Electronic Alarms and Home Security Devices - Lost zone on NX490 Smoke detector

I have an NX 490 Wireless Smoke detector connected to my NX-8E Caddx alarm. The keypad is BEEP BEEP BEEPing every minute and says SYSTEM NOT READY. When I check the zones (*2), its says LOST ZONE.

Is this a bad detector or are the batteries just dead (I would have thought it would say LOW BATTERY) if the batteries were dead. I checked the voltage on the two 9v lithium batteries and they were good measuring 9.33 v each

I called the monitoring company to go into test mode and hit the test button on the smoke detector and it went off and the alarm went off correctly. The phone also disconnected and called the monitoring company as it was supposed to. The system then appeared to work ok- i.e., the zone was no longer lost.

what could be the trouble?

I have had the same problem with other devices.

First off, there is a difference between system not ready, and system trouble.
If you have a lost zone, it should show a system trouble which is viewable by pressing *+2.

I have found that sometimes other RF in the home will cause some wireless devices to not "check in" with the reciever.

GE tech support suggested moving the problem device around the room or to a different room and see if the problem goes away.

Low batteries could also be a problem. A 9 volt reading of 9.3 is not low,
but a fresh batteries should read almost 10 volts.

Let me know if this helps.

Good Luck

"Lost zone" is a wireless supervisory condition (Reciever can't hear from wireless device in X amount of hours).

"Zone low battery" is just that, a low battery condition.

well it started doing it again this morning so I moved it to a different room and it started working so it seems like it was a signal problem. Now that I think about it, there is an electric water heater in between the receiver and the smoke detector.

I'll leave the detector where it is now (a different room) and see if it goes off again. If it doesnt. I'll put it back but move it to a different area in the room so that the water heater isnt in between

There are repeaters available (or multiple recievers-up to 8 of them on an 8E panel) as a last/worse case scenario...

I may need one of those when I wire up my shop (its about 175 feet away from the control panel).

Well its been a week with the smoke detector moved and it hasnt had the LOST ZONE problem again. I'll move it back to the same room but more in line with the wireless receiver and see what happens.

Thanks!

That's fairly typical, actually. I've had transmitters do this off and on for a couple of weeks, or so, then never do it again. It could be something as unpredictable as a neighbor with a powerful ham/cb radio keying up at exactly the wrong moment.

A good rule of thumb: if cordless and cell phones are a little flakey in your structure, then you will get the random lost device glitch once in a while.

For that 175 foot run to the shop, while the wireless with a well placed repeater should work, in theory, I suspect that you would have a lot of issues with it. If you can pull it off at all, running underground wiring out there for hardwired zones will prove to be far more reliable. A couple of runs of 18-4 direct burial cable in the length you need would cost less than transmitters and repeaters necessary to cover the structure, and give you far less issues in configuration and operation.

MrRonFL gives good advice, but, I would run 2 18/4's if I was running this underground. I would also recommend using conduit with direct bury cable.

The reason I would run two is that I have had too many problems later and the more conductors you have the more likely you are to have at least 3 that are good for the comm buss.

Yes, a "couple of runs" of 18-4 will do the trick. Since you are working with a NX-8e, one trick that you can do is to locate a hardwire zone expander, and possibly a keypad in the shop building, that way, you only need deal with the keypad/module bus, rather than having to run individual zone wires all the way back to the main control.

well great. I had moved it to the hall after it first had its problem. and the problem didnt reoccur for a week or so. So I put it back in the original room in the same spot. sure enough, a few days later it happened again.

So I moved it back to the hall (hung it on a small nail). And then it fell of and the clips that hold the cover on (3 of the 4) broke.... arggghhh!