Storm Blew Out IntelliCenter

[ajw22]

TLDR - My IntelliCenter OCP was bricked by a storm and to get a parts I am considering buying a full new IntelliCenter bundle, keeping some parts, and selling the rest.

I have been traveling the last few weeks. The IntelliCenter was left on its normal schedule running the VSF pump 24/7 and pool cleaner daily, with the Intellichlor % slightly high. My housekeeper checks the house every few days while I am gone and cleans the skimmers as needed. I also put a gallon of liquid chlorine in the pool to raise the FC an extra 3PPM just in case.

A big thunderstorm rolled through the area and I got a call from my alarm monitoring service that the house alarm went off. That was the first sign something was amiss. I reset the alarm, checked the house cameras, and told them to ignore the alarm. The front door sensor had set off the alarm. I saw on the cameras the rain and wind blowing around the house.

I tried to get into the IntelliCenter2 app to check on the pool but it told me the pool was offline. I got an early model IntelliCenter that came with the Engenius WiFi link which is flaky. If it loses WiFi connection it does not always reconnect without a power cycle. I figured maybe the power in the house had burped.

The next day my housekeeper texts me that nothing is running on the pool and the IntelliCenter OCP display is blank. Touching the panel does not get it to light up. Interesting though is that I have an Indoor Control panel (ICP