Paradox EVO192 alarm panel help...

[Dannyx]

Good day folks. I had a (big) screw-up at work today: our company recently signed an agreement with a line of hypermarkets that's pretty big in EU and possibly overseas too, through which we provide tech support for its entire security systems infrastructure. This involves everything from CCTV to alarm and fire systems.

Long story short, I made a colossal screw-up today when I was inspecting the Paradox EVO192 alarm panel at one of their shops: I plugged the backup battery in backwards ! Such an embarrassing mistake, but so easy to do thanks to that stupid connector which although takes a bit of force, CAN still be inserted backwards, which I just did *facepalm*

For the record, this DID happen to me once before, but I got away with replacing the onboard fuse to the left of the board. This time though, the board died for good....not only did the fuse blow, but after replacing it and trying to power on again on AC mains, the board stood there doing nothing for a few seconds, the it burst into flames ! No joke ! The part I encircled went up in a puff of smoke ! I was mortified

We WILL get a replacement tomorrow, but the problem is I won't have enough time to study it and compare it to the dead board at my own pace, since it has to be installed straight away and will probably get shipped to the client directly, so if anyone out there, by some freak coincidence has a Paradox EVO192 on hand and can provide some close-ups of that area, it would be greatly appreciated, so I can hopefully fix the dead one too. That's clearly a buck converter, delimited by that ground trace, so worst case scenario I could probably botch in an off-board one to restore the dead power rail... Thanks.

[petehall347]

Re: Paradox EVO192 alarm panel help...

is that a reverse polarity protection diode ? maybe it wasn't fast enough ...

[Dannyx]

Re: Paradox EVO192 alarm panel help...

is that a reverse polarity protection diode ? maybe it wasn't fast enough ...

Yes, it is, but it's not shorted. Not that it'd HAVE to be shorted - its purpose would be to, indeed, blow the fuse if some numb-nuts (this guy<<<<<<<<<) pushes the connector in backwards. The fuse did blow, but apparently not before something else died

[stj]

Re: Paradox EVO192 alarm panel help...

what type of battery does this pos use?
i say pos because it should have been protected from that.

your company did of course do an equipment audit and get manuals etc before signing the contract right?

as if i didnt know the answer!!!

[Dannyx]

Re: Paradox EVO192 alarm panel help...

It uses a 7Ah 12v SLA (UPS kind).

It's most definitely NOT the first one I install or troubleshoot, so it was simply operator error...

Our company is actually a subcontractor of the one in charge of this stuff for this line of shops, so basically we do the dirty work for them and they treat us to some cash (which doesn't show). We install and work with whatever they give us, despite some of their design ideas not being to my liking or flat-out incorrect - we just have to roll with it.

An example of stuff which is not quite logical to me is the outside siren which has a backup battery already in it, like you'd expect, but they INSISTED we power it from its own dedicated supply, which in turn has its own backup battery, which to me sounds like overkill....kinda like plugging an UPS into another UPS. I can see where they were going with this, since it increases the run time overall, so maybe I'm in the wrong here

[stj]

Re: Paradox EVO192 alarm panel help...

maybe because they dont want to change the battery in the bell-box because they may need a hydraulic platform to reach it.
so they let it dry out and use a remote one - until 3 years from now a thief cuts the wire.

[Dannyx]

Re: Paradox EVO192 alarm panel help...

No, the bells are actually not that inaccessible - I know, since we installed the whole system in two new shops that just opened up. Just takes a medium-sized ladder....anyway

Here are some close-ups of the NEW board that these guys sent in for replacement today. The parts in red are what's visibly destroyed on the dead one (zoom in, since the photo's large). That resistor for example is so bad you can no longer make out its value. There may still be other dead stuff. Probably not THAT hard to fix, assuming the traces are still there and the layers are not shorted...