another blown Intellicenter

[ogdento]

Figured I'd share some busted electronics photos of the latest blown Intellicenter from @nsbenz... he's had the misfortune of a few lightning strikes now but this latest event took out all of the TVs in the house! He's got loads of protection on all of this stuff too (surge protectors, arrestors, even a ups). Anyway, I thought it was worth sharing because this board has the most visible damage I've seen to date (let alone the bits that look ok but are still dead). Usually I see a board with one or two of these issues.

I've never seen an ethernet jack explode like his did... the "can" surrounding the connector and magnetics literally blew open:


The gas heater connector got a little love too (relay seems ok though):


This is one of the power supply chips from the upper board (the one with the USB port):


U13 on the lower board is a very dead comm port chip. notice that the traces to resistor R57 have vaporized:


This is the comm port power supply... it frequently dies on these boards. Notice that U1 has a little extra ventilation now:


I haven't mapped out these pins but it's the interconnect between the upper and lower boards... a lot of energy went through those rightmost pins/traces:


The final insult was that on first look the personality card appeared ok... when I couldn't get my test board to recognize it I separated the top/bottom halves and found this poor creature:


RIP

 

[PoolStored]

Yikes!!!

 

[ogdento]

Hah, yikes indeed! I think this is dead board #4? but I'll let @nsbenz confirm that

 

[Jimrahbe]

Tom,

Was @nsbenz using wireless links, or was his Ethernet port hardwired between the house and the IntelliCenter?

I used to manage a repair center for very expensive audio visual equipment.. We would see these same types of failures.. In almost every case, it was with equipment that was in an outbuilding or pool house, etc... They were all hardwired.. Seems like a great lightning attractor..

Thanks for the report,

Jim R.

 

[ajw22]

While we have often worried about power line surges blowing out electronics and therefore installed surge protectors my theory is all the comm lines, low voltage, and sensor wires are acting as antennas attracting EMP when lightning hits nearby. Those wires connect to sensitive chips, with no protection, where normal voltage may be 10V or less. The EMP pulse voltage is much higher and easily damages the circuits.

 

[ogdento]

you are absolutely correct @ajw22 (and Jim)... all the low voltage cables are lightning magnets, buried or not.

@Jimrahbe not sure if it was hard wired... I don't recall if I ever asked him. I still don't have an Intellicenter on my pool but I know they do make wireless adapters - I heard the old EnGenius ones were terrible... are the new ones (made by Quest I think) any better?

I recall a conversation I had with Jim years ago about how we prefer simpler, hard-wired stuff but that the wireless links can really save your bacon... if the lightning came in on the ethernet rather than the comm wires, I can see how a wireless adapter might have saved the Intellicenter... and maybe the 10 TVs connected to the router wouldn't have died along with it!!

 

[ajw22]

I heard the old EnGenius ones were terrible... are the new ones (made by Quest I think) any better?

The 900 MHZ wireless link is actually the old ones used on the EasyTouch.

Then Pentair tried to go direct to WiFi with the Engenius wireless bridge and it was flaky.

So Pentair returned to the 900 MHZ wireless link on the IntelliCenter.

I had the Engenius WiFi bridge and it was flaky. I changed to the 900 MHZ wireless link and it is more reliable but still freezes and the IntelliCenter loses connection if the power blips.

I think the internal server in the IntelliCenter has some bugs that cause it to freeze and the wireless devices are getting blamed for software bugs.

I recall a conversation I had with Jim years ago about how we prefer simpler, hard-wired stuff but that the wireless links can really save your bacon... if the lightning came in on the ethernet rather than the comm wires, I can see how a wireless adapter might have saved the Intellicenter... and maybe the 10 TVs connected to the router wouldn't have died along with it!!

My IntelliCenter was NOT hard wired to my LAN and the board blew. What is interesting is one of my garage door openers near the IntelliCenter panel died. The door sensors that put a beam across the opening died disabling the opener. And those door sensors have long wires that run between the bottom of the door and the opener board mounted on the garage ceiling. Another low voltage connection with long wires getting blown by EMP.

 

[nsbenz]

Was actually board #5 the rest were before we added more layers of surge protection. This is in the Bahamas were the power is not very stable, once we put all the layers in place it has been good. All the other board issues were related to the RS485 circuit. This was actually a lightning strike on the actual pool, people in the kitchen watched it strike the pool. Most things connected to the network took a hit.

 

[Jimrahbe]

@nsbenz

You did not actually answer the question..

Was the IntelliCenter hardwired, or were you using wireless link???

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[ogdento]

This was actually a lightning strike on the actual pool

I guess storms really aren't a good time to be swimming!