Intermittent "Mains power off" alert following power surge

[JamesNorto]

Hi everyone, hoping you can help with some advice.

I have a Texecom Premier Elite 24 (metal case), professionally installed a few years back but I fancied trying to troubleshoot the following issue myself.

A few weeks ago, I had a power surge (well the lights flickered briefly) and ever since then the alarm has been showing an intermittent system alert stating "Mains Power Off".

I checked/swapped the fuses but the alarm keeps see the power come back for a short while and then go again, come back, go, etc. etc.

I've checked the mains connection coming into the alarm panel with a volt meter and when the alarm "thinks" it has no power, there definitely is 240V coming in.

Looking on the diagnostics window in Wintex I can see the System Voltage and Battery Voltage stay at a steady 13.8x Volts. Whereas the System Current when present is around 0.387 A but does suddenly drop to 0 A, before coming back again.

I've trawled the threads and saw an issue with older firmware so have flashed the panel from 2.x to

, with a factory reset, but that's had no impact.

I've also swapped out the battery, as was 3 years old.

I can arm the system (with accepting fault) and it all works fine. As I've said, it's been like this for several weeks (had to turn off fault tones, as was driving me insane) so it must have power most of the time, as presume the battery would have drained by now if not.

System is just the Premier Elite 24, with the basic 8 zone expander on. It's got 8 PIRs and 3 door contacts.

I'm guessing I've got a problem with the PSU or PCB itself, but any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Even if it's having to get a new PCB (ouch).

Many thanks in advance. Let me know if you need anymore info.

Cheers!

 

[secureiam]

what version panel? menu 4 in day mode on keypad will tell you or in wintex top right

 

[JamesNorto]

hi there, thanks for such a speedy response!!

It's version 3.01

 

[secureiam]

when you say intermittent whats it doing exactly? step by step.

3.01 is relatively recent firmware

 

[sparkymarka]

Probably the switch mode psu ! The rep left us a couple last visit .....why ? ....mmmmmm maybe they have had an issue with some of the psu's

 

[secureiam]

the older units there were issues with, but wondering if its ghosting or genuine psu failure issue.

was the panel flashed up?

 

[secureiam]

of course its been flashed, as the system is a few years old, probably outside warranty but would need to check the date stamp.

 

[JamesNorto]

Hi.

The problem started on a 2.x version of firmware (sorry forgot to record the exact version), but to rule out the issue being with firmware I flashed it yesterday to 3.01. I factory reset the system too, after upgrading it. Literally just after flashing it and powering back on, the "mains power off" alert started straight away.

So in terms of what it does....

The alert will appear and the power LED on the keypad starts to flash. (there's definitely power coming from the mains)

Typically less than a minute later the power LED will be permanently light, but the "mains power off" alert does not clear. Even if I try and reset the alert message on the keypad.

The system constantly cycles between these states every few minutes.

Looking in the event logs, the system does record power being restored (even though the alert on the keypad doesn't disappear).

There are no other alerts that I can see.

Cheers.

 

[secureiam]

probably a psu fault

 

[JamesNorto]

feared it might be. Do Texecom sell replacement PSUs?

 

[secureiam]

Best thing to do is call Texecom they should be able to point you in the right direction of a spare.

 

[JamesNorto]

i'll do that. Many thanks for your guidance with this and for saving my sanity! thought I was missing something else.

 

[sparkymarka]

It's all well and good having these fancy power saving switchmode psu's , but there's more things to go wrong with them .... Old wire wound transformer .... May have swopped no more than half a dozen in the last 25 years ! Say no more !

 

[secureiam]

I believe the newer switchmode power supplies have been sorted, but if something can go wrong it will, the more that can go wrong the higher the chance of something going wrong.

saying that I believe the Texecom ones are sorted now and have been for awhile.

 

[Europlex]

It's all well and good having these fancy power saving switchmode psu's , but there's more things to go wrong with them .... Old wire wound transformer .... May have swopped no more than half a dozen in the last 25 years ! Say no more !

I could not agree with you more, can't remember the last PSU I replaced.