drive voltage from the alarm control board and it's good.

Afterwards, the siren is loud and not making the strange whimpy tones.
I did a schematic for the siren as well, it seems to use a SCR out of 2 transistors for the ramp i.e. cap charges pitch goes up, SCR fires and discharges and it repeats. The main tone osc and VCO is a two transistor multivibrator.

If this doesn't fix it, I will go nuts. The alarm board I made using an ESP8266 and TIP110 to drive the siren. I hauled it onto the bench and could not find anything wrong with the siren output.
It usually goes off around 3-4AM when hobos and thugs are trying break-ins in the back alley, so I am half awake wondering what happened.
Last time it went off I thought it was a cheezy not loud car alarm until I checked the datalog and it had gone off.
I made a few touch/ vibration sensors and have one now that detects the garage door handle being mangled, so it chirps and warns before they trash the door. If the door gets pushed open or motion it goes off hard.

[stj]

Re: Honeywell/Ademco Wave2 two-tone siren - recap, sch, pics

broken solder joints all over that board.
not surprising with the speaker so close

[redwire]

Re: Honeywell/Ademco Wave2 two-tone siren - recap, sch, pics

Well, just for you I climbed back up and brought the unit down, back to the workbench. I had resoldered (after that pic) a few things but wondered if I missed one. It's whole life probably runs a few minutes per year. These things are mission critical nowadays.

The solder joints are shiny, no signs of fracture yet there are a few rings and many pins not wet. So the solder is fully around the pin but not sticking to it. I usually see that with crappy solder that looks dull finish, or wave soldering that jiggles or moved during cool-down.
I desoldered and resoldered all parts a few times as needed. The solder is lead-tin, rosin flux yet still not working well. This was more hassle than I'm used to, so I looked and the problem is the PC board hole sizes are basically huge so the solder has too much surface tension and doesn't wet to a pin.
After a lot of work, I resoldered everything and did another test OK. We'll see how it does.
The speaker doesn't vibrate that much, it's a small bullet horn driver and there's a patent about it.
You can also use the siren board to drive an external big horn speaker.

[stj]

Re: Honeywell/Ademco Wave2 two-tone siren - recap, sch, pics

it could also be the mylar caps.

[CapLeaker]

Re: Honeywell/Ademco Wave2 two-tone siren - recap, sch, pics

That reminded me on the Algo Duet I repaired a while back. It uses an IC to do the warbling. https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=112675
Yes, I did see a few solder joints on your board that looks in the picture that there are some cold solder joints.

[redwire]

Re: Honeywell/Ademco Wave2 two-tone siren - recap, sch, pics

Next time I'll pour some flux on the board beforehand - sometimes I find old parts get oxide on the leads and are very stubborn to get solder to stick to.
Last nightmare was an Onkyo AV receiver lead-free I tried to touch up the boards with lead-tin solder and rosin flux- which did not work at all, no wetting happening.

When the siren was running I roughed it up, tapped parts and it was working ok. We'll see if it's a bad part or that kooky diac/SCR it has.
Now there is a spark when I connect power, there was not before. So the new cap seems to make a difference.

The siren was a dumpster dive rescue, someone threw out their whole home alarm system. I thought running 20 year old brand-name stuff verses Aliexpress cheap stuff that wails and everybody ignores the cycle of 4 sounds or whatever, including the bird sound lol, it's better to go old school H/W.

[stj]

Re: Honeywell/Ademco Wave2 two-tone siren - recap, sch, pics

you should find an abandoned factory or school and get yourself an oldschool firebell!!

[CapLeaker]

Re: Honeywell/Ademco Wave2 two-tone siren - recap, sch, pics

you should find an abandoned factory or school and get yourself an oldschool firebell!!

[redwire]

Re: Honeywell/Ademco Wave2 two-tone siren - recap, sch, pics

Firebells are 120VAC here and residential alarm panels are 12VDC. Fire trucks are 12VDC 100A siren motors.
The fire bells seem to have a fire-code lifetime limit, or the inspection company gets bored and needs to make money, so they get changed out. They used to be made in USA and now it's made in china and they are small and sound like soup cans lol. Can hardly hear them.

