There are bell boxes that are wireless in that they are told to sound the alarm by a radio signal sent to them. Being wireless one can assume they are powered by batteries.
How long does a set of batteries last before a ladder must be climbed to replace them.
How does the bell box indicate that the batteries are getting low in power and need replacing.
How can the owner tell there is a problem when the batteries are so exhausted as to be unable to inform the owner that they need replacing.
How many alarm notifications can be sounded before the batteries need to be replaced.
Or how many minutes or hours of full volume siren can a set of batteries support.
Hello Bernard.
In answer to your questions.
I can tell you that in the case of Yale alarms..
The technical specification lists the siren batteries as lasting 3 years typical service life.
Obviously this can change dependent on the amount of use the siren gets.
The default period for an alarm response is 10 minutes with the 6200 system using the siren as a master. (This can be changed to four)
The default length for a 6300/6400 system is 4 minutes and can be set from 1 - 15 minutes.
So the number of notifications cannot be readily given a definate answer.
However I would suggest that anyone with more than ten full alarm activations should consider changing batteries even if they are not indicating low power status. I have an alarm on a board for demonstartion purposes so that has been activated more often (though not as long) than many alarms and after a year I still have the original batteries in.
The siren gives a series of beeps and flashes when arming or disarming when the batteries are getting low. This occurs when there is approximately one months life still remaining.
There is no notification that a siren has completely exhausted its batteries other than the fact that when armed and disarmed there would be no confirmation beep and led flash normally expected. ie when an owner set his alarm he wouldn't get the acknowledgement response from the siren.
In terms of other devices the control panel lists a fault and an led description of the sensor whose batteries are failing , again with approx 4 weeks use remaining. The devices also indicate low battery status by flashing its red led when activated rather than a single blink.
If the devices totally drained they would still appear as a fault on the control panel as the panel continually polls all devices (except the siren) to make sure they are still in the system and any devices no longer 'seen' will appear on the lcd fault log.
I do have experience of the Response systems usually taking them out and swapping them.
Any systems not facing the sun or shaded by the eaves (as happens) will expire sooner rather than later.
The internal cell battery is only a pp3 9v and unless the nicad rechargeable gets sunlight the pp3 will not power the siren very effectively at all.
You also have the problem of having to face the siren from the southerly aspect of your property even if the best place for burglar deterent is on the North.
The Yale siren uses four 1.5v D cells as oposed to a single pp3
which gives (12000/4)4000mAh at 6 volts (in series) as opposed to 600mAh at 9v
