A few years ago I bought this Potter PFC-6006 control panel board off eBay for a bit over $20, advertised as working. Came in the mail, powered it on and all was working fine for a few days. Eventually it started blowing the main 2A fuse every time I powered it on. Gave up and put it in a drawer and here I am again trying to get it working.
I’m not too invested in this hobby, I don’t wanna spend too much money so I’m trying everything I can to get this panel working so I don’t need to buy another one for an exorbitant price. Unfortunately this panel has a built in PS, so I cant simply swap it out with another one. Something I figured out was by hooking up a 24v DC supply to the AUX output (very jank) I could get the panel to sort of power on. All functions seem to work. I was able to connect it to the Potter Fire Panel Programmer and configure things, I was able to set it into an alarm condition on every zone, auto silence works, etc. All of that works except for the LCD and controls. It powers on with the rest of the panel, however it starts it’s initialization process and stops at “Initializing - LCD” and never changes while the rest of the board powers up. None of the controls function either which has left me stuck again.
I just wanna find a way to completely bypass the built in supply, as I don’t wanna mess with high voltage electronics and attempt to repair it. Understandably this would also bypass any protection circuitry and risk damage to the board, but for how cheap this board was I don’t really mind. Does anyone know how to do something like this, or is buying a new panel my only option?