In this post I’ll cover how to interface with the CO Detector I covered in earlier posts. Based on the measurements I did, the CO Detector has 4 outputs and 1 input the we can interface with. Here is a list of these interfaces along with a brief description. SW1 – Test Button VDD1 – Power On ICSPDAT/RS232 – Data LED1-A – Status LED H1-A – Alert Buzzer One thing that I like to do before building a bread board…
Now that I have headers and pins soldered on the CO detector, I’m ready to start taking some measurements with my test equipment. As I mentioned before, I prefer to use them in a certain order. First I’ll start by taking resistance measurements with my multimeter. One of the header pins is labeled GND1. I want to test if this ground is common to some other points on the board. Besides the negative battery terminal, this pin was also common…
I’ll be covering a tear down of an off the shelf CO detector in this post. Next I’ll cover some advanced features that I discovered while testing the CO detector. This unexpected discovery is the reasoning behind a slight delay in the publishing of this post. The CO detector I’ll be using in this example will be a First Alert Carbon Monoxide Alarm, model number CO400. It should be noted that tampering with the alarm can result in the unit…