External Box - Live or Dummy?

[Jasmine H]

I really hope someone here can give some advice on a query with our house alarm. We have a monitored ADT system which was installed by the previous owners (maybe about 8 years ago), but we never took the contract out ourselves (so it is no longer monitored) and have never turned the alarm on.

Earlier the internal siren suddenly started going off and the control panel display had gone blank so the fobs did not work to turn it off. After phoning ADT and not getting much help there, my husband eventually managed to take the fuse out of the control panel and disconnected the backup battery in the control panel and internal siren.

That stopped the racket thankfully, but my query is related to the external box on the outside of the house (the one that flashes with blue leds). We are not sure whether this is a live box or a dummy box and it is too high to easily check and neither of us are good up ladders.

If it was a live box would it have gone off by now? We are worried that if it was connected up, it may suddenly go off when the battery starts to die and if this happened in the middle of the night it would be awful...

 

[sparkymarka]

Dummy

 

[Jasmine H]

I should have added that we have lived here for almost 5 years now. Is it possible that a dummy could still be blinking its LEDs after this length of time?

 

[sparkymarka]

Is it blinking now.?

 

[Jasmine H]

Hi. Someone come round to check at short notice and it is confirmed to be a dummy. It was still blinking yes, so the battery must have kept the LEDs going for over 5 years, which is quite impressive. At least I can sleep easy tonight now.