Faults after absence / absynth!

Hi Guys

My client has just returned from a month's trip and the house was painted. The painters did remove some keypads, but I've checked them and they are all wired back okay and have led's working.

The system comprises about 30 keypads, several 8 ch 1amp dimmers and 12 ch relays (about 120 circuits total) with a PAC and PCI. The PCI is used for RS232 interface with the Pronto RFX 9600 extender for scene setting etc. The PAC naturally houses all the scenes and schedules.

First off, an 8 ch dimmer seemed to have failed on the low voltage and network portion, but was switching manually on the overrides ie: no circuits were ramping off the unit from keypad inputs. I had a spare relay with me, installed it and re-addressed all the Ga's and they are now working as on / off, so I assume that dimmer was faulty.

Now for the confusing part:

The stored scenes in the PAC are working, but the schedules I've written do not work at all ie: Sunrise and Sunset scenes. I've checked the programming, daylight savings etc and all okay. I downloaded the PICED file again and still nothing.

Does the PAC have a battery? If so, remember that the stored scenes are still working and the unit is no more than a year old.

Does this sound like the BUS may have had a power spike and the dimmer and PAC were the only casualties? The are housed in two separate boards about 60m cable distance away. Prior to this the system was stable for over a year and nothing but a pleasure to work with. As far as burdens and clocks are concerned, we are within limits.

Can anyone comment (after this long history) on what the fault might be?

Any saving of head scratching and new ideas most appreciated!

Regards

Richard

 

A few different things are possible.

• It's possible that the connectors simply weren't plugged in properly. The Dimmers/Relays get their power from the mains connection so it may have appeared that the unit was powered and operational, yet it may have been separated from the network. If this unit had still shown up in a Toolkit network scan prior to it's replacement, you could have ruled this out.
• If you are using logic in the output units it's possible that the level of those logic groups was Off, effectively forcing the channels to stay off in response to C-Bus commands.
• The unit may have the C-Bus Priority option turned off, which means that the local toggle buttons on the unit have priority over C-Bus commands.
• Something may have failed internally in the unit.

The most likely reason for this is that the PAC does not contain a valid time. For schedules to occur the unit needs to know what the time of day is. If changes were made to the wiring it's possible that the PAC may have been without power for an extended period of time. There is an internal back-up capacitor for the date and time however this is only guaranteed to last for 24 hours. An external 12V dc connection can be made to the PAC for preserving the date and time settings for longer than this.

 

Hi Newman

As far as connections are concerned, no chance of that. Incidentally the 'unit' led was flashing on the dimmer - can't say I remember what that means, but I did check connections to the dimmer several times and measured good voltage as well. When I changed it to my spare 12 channel relay, the led on that was constant after booting up.

Your point about the back up cap and the 12v battery interests me. There may very well have been an extended power failure, but I have since downloaded the PICED file again via my PC which had the correct time. I also changed the time a couple of times on the DLT's to test Sunrise and Sunset by setting to minus 15 min of the present Sunrise / Sunset calculations in the software and waiting for the scenes to be set - nothing.

So assuming no network faults, is the PAC more than likely faulty?. Have you ever experienced a fault where the stored scenes work okay, but no schedules? There is no logic written for this project...

I forgot to mention that the unit/comms led is flashing and I am exploring the possibility that the Firmware may be corrupt. Is this possible? Would it behave similarly if it was?

Thanks

R

 

It should either all work, or not work at all.

Do the Schedules have an Enable Group? If so, it could be that the Schedules are not enabled.

This sounds unlikely. If the firmware is corrupted, then nothing should run.

 

Hi Darren

No, it has been working 100% for over a year.

PS: I just edited my last post - the unit/comms led is flashing on the PAC. Does this mean the Firmware may be corrupt? If so, is it possible the unit could behave the same way?

Any chance a competitor could have 'popped in' with older firmware and tried to upload the PICED file? I wouldn't rule that out, co's the client was away and the painters were on site... just a thought?

Thanks

R

 

Enable Group is unused on schedules. I am using Enable for Holiday Mode only, available only on the front door DLT.

Tx

 

I can't think of anything which would explain this. You could try updating to the latest firmware, but I don't expect it to help.

Send your project archive to CIS technical support with a reference to this post. Give them specific details of what should be happening and what is actually happening (or not happening).

 

The unit/comms LED flashes on a PAC every time it receives a C-Bus message, so flashing here is expected. You should see either a single or double blink every 3 seconds or so, along with some extra blinks thrown in for good measure.

If the Unit LED on the DIN Dimmer is flashing it means that the unit is in override mode. This means that either a local override button has been pressed or that the remote override is active. To cancel a local toggle button override you hold down any button on the dimmer for about 1 second. This puts all channels back to their C-Bus levels. If the Unit LED continues to flash then it means that the remote override is active. The most likely reason for remote override being activated is a cable fault.