[CapLeaker]

Re: Honeywell/Ademco Wave2 two-tone siren - recap, sch, pics

Sounds like a soup can! Bahahahahaha!

[redwire]

Re: Honeywell/Ademco Wave2 two-tone siren - recap, sch, pics

WONTON ALERT

[stj]

Re: Honeywell/Ademco Wave2 two-tone siren - recap, sch, pics

well if they are being swapped-out maybe you can find an old one.
120v isnt a problem with an ssr

[redwire]

Re: Honeywell/Ademco Wave2 two-tone siren - recap, sch, pics

It's a matter of trust. I wrote the ESP8266 alarm code... and it ended up complicated - debounce the sensors, warning chirps if you mess with the handle, webpage, data log and I recently added NTP so it has the time/date but did not yet add timestamps to the log. It has been working for over two years with no troubles, but C is still a bit a scary with a siren/bell the entire neighbourhood can hear lol.

It's been my algorithms getting it wrong:
What happened is a thug took a hammer to the garage door handle and busted it up. That made me toss the capacitance sensor I had on the handle, it's useless if they're wearing gloves or using a hammer. Changed to a vibration/shake switch.

Next, a thug body-slammed the garage door, moved it a bit past the Hall sensor for a second or so. I had heavy debounce filtering, ~2 seconds to prevent false trips from thunderstorms, garbage truck banging etc. so the alarm did not trip.
I lowered debounce time to 0.8 sec and sure enough the second time he came around, it went off at 4AM and he fled. Since then, no major attacks.

So it's working OK, they really don't like a siren going off and a couple apartment buildings nearby can see what's up - as well as hear the alarm.

[stj]

Re: Honeywell/Ademco Wave2 two-tone siren - recap, sch, pics

if it's an up-n-over type door they usually have some play in them you could catch with a microswitch
and give the door some 240v while your at it - it's not like they are going to sue you for being thrown while breaking in.

[redwire]

Re: Honeywell/Ademco Wave2 two-tone siren - recap, sch, pics

Yes it's a knee banger, or up and over door. Very heavy wood from the early 1950's. Can't find spare parts for it.
I put a motorized door opener on it, although not recommended because it sorta wants to chop people in two lol. It doesn't have a sensor beam for the door's sides at the bottom.
Once I hit the remote button to open the door, and it swung up and nailed a car illegally parked in front. Some dumb plumber's car. No damage but it was loud and it the opener tripped on high torque. I closed the door and then hit his car again for full effect.

I made a Hall sensor at the door top using a rare earth magnet and get around 2" range. So if the door top moves back an extra inch, it trips the alarm.

One guy did connect a car ignition coil oscillator to his car. Thief was found unconscious on the boulevard. That seem like the next level. 240V is not enough to go through shoes lol.

[stj]

Re: Honeywell/Ademco Wave2 two-tone siren - recap, sch, pics

well i thought you had a galvanised door.
for wood your limited.
maybe explode something unpleasant.
iodine crystals for example will stain everything they touch if you heat them with a coil
or cyanocrylate gell.
put a computer fan behind the evap unit to make sure it goes out of the garage and not into it

[CapLeaker]

Re: Honeywell/Ademco Wave2 two-tone siren - recap, sch, pics

There is only one thing that comes in my mind. A flamethrower. By the time you get down there, BBQ is done.

[stj]

Re: Honeywell/Ademco Wave2 two-tone siren - recap, sch, pics

a bit noticeable.

[CapLeaker]

Re: Honeywell/Ademco Wave2 two-tone siren - recap, sch, pics

Who cares? Someone was smoking carelessly.

[stj]

Re: Honeywell/Ademco Wave2 two-tone siren - recap, sch, pics

well if you want to go down the blatant route you could use a solenoid valve or electric pump to spray the intruder with anything from freezing cold tap water to petrol or kerosene
that should make them run - nobody is going to start a fight while they are at risk of exploding in flames!