4
Had a weird sensor failure on a job in Everett last Thursday
Was finishing up a panel install when a motion sensor just stopped talking to the system. No tamper alerts, just dead. I pulled it down and the board looked fine, no burn marks or anything. Ended up being a bad capacitor on the power circuit that you could only see with a magnifier. Anyone run into something like that where the failure was totally silent?
3 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In3 Comments
lane.taylor28d ago
My buddy had a sensor go completely dark on a warehouse job last year. It was a door contact, and it just stopped sending any signal at all, no trouble beeps or anything. He spent an hour checking the wiring before he popped it open. Found a tiny crack in a resistor leg, so small you had to tilt it in the light just right to see. Those silent failures are the worst kind of hunt.
3
reed.hannah28d ago
Oh man, "silent failures" is right. I once spent a whole afternoon tracing a wire for a phantom short, @lane.taylor, only to realize I'd left my own meter's probes touching in my bag. The hunt is always worse when the problem is something stupid you did to yourself.
2
shah.zara2d ago
Hold up, you're telling me the silent ones are the worst? I live for that kind of puzzle. That hour of checking wiring is the whole point, isn't it? It's way better than chasing a constant beep that just leads you right to it. Finding that tiny crack in the resistor, something everyone else missed, that's the real win. Makes you feel like you actually solved something.
7