# Only one horn/strobe, and it was just beeping



## 480sparky (Sep 20, 2007)

A couple days ago, I started a small commercial job in a retail store adding some receps and phones that were missed during the design phase. The only thing I had done so far the first morning was to look at the panel to locate the circuit I was going to work on when I heard a beeping sound.

I walked out on to the sales floor, and a single horn/strobe was beeping. No flash, just the beep.... and every 15-20 seconds instead of wailing like normal. And none of the others seemed to be doing anything. The owner had a key to the electrical room, so I took it and checked out the FA panel.

Silent Knight. Panel was good.... showed no trouble or alarms. The monitoring company had not gotten any notification of any problems. But the h/s would beep for ½ second about every 15-20 seconds.

Being a new store (opened a couple weeks ago), I told the owner to contact whoever installed the FA system.

I noticed the h/s was gone by the time I finished yesterday, so someone had been on-site to troubleshoot it. But I'm curious as to why a single horn/strobe would act that way? Bad unit? Bum board in the panel? Poltergeists?


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## crazymurph (Aug 19, 2009)

Sounds like a bad unit. A bad board would effect several H/S units. If it was wired wrong (reverse polarity) it would be in alarm all the time.


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## bduerler (Oct 2, 2009)

i say it was a ghost


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## B4T (Feb 10, 2009)

Those H/S get a "module" that synchronizes all the units to either flash or energize horn at the same time.

That might of been what was causing the trouble.


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## MDShunk (Jan 7, 2007)

You sure this horn/strobe was part of the fire system? I know you can connect the horns to just "chirp" every once in a while in response to motion detected before the burglar system alarms out for real. Did this horn/strobe say "FIRE" on it?


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