Ran into a weird voltage drop on a job in Tempe yesterday

I was putting in a new DSC Neo panel and the keypad kept losing power after about 20 feet of wire. Checked everything twice, then finally metered the transformer under load and saw it was only putting out 15.8 volts instead of 16.5. Swapped it for a new one from the truck and the drop went away. Has anyone else had a brand new transformer be that far off spec right out of the box?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_tessa2d ago

Oh man, that's a pain. I was reading a thread last week where a guy had the same thing with a brand new Altronix power supply. It was just enough under voltage to make some door access readers act up. Seems like quality control on some of this stuff has really gone downhill lately. You don't expect to have to meter a new transformer right out of the box, but I guess now we do. Glad swapping it fixed it, but what a waste of time on site.

the_oscar2d agoTop Commenter

Brand new and already that far out of spec? That's just lazy. You'd think the basic job of a transformer is to, you know, transform the voltage correctly. Makes you wonder what they're checking before they ship them out. I'd be sending that one back for a refund, not just tossing it in the trash.