Autona (UK) burglar alarm unit: any leads?

Bit of a longshot, but does anyone in UK have any suggestions as to how I might locate the circuit diagram for an Autona Series 200, model 2250 microprocessor control unit please?

As per my parallel thread, the re-entry delay on mine has failed. Rather than the hassle of installing a new unit of a different type I'd like to attempt either fixing it or adding a supplementary circuit of my own.

Web searches for Autona Limited lead to a phone number 01844 345740 that is unrecognised.

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK
Reply to
Terry Pinnell
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You have to hope it is a rebadged sonething else, take a few distinctive numbers off the chippery and google them

Reply to
N_Cook

Googling their street address shows they dissolved quite recently. Also dissolved at the same address is Riscomp LTD. But Chiltern Circuits still exists -- apparently all three firms shared directors.

There appears to be some current interest in using Autona amplifier modules -- perhaps ask your question on a diy audio or guitar forum, and someone would know where to find Autona schematics.

I'm thinking, too, that the circuit would have been documented in the electronics magazines of that day. Or, that a similar circuit might have been written up. I don't know if you have access to any circa

1990 electronics hobbyist magazines.

But, considering this is 20 year old technology, perhaps you'd like to upgrade anyway?

Reply to
spamtrap1888

Terry

When I needed a manual for my daughter's alarm panel, I posted on an alarms group. Can't remember what it was called now, but I seem to recall that I just did a search on the whole list of newsgroups using "alarm" as the search word, and found a UK group. Some kind soul on there came back to me very quickly with a pdf of the complete manual. It's been a few years now, but I guess that the group is probably still there.

Arfa

Reply to
Arfa Daily

Thanks both, good ideas which I'll follow up.

My motivation for sticking with this admittedly very old box is that it avoids all re-installation hassle (changed connections, new rawlplug positions, etc). And it goes against the grain to ditch it when all but the re-entry works perfectly

Meanwhile today I'm going to dust off my shed workbench and breadboard an add-on. That will hopefully regain the re-entry functionality, albeit at the cost of adding an extra small case.

The idea is to use the N/C door sensor to trigger a 20 s monostable. That in turn will enable an astable to give me a warning beep of around 2 Hz. (Unfortunately, without the circuit diagram I can't confidently use the existing 'sounder' for this.) When the mono ends it will trigger a short pulse to a small relay (perhaps a reed type). A loop through the relay's N/C contact to the original delay entry inputs of the CU will trigger the alarm if it hasn't been disabled within the warning period (because these inputs now act immediately, like the other loop inputs).

Apart from my general rustiness, I expect the main challenge will be to ensure no problems arise with spurious triggering of the mono, such as when power is applied, such as after a mains power cut. I plan to use CMOS

4001 and/or 4011, a few Rs and Cs and probably a transistor or two.

There's one other longshot approach I'm trying in parallel. By removing 4 screws I was able to get a good look at the circuit board. Its main active component is a PIC16FC4. I know virtually nothing about PICs, but just in case that *has* become faulty I thought it worth dropping in a replacement. I couldn't find that specific one in stock anywhere so I've taken a gamble and ordered a PIC16C54-XTI/P (8BIT CMOS MCU, 16C54, DIP18) at £3.64.

Does all that sound reasonable?

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK
Reply to
Terry Pinnell

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Even assuming you got hold of the program Autona used, how would you program the PIC?

Reply to
spamtrap1888

I don't think that's a valid part number -- sure it's not a PIC16F84? You need to make sure you've got the right one; different chips in that range have very different sets of internal features (timers, IO pins, etc.).

As noted elsewhere in the thread, you will need to program the right firmware into the flash memory inside the chip; a blank PIC won't do anything useful. If your existing one just has a fried input pin or similar -- and doesn't have the protection fuse set -- then you may be able to read out the existing code using a PIC programmer.

If you can't get the code, then it may be less effort just to replace it with a more modern microcontroller... assuming it's really the microcontroller that's dead. If some of it's still working fine then I'd be inclined to suspect almost everything else first!

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Adam Sampson
Reply to
Adam Sampson

The part number is valid

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but yes, that was dumb. I realised my mistake shortly after getting CPC's order confirmation yesterday!

And that wasn't the only dumb thing I did. Part way through breadboarding my proposed add-in, I decided to test a few voltages and resistances at the CU connections. (Because the circuit would have to be more complex than I described, to maintain the EXIT delay.) In the course of doing that I discovered the cause of the problem: I'd swapped the anti-tamper loop and delay loop!

So, much wasted time but a happy ending ;-)

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK
Reply to
Terry Pinnell

En el artículo , Terry Pinnell escribió:

You lost your bet - PICs are programmable. How are you going to get the program from the old PIC into the new one?

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Reply to
Mike Tomlinson

See my post yesterday evening.

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Terry, East Grinstead, UK
Reply to
Terry Pinnell

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