Wierd Glitches

Hi guys. I'm sure the possibilities here are endless, but some suggestions would be great.

I have a system we installed about 18 months ago and all has been fine.
Two days ago a dimmer unit has started intermittentlenty bringing all 8 channels on full.

I have ordered another dimmer, however it also seems a few other single groups at random have been either comming on or going off or just not working briefly.

These other groups are scattered across various relay units and/or dimmers.
It is not the same few groups either it seems totally random. The only constant is the regular (2-3 times a day) problem with one dimmer unit.
(L5508D1A)

Could this unit possibly be causing the other random faults?

Thanks,
Brad.

 

The first thing to do is to run the C-Bus Diagnostic Utility to see if there are any C-Bus messages causing the lighting levels to change. If there are, look at the unit address of the messages to see where they are coming from.

Also use it to see if there is a high error rate on the bus.

 

Thanks, have just got the utility after reading another thread.
I have not seen this fault myself, its quite random.
Also going to check for an extra software burden etc.

Hope to be onsite tomorrow.

 

Update,

Was on site for nearly four hours today with diagnostic software running.
Very little traffic and about half a dozen errors.
Most traffic due to thermostat broadcasts etc.

NO faults experienced and none all day yesterday. Client called today at 5 to say dimmer 1 has all channels on again - with no interaction from them. I replaced this unit today as a long shot

Client will be away for a week or so, so am thinking of leaving my laptop on site to keep diagnostic log running.

 

Thanks nick, this was something i wasn't sure about (the remote on /off function), however as all the output units are connected with proper cbus patch cables except a longer one i made myself to span the switchboard, wouldn't all the output units be affected? Either way, I'll check this out thanks.


Update : I removed two scenes from the touchscreen as they weren't being used and disabled cbus messaging in the thermostats to reduce log file size.
(i have 4 thermostats reporting data to a ctouch with remote buttons etc)

The system hasn't played up since then (saturday morning). This system has been running untouched since late august without any probs untill last week so I'm pretty sure its not software related.

Any way It doesn't fault again soon, I'll re-enable the thermostats and may have to start removing units and checking cable.

 

Solved!

Well its been a while and the system hasn't given any more trouble .. . .till now.

The customer called again and said they were having similar problems with all channels on a dimmer coming on occasionally and some other problems with groups not responding occasionally etc.

They did mention one or two brief glitches since my last post which they hadn't reported.

I found the fault still apparent this time when i got to the site (previously only happened when i wasn't there).

I noticed occasionally indicators would flash rapidly for 20 secs or so when a switch was pressed with no response from the respective load group.
The button presses would also go unlogged in the cbus diag tool. Everthing would then be fine for a while.

A comms error it would seem. I also noticed my toolkit would take a long time to do the unit scan etc or fail periodically.

I disconnected the lines out to all input devices at the switchboard and found i still had problems with my laptop connecting.

Turned out to be a L5512RVFP causing the problem. With just this one unit connected to my pci i could not get toolkit to connect.
I did also notice one of the channel lights/local buttons was permanently on without the actual relay channel having switched.

A new relay unit is in place and all is fine.