older American Security Safe dead battery

[murban64]

My mother-in-law has two older model American Security Safes with dead batteries, and no one can tell us how to bring them back to life. The keypads are not removable, but they do have a small "phone type" socket underneath the front of the panel. See photos of safe front and phone socket.

I assume that the phone socket is there to allow one to energize the keypad remotely to open the safe and replace the battery. My mother-in-law has no information (paperwork) on the safes, and they are bolted in so I cannot see the backside for any info. She claims to know the codes if we can power them up.

The phone socket looks to have 6 electrical contacts in it. How does this remote access work? Do I need to plug in a 6-conductor phone cord and then try and apply 6V? or 9V? or some other voltage level to specific conductors. And which conductors do I connect to and with what polarity (+/-).

Any advice is much appreciated

[prevariikation]

The safe might be an Amsec HR916E. The page mentions that there's a bypass power cable that takes a 9V battery, but I haven't found details or pictures yet.

[murban64]

Thanks, It does look like the right model number and the 9V is a good tip.

[demux]

It should not be too hard to make your own cable for this if you can find the correct pinout. All you need is something with an RJ11 plug on one end and some bare wires to wrap around the battery leads on the other. An old phone cord with one end cut off would do nicely. But I'd caution against just trying things until you can find the correct pinout. I doubt that any more than two of the leads are connected from the jack, but I would not swear by that, and if you just start randomly putting 9V across things you could easily fry something important...

[murban64]

Thanks for the comments.

I have a 4-conductor cord that I tried with a 9V battery in all the combinations for the 4 contacts, with no result. I see plenty of 6 conductor cables online and that's my next step. I would only really expect two contacts in the connector to be active or live for this bypass power, and those would hopefully have some level of reverse voltage protection.

[Raymond]

Question? Would a VOM recognize positive voltage if run across the wires of the cable or across the contacts in the socket? Is the socket wired parallel to the battery pack or must you hold down a key to make the circuit?

Inquiring minds just want to know stuff.

[murban64]

Thanks Raymond, you bring up a good question.
I do find it a little odd that the safe runs on 4 AA (4 X 1.5v=6V) versus the 9V stated for the bypass power. If there is need to provide switch input along with remote power, it seems that the * (star) key is the only one available to be depressed at the same time as entering the access code, since the # key is required at the end.

[demux]

I have seen some of these digital keypads with emergency backup that work both ways: e.g. some use 6V internally and a 6V emergency source, some use 6V internally and can take a 9V emergency source, presumably with an appropriate resistor in series to make sure the correct voltage gets delivered to the circuit.

An RJ11 is six pins, and registers off the center, and it would not surprise me at all if the manufacturer put the emergency power pins on the far outside to prevent a regular phone cord from being used to provide emergency power. If you have or can easily acquire a 6 wire cable, that would probably be my next suggestion to try.

[murban64]

Thanks demux!, do you think there is also a chance I would need to simultaneously press something on the keypad while applying the voltage as Raymond suggests?

[demux]

It's possible, but that would probably be something you'd need to find some documentation somewhere to get. It could be any combination of keys in theory.

[billdeserthills]

Did you try calling AMSEC?

800-421-6142

Try technical...