Light on 12 channel Dimmer not working

Hi Everyone. I have read this forum for tips and help for years, and I just just signed up. I have a problem I hope you can help me with it. Note I am not an electricial. I purchased a house with cbus in it many years ago, and from this forum have taught myself some basics to use the toolkit, and some really really basic programming (mainly just setting names on switches and programming what wall switch triggers which lights.

I have a light on channel 2, of a 12 channel cbus2 relay. The light has stopped working. All other channels of the 12 channel dimmer work as expected. The particular light is controlled from a 6 gang saturn wall switch. Everything, bar this one light on the 6 gang saturn work. Toolkit shows the light correctly mapped to the 6 gang saturn, and the 12 channel relay shows up no problem.

When I manually press the button on the 12 channel dimmer, the light does not turn on. When I press on the saturn wall switch, the light does not turn on. The light itself works fine. it is a light with 240v 3 pin plug, so I pulled it out of the cielling, plugged it into a normal power point, and the light works. For some reason it seems it does not work when it is in place. I connected a small appliance to the 240v outlet in the cieling the light connects to, and it also does not work. So I suspect power is not making its way from the relay when channel 2 is on.

It is possible for one channel of the relay to die, when the other 11 channels are working fine. The light for the specific channel, channel 2, on the relay come on when I press the test button for channel 2, and it makes it's little click.

any thoughts anyone thinks they can share ?

Thank you in advance. John

 

Hi John

Fire up Toolkit and connect to your network. Take a look in the Application Log which is the first item under the network (see below).


Any command on C-Bus will show up in this log. It's very handy for making sure commands are travelling around the bus. If you can see the command there being sent from your Saturn switch, then we know that's ound.
Confirm in your relay unit that you have the correct group controlling the relay. If all of this is correct, make sure you don't have anything strange in the logic for the relay. There might have been something in there for 'And logic' previous to you buying the house and that second group is no longer on. Can you operate the channel manually from the relay unit? (pushbutton on the front)



Also, make sure you don't have a turn on threshold set for the channel too

Cheers

Chris

 

Hi Chris. So the log shows the unit turning on and off when I press the button on the saturn like this


The lights are the MAIN WIR. The log confirms the signal so the saturn seems to be working ok

When pressing the saturn nothing happens to the lights.

Levels look like this



And the logic looks like this



I have had the house for a few years now, and never had this issue. I think everything looks set up correctly.

Pressing the button on the relay makes the click on the relay, the green light turns on next to number 2, but the light still does not turn on.

I am baffled ?????

 

Relays do fail but not often. It could also be just a poor connection.

Each relay has 2 connections (A and B). The power goes into one and the load connects to the other. It is not unknown for these connection come loose after some time. The power is also generally looped across all relays, so it could the other end of the loop. If you have a decent multimeter and are comfortable using it on mains you could test this for yourself. Otherwise call an electrician to test it for you.

 

So, when you press button 2, the adjacent indicator light goes on/off or number 2 goes on and off?
and, when you operate from C-Bus, does the indicator light change state from on to off but the connected light just stays in the same state?

 

Definitely sounds like a faulty channel, if it feels like a “soft” click compared to other channels the relay channel has failed, check the out going voltage on the channel with a multimeter, should be 240v between active and neutral on channels 2A & 2B, if the channels faulty you have a following options, both options required a qualified tech to do the electrical component

1 - if you have a spare channel on a relay, relocate the cabling to the spare channel and reprogram the channel

2 - Replace entire relay unit, and reprogram the entire new unit

 

Sorry, the indicator light on the relay next to number two comes on, but the ceiling mounted light still does not Tuen on

 

i suspect it could be the relay. As far as touching live 240v, nup, not for me. Definitely call an electrician for that. The problem is finding an electrician in Sydney who knows Cbus. All the electricians I know are your common tradie. That don’t know anything more than traditional electrics, let alone anything which needs programming.

Luckily I have 4 free channels in total across 2 x 12 channel relays. So swapping around could very well be a solution

finding a sparky with Cbus knowledge in Sydney, who can also work their way around toolkit, is hard work. If you know any around the southern suburbs, send me my way

 

You will only need the sparky to move wiring from one relay to another (just the active and switched active wires )

You should be able to do the rest, as you have shown us above, you seem to know how to open toolkit, and find the relay units, all you need to do is setup the spare relay channel with same group address from the faulty relay(MAIN WIR) from the pull down on the spare channel, apply the changes, and confirm the new relay channel operates via the wall switch

I’d suggest you do a backup of the network database before you start

 

I'm not quite that good. I bet someone who knows what they are doing will look at what I have programmed in and think its a mess !!!

 

for those interested - here is an update

On saturday morning out of nowhere, the faulty relay decided to work - outta nowhere

I did nothing, I changed nothing, it just started working

Twilight zone shit !

 

Like I said above, get an electrician to check the existing connections. (They don't need to be Cbus savvy for this). A bad/tarnished connection can change symptoms with changes in weather conditions.