TIL a 9 volt battery in my pocket saved a keypad swap

Had a dead keypad on a panel in a garage out in Tempe and the homeowner had already moved the ladder. I touched the 9 volt from my pouch to the two power terminals just to see the display light up, and it gave me enough juice to walk through the zone map before I ran new wire. Anyone else keep a spare battery on them for stuff like this, or is that just me being lazy?

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the_elizabeth8d ago

Have you ever noticed how the old timers always had some trick like this that never made it into the manuals? I read a thread a while back from an alarm tech who said he kept a 9 volt in his bag just for checking whether a keypad was actually dead or if the panel had lost power, which sounds like about the same thing you did. It makes sense too, because nine volts is enough to wake up the display on most of those older pads without any risk of frying anything. What you did was basically confirm the pad was fine and the wiring was the problem, which saved you from swapping a good part. That is not lazy at all, that is knowing your tools and using what is in your pouch instead of dragging a ladder back out. I keep a couple of spare batteries in the truck for the same reason, they weigh nothing and they have bailed me out more than once.

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