Intellicenter i5P died

[wgipe]

Hi all! Long time no post. Things have been great....up until today. I went to increase the temp on the app and it couldn't find my Intellicenter. After some troubleshooting, it would appear that my main board has kicked the bucket. I'll call them on Monday to see about getting a replacement - I'm under warranty for another month or so. Two questions:

1) Does anyone have a way of confirming it's the board? I've confirmed I've got 240 getting to the power connector, and when I flip the breaker on, I hear a faint rhythmic clicking from the back of the main board. I've disconnected all of the accessories and wires from the main board to see if I can get it to boot with nothing attached, and it just clicks away with nothing on the screen.

2) My IC-40 has no lights either. I'm assuming this is because it's controlled by the Intellicenter. Is there a way to make it work on its own in the meantime so I don't have to manually chlorinate until the board situation is sorted out?

Thanks, as always. I sure appreciate you guys!

Wes

 

[ajw22]

Welcome to the club. IntelliCenter PCBs seem to be overly sensitive to power spikes and they brick and go dark. @ogdento has a collection of them me and others have contributed. If you can keep your failed board send it to him.

Move the SWG transformer wires from the LOAD to the LINE screws on the filter pump relay to power it and run your pump 24/7. Put it back when you get a new PCB.

 

[wgipe]

Welcome to the club. IntelliCenter PCBs seem to be overly sensitive to power spikes and they brick and go dark. @ogdento has a collection of them me and others have contributed. If you can keep your failed board send it to him.

Move the SWG transformer wires from the LOAD to the LINE screws on the filter pump relay to power it and run your pump 24/7. Put it back when you get a new PCB.

What a club.... I don't know what happened for sure, but it's dead as a doornail. I'll see if I can hold on to it and send it to @ogdento. It would be great if he could find a solution so that the only option isn't an $840 board once we're out of warranty.

I didn't think all the way through IC40 not powering on....of course the relay is keeping it from getting power. Thanks for the help. It's working great now.

 

[ogdento]

Bummer. Sorry to hear that yours croaked. Do you recall any storm events the day before it died?

The faint clicking is interesting... it's not great, but at least it's doing something. @ajw22 's board did nothing at all, and three other guys had holes blown in chips on the board. Do you see any physical damage? The last couple boards I've seen had no visible damage, but the comm port power supplies were dead (outlined in a yellow box in the attached image), but that doesn't seem like what you've got.

I'm wondering if the clicking is one of the relays on the top board (outlined in an orange box in the attached image - but there's another for heat too, not shown in the picture). The old easytouch/intellitouch/suntouch etc. boards had socketed relay drivers, but this board has them soldered on - u4 and u7 - and if they are dead/partly dead that "could" explain the clicking.

Hopefully Pentair will swap it for you! My friend in the business told me that Pentair has replaced a LOT of Intellicenters. Hopefully some of their board revisions have made improvements because there's a lot of folks coming off warranties now. The $840 replacement price is just stupid, as is the fact that you can't get the top or bottom board separately (nobody thinks about ewaste). Yours might be repairable, but if not I've been seeing used boards for 500 - might be worth it but I don't think you'll have any luck with a warranty.

btw, I copied this image from @ajw22 's initial post about his dead board and I've used it or a section of it many times to illustrate various bits... he should get a royalty!

 

[wgipe]

Bummer. Sorry to hear that yours croaked. Do you recall any storm events the day before it died?

The faint clicking is interesting... it's not great, but at least it's doing something. @ajw22 's board did nothing at all, and three other guys had holes blown in chips on the board. Do you see any physical damage? The last couple boards I've seen had no visible damage, but the comm port power supplies were dead (outlined in a yellow box in the attached image), but that doesn't seem like what you've got.

I'm wondering if the clicking is one of the relays on the top board (outlined in an orange box in the attached image - but there's another for heat too, not shown in the picture). The old easytouch/intellitouch/suntouch etc. boards had socketed relay drivers, but this board has them soldered on - u4 and u7 - and if they are dead/partly dead that "could" explain the clicking.

Hopefully Pentair will swap it for you! My friend in the business told me that Pentair has replaced a LOT of Intellicenters. Hopefully some of their board revisions have made improvements because there's a lot of folks coming off warranties now. The $840 replacement price is just stupid, as is the fact that you can't get the top or bottom board separately (nobody thinks about ewaste). Yours might be repairable, but if not I've been seeing used boards for 500 - might be worth it but I don't think you'll have any luck with a warranty.

btw, I copied this image from @ajw22 's initial post about his dead board and I've used it or a section of it many times to illustrate various bits... he should get a royalty!
View attachment 568293

This is really interesting. I haven't looked at the backside of the board yet, but there is no visible damage at all. As another data point, I needed to run the heater today, and the bypass is on an automatic valve so I can run my pump at lower RPM when it's not in use. Rather than pull the actuator off so I can turn it manually, I threw the breaker to the controller back on and flipped the switch on the actuator. Lo and behold....it worked. So it would appear that the board is getting power at least in part to send power over to those connections.

 

[ajw22]

In my board it looked like the CPU or memory failed. The system and devices had power it was just brain dead.

 

[wgipe]

In my board it looked like the CPU or memory failed. The system and devices had power it was just brain dead.

Sounds like the same deal. Out of curiosity, do you have a surge suppressor on your panel? I didn't have room for one, and now I'm kicking myself.

 

[ogdento]

I don't recall @ajw22 's board doing any weird like clicking relays or drawing too much current... so I don't think his relay drivers blew (or at least they didn't blow short). I still have it here somewhere so I'll take a look. but for yours, when you hear the clicking do you see any aux leds flickering?

anyway, @ajw22 's comment makes me wonder a couple of things:
1. do you have a means to measure the current draw on the 18vac input? In fact, you can run 24vdc to this if that makes it easier. See my post here for how to power these things with dc:

Powering an Intellicenter i5P

I wrote an earlier post about powering up the Intellitouch and Easytouch boards on my test bench, so I thought I'd add one about how I power...

saturationregion.blogspot.com

2. if your board is brain-dead like ajw22's, I wonder if it's really dead or if the screen just isn't showing data - is the display white or is it totally off? an alternately, if you're able to plug an ethernet cable into it, do the activity lights turn on?

 

[ajw22]

Sounds like the same deal. Out of curiosity, do you have a surge suppressor on your panel? I didn't have room for one, and now I'm kicking myself.

Yup, have a Siemens FS140 surge suppressor hanging off the bottom of the panel. I don't think the damage was from the electrical service feed.

My PCB blew during a big storm that also took out a garage door opener and the amp that powers my outdoor speakers. I was not home at the time but believe it was a lightning strike EMP that took out the devices.

The IntelliCenter has RS-485 lines and actuator wires that act as antennas. The garage door opener blew at the door sensors that have long wires to the opener on the garage ceiling. And the amp has lots of speaker wire around the outdoors connected to it.

I think the board design is not well protected from inducted voltages coming into it through low voltage lines.

 

[wgipe]

LRS01-RS485 Black Aluminum Casing Data Surge Protector | eBay

Specification: Description: Protects your device from the damage of lightning and surge. Used to protect the coaxial data transmission of communication circuit system, repeater, switchboard devices. Easy to install. Install between PC and the protected device first, "IN" end is for input and...

www.ebay.com

I wonder if these would help.

 

[ajw22]

LRS01-RS485 Black Aluminum Casing Data Surge Protector | eBay

Specification: Description: Protects your device from the damage of lightning and surge. Used to protect the coaxial data transmission of communication circuit system, repeater, switchboard devices. Easy to install. Install between PC and the protected device first, "IN" end is for input and...

www.ebay.com

I wonder if these would help.

I have considered them. If I have another board blow out I may give it a try.

If Tom could identify exactly what failed and the likely path then I would know which low voltage lines need protection.

There are lots of wires hanging out of the cabinet and connected to the PCB:

• RS-485 wires
• Actuator wires
• Temperature sensors
• Antenna cable

And adding boxes like that to the RS-485 lines introduces more complexity and points of failure for the RS-485 comm at other times. Is it worth it?

 

[wgipe]

I have considered them. If I have another board blow out I may give it a try.

If Tom could identify exactly what failed and the likely path then I would know which low voltage lines need protection.

There are lots of wires hanging out of the cabinet and connected to the PCB:

• RS-485 wires
• Actuator wires
• Temperature sensors
• Antenna cable

And adding boxes like that to the RS-485 lines introduces more complexity and points of failure for the RS-485 comm at other times. Is it worth it?

You make a good point. At some point, it's just the cost of doing business and you go on with life. Protecting the most vulnerable circuit does seem to make sense if he can find a common failure. I have a nutty week, but so have an external bench power supply that I can use to see if the board will power up solo. It will probably be next weekend until I have the time to try. I'll try to avoid sending the old board back so I can send it to him for further analysis.

