Weird SpectrAlert Problem

Fire Alarms
1

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted here!

I’m having the strangest problem today with, not one, but four of my SpectrAlert horn/strobes. Either I’m doing something wrong, or they all randomly went bad on me.

I just got done charging up a 12 volt fire alarm panel battery that I plan to use for a mobile two-way radio. I don’t have a voltmeter, so I wired up a 12 volt halogen light bulb to test it. It lit up very brightly. Just for fun, I decided I would wire up one of the my 12/24 volt SpectrAlert horn/strobes. When I wired up the horn on the unit, nothing. I checked the connections and polarity and tried again, nothing. So I moved the wires over to the strobe terminals and hooked up the battery. Strobe worked perfectly fine. So I went to my two 12-volt batteries for my panel and wired up the horn to 24 volts, nothing. Knowing this horn was just working a few months ago, I pulled out another SpectrAlert, the same model. Wired up the horn and got nothing. I wired up the strobe. It flashed just fine. I tried this with two other 12/24 volt units. Same results. No horns at all. Just tiny sparks when I touched the wires. On one of them I had the jumper plugged in to make the horn and strobe work together. This time nothing happened at all. I wired up a completely different horn/strobe. The horn sounded as normal.

I have never experienced this problem with any of my fire alarms before, and I don’t understand why it’s happening. Last time I tested all four of the units a few months ago, they worked flawlessly. Up until then they’ve just been sitting in a pile of alarms. Not even touched. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they would have all randomly failed on me, but that’s the only logical conclusion I can come to right now.

If anyone knows what the solution is, please let me know! Thanks in advance!

2

Are these the classic SpectrAlerts or are these the new Spectralert Advance. Also do you have a model number on the back of the devices, are they all the same model ?

3

Wire a small piece of wire from the strobe negative to the horn negative. Then attach the positive lead to either the strobe positive or the horn positive and the negative lead to the horn negative or the strobe negative.

4

If it’s the SpectrAlert Classic, then only the strobe will work on its own. The strobe will need to be activated for the horn to work.

5

Sorry for the delay in replying. Really busy week.

In reply to electronicwiz101, I did not know that. That’s most likely my issue, and the I think the fact you can’t run the horn independently is stupid. I’ll try what ccs46 recommended tomorrow. They are all Classics, sorry for not clarifying that earlier. Three are P1224MCK’s, and one is a P1224MCW.

6

I got them working. Thanks a lot for the advice! I do think it’s really dumb that you can’t run the horn and strobe completely isolated from each other. Never seen any other 4-wire fire alarm like that, but I’m glad I know this now.

7

Always Happy to Help! :slight_smile: