honeywell galaxy 2-20 flashing stars

[gordyroxy]

for a while the keypad displayed a batt error but the alarm was working.
yesterday the keypad display went dull then became brighter and all 3 keypads are displaying flashing stars. when the stars first appeared there was a low alarm noise coming from each which was stopped by pressing any key.

i took out the 3amp fuse and removed the cover, when i did this the alarm went on on the outside of the house, but not in the box.
putting the fuse back in stops the alarm.
the keypads change to text saying its resetting wait but goes back to stars...

im sure the battery is goosed as its 8 1/2 yrs old.
i put the tamper screw back in, with the cover panel still off, and removed the battery..
the alarm stops with the fuse back, the pcb gets a green power light, but the keypads are now off completely. there are 3 fuses on the pcb, 2 with 3 coloured stripes and one clear one, they seem ok, but i havent tested them or replaced them

im going for a new battery, but can anyone tell me if this is the normal happenings of a dying battery is another part at fault..
thanks in advance
Gordon

 

[sparkymarka]

That's what happens when you ignore an issue , it may cost you more in the long run if it's burnt out the pcb/power supply !

 

[gordyroxy]

lol, being told ive been daft at delaying helps me how ?
but noted

 

[sparkymarka]

F1 is the battery fuse 1 amp worth replacing at a guess ! Is the faulty battery still connected ? If so remove for now untill you get a replacement.

 

[gordyroxy]

with the back up battery in place, the keypads flash with stars, no sounder for opening closing main door is off.
I have removed the battery and there is nothing to the keypads at all now, no power to it

 

[Europlex]

Flashing stars on the RKP is bad communication between the RKP at the panel.

Bad joint, loose connection etc.

 

[gordyroxy]

thanks for that, will have a look, is it normal for the keypad to lose all power when backup battery is not in place

 

[socdesign]

No, the panel should supply power with no battery connected. Check the fuses.

 

[gordyroxy]

will change the fuses tomorrow, then let u know, thankyou

 

[Europlex]

Flashing stars on the RKP is bad communication between the RKP at the panel.

 

[gordyroxy]

i get that the flashing stars on all keypads is a bad connection but without the battery connected there is nothing, no power at all to keypads, power to panel is ok, sorry for my ignorance, but is this two problem or just one

is it a power problem as with battery disconnected it still should have a display of flashing lights
and, the second problem of no communication to rectify the flashing stars....


or
is the no display and flashing stars bad connection the same issue

 

[gordyroxy]

update: (with 3amp fuse out before fuses taken out, and reinserted when checking them)
i took all three fuses out,
f1 battery
f2 aux
f3 bell

alarm bell started. i put f3 in and didnt make any difference, still ringing and still no power to keypads
took f3 back out and
put in f2, f1 and power to keypads, alarm reset, keypads reset,
after entering code 2x to clear 1. batt miss and 2. bell error, its now working, but i have to clear bell error and batt error every time.

im going to change the fuses anyway, and the battery..

summary
all this is with no battery connected
with f3 only in - outside bell rings, no kypd power..
with only f2 in - alarm resets, works, gives me batt miss, batt fail, bell fail
with f1,f2 same as f1 but one less batt fail message...

when f3 only was connected the outside bell rings, but no power to keypad, (when 3 amp fuse out)

when f2, f1 only are in the outside bell doesnt ring, with 3amp fuse out

and to make matters even more confusing, i just put f3 back in, to technically what it was before with no power to keypads, but now its working and back to normal, ie just the battery alert....

 

[socdesign]

You are confusing yourself. It does not make sense to be removing all fuses and placing one in at a time. Just test the fuse, or replace with a known good one.

It sounds like the bell is being powered by AUX. Not ideal, but will not cause a problem - you will only get the bell warning when the fuse is open, but as the bell is being powered via AUX, then there's no other impact.

From what you are saying, it sounds like all fuses are actually okay. What didn't make sense was your previous post where you said there was no power supplied to keypads when the battery was disconnected, but mains power (including fuses) was.

The battery itself can cause disruption to the system when faulty. It can cause a heavy load on the charge circuit and although the load isn't high enough to blow the battery fuse, it can pull the DC voltage down causing various problems.

If the battery is not at fault, then a few other things can cause loss of comm's between the panel CPU and the keypads:

1. Bad wiring to keypads (open, short, incorrect)
2. A bad keypad on the bus.
3. A bad panel PCB.

 

[gordyroxy]

i was only messing about with the fuses as i had no spares ones and still had to get the new battery, I took the fuses out from curiousity lol, so i could see what they did or didnt do to the system..

when the system started the flashing stars on the stars, i took the battery off, the minute i did that the keypads lost all power. which was confirmed on here shouldnt be happening... i took the fuses out to check them visually and they looked ok so out of curiousity put them back in separately to see what happened, thats when the power came back to the keypads, and when i eventually put all 3 back in its back to working.

ive now put new battery in and the system has no errors and is working fine, from all your grateful help i have a slightly better understanding of it, but from what i have done which is bascially take a 3 fuses out and put them back in, the result is the system has no flashing stars, and no error codes...
the only thing that is confusing me is no way would that be a fix of the faults, but it has, was trying to give as much info as poss just incase someone might contribute it to move the pcb etc when the fuses came in and out or whatever...
thanks to all who helped me and took the time to reply, ive a suspicion that it might go back the same way, hope not

(@socdesign, if there was a bad connection to a keypad would all 3 have a bad connection or just one keypad)

 

[socdesign]

It depends how the daisychain is wired. If the panel is at the end of the chain, then a break between the panel and the first keypad would cause all keypads to fail. If the panel is in the middle somewhere, then only the keypads on one side of the chain would go down.

Intermittent failures are the worst type. If the fault comes back, then you need to change one variable at a time to debug the problem (this may take some time). The first change would be to re-wire an individual keypad to the panel and see if the failure replicates over time. Changing more than one variable will only lead to confusion.

One other thing you can do is check the diagnostics in engineer menu 60 for the keypad comm's. Watch the reading for each keypad for half a minute and ensure that they're sitting at 100%.