Hey guys. So earlier today, me and the assistant principal were walking around and talking and she brought me into the closet where the panel was and I noticed that the panel was in trouble and it had been acknowledged. It said **common fault, module *Location***but that’s all I can remember seeing on the screen. But that’s not all.
I also noticed that none of the 4 annunciators showed the trouble, only the main panel did. The assistant principal did write down the troubles to give to maintenance and when we walked past one of the annunciators, I pointed out that it wasn’t showing the trouble. I also walked past another one on my way to class and it’s not showing the trouble either. (This is an EST3 system btw). Anyone know what that trouble means and maybe why the annunciator aren’t showing it?
Is it possible that the communication with the annunciators was lost? You would think that the annunciators would show a trouble of their own then, though.
I’ve noticed that all the annunciators at my school (EST3) display different alarm history counts. I don’t know why, but it might be a communication issue
I don’t know. I agree that if they did lose communication they would probably freak out. But I can tell the are communicating with the panel because they are all displaying the name of the monitoring service.
I know that for example, on an ANN-80, if it looses communication with the panel, the panel will go into trouble, but the ANN-80 will simply be stuck in the state it was in at the moment it lost communication. A good way to check would be to see if the time/date is still changing on the annunciators.
A tech may need to go out there and download the program to each annunciator, that may fix it as long as they have the matching SDU. If they were programmed and working prior and then stopped communicating i believe the annunciators themselves would show the communication fail along with the main FACP. Knowing the full on trouble on the Main may help identify the issue. you can install the annunciators power and SLC, but if your don’t download the program to them then they don’t know that they should be communicating, (like you’ve installed a body without a brain) and won’t show you a trouble. That’s been my experience , I’m just one guy and i don’t claim to know everything so please correct me if someone knows better ,hope it helps.
This is True , hopefully that is the issue and nothing more, looking at the program would confirm that, perhaps the annunciators only report alarm condition?
Does anyone know what the trouble itself means? I believe it’s on a pull station I’ll try to get a picture of it today but it’s probably gonna be a couple hours after this specific post.
I’m not sure exactly what the trouble means, it could likely be that the panel lost communication with the pull station, as that is essentially one of the only times a pull station would go into a trouble condition. I have seen the “COMMON TRBL ACT” message before on my school’s system, however it was for a “visual trigger” in a booster power supply. It may only show the actual trouble if the “Details” button underneath the up and down arrows is pressed, however that’s just a theory and I have no experience at all with EST3 systems.
Hitting Details will give you a bit more information such as what data card the device is on and the device physical address and should give a bit more detail to the trouble …if its a pull station then more that likely its a bad module or can’t see the resistor of the module, wont know for sure until we can see what the trouble is and go from there