 

[ajw22]

but so have an external bench power supply that I can use to see if the board will power up solo.

All you have to see is if the display lights and the CPU boots and puts anything on the display.

I have an indoor control panel (ICP) which connects by RS-485 and mimics all you see on the OCP. When my PCB was bricked the ICP got power via RS-485 from the OCP and booted up with it's own processor and memory. It displayed a POOL only configuration although I have as POOL/SPA and it was not getting any data from the OCP.

So like your panel other areas had power and everything pointed to a CPU/memory failure.

 

[wgipe]

Just talked to Pentair. They are sending a replacement board no questions asked, and I don't need to send the old board back. I'd be happy to send it to @ogdento if it helps the cause. I'm also happy to run some diagnostics is you'd like me to check something specific.

I did ask if there was a suggested best practice to protect these boards, as they seem finicky, and he said there is not - they just seem to be susceptible to voltage variation. I also asked why the boards are not sold separately. He said they used to be, but they had a lot of broken pins when people tried to separate the boards to replace one or the other, so they made it an assembly.

 

[ogdento]

agh, thanks for asking them about the separate boards... I was nervous the first time I pulled one apart, but if they just told folks how to do it I like to think it would have gone better (I use a wooden popsicle stick near each connector to carefully pry the boards up - being careful to pry off of the opposite board and not a surface mounted component)

you could use a meter in diode mode to give a quick check of the relay drivers on the board... it's not a complete test of the part but if you see a short then you'll know something's up. they're UN2003A (aka UNL2003) chips, see the simplified diagram from the data sheet:

the above diagram lets you check the flyback diodes on the outputs - from COM to each of 1C-7C. You should see 0.7-0.8 volts with black lead on COM and the red on each of 1C-7C. Flip the leads and you'll see the voltage increase steadily (charging a cap). If you see any 0's, then the diode is shorted (this seems to happen more often than it being open).

You can also use this more detailed "per-channel" block diagram to the check the other diodes that are connected from the E (common emitter) pin to the inputs and outputs. You can see below that there are parallel paths of 3 series resistors, 2 NPN transistors, and the diode - all connected to the E and Input pin... so the values you get aren't necessarily meaningful, you're really just making sure nothing is shorted:

And if you feel like connecting it to your lab supply and seeing what the current does, go for it! otherwise I can do it. I've got a good working top board and a good working bottom board - although they are painted yellow - so I can at least see if either of your boards is still good.

 

[ogdento]

Hey @wgipe , I just looked at another dead i5p board and (so far) the bridge rectifier on the 18vac input is shorted (it's the one made up of 4 individual beefy diodes, just above the comm port connectors). In this case, the 3rd diode from the left has a nice crack and is shorted, and I think the 2nd is also shorted. As a result, it shorts out my power supply which I've set a 500mA limit on.

I haven't seen this failure before so it might be worth checking yours. Set your meter to diode and measure the 18vac input pins... you shouldn't get 0 with the probes in either orientation

 

[ogdento]

 

[Turbo1Ton]

LRS01-RS485 Black Aluminum Casing Data Surge Protector | eBay

Specification: Description: Protects your device from the damage of lightning and surge. Used to protect the coaxial data transmission of communication circuit system, repeater, switchboard devices. Easy to install. Install between PC and the protected device first, "IN" end is for input and...

www.ebay.com

I wonder if these would help.

I used something similar for the ethernet connection after a lightning strike took my board out. It also killed my network switch in the house, which is why I added these. Also added a panel surge protector after that. Didn't know they had RS-485 surge protectors.

--Jeff

 

[Mark McLeroy]

LRS01-RS485 Black Aluminum Casing Data Surge Protector | eBay

Specification: Description: Protects your device from the damage of lightning and surge. Used to protect the coaxial data transmission of communication circuit system, repeater, switchboard devices. Easy to install. Install between PC and the protected device first, "IN" end is for input and...

www.ebay.com

I wonder if these would help.

After a very close lightning strike 2 seasons ago took out my Intellicenter's main board and my Pentair hybird heater's control board, and was quoted over $5000.00 to fix it, I installed surge protection in the load center, and similar devices to what you show here on the R-485 bus. I also installed a surge suppressor on the Intellicenter's RJ45 port. With amazing help from several people in this forum (you know who you are), I was able to do the job myself for about $1500 in parts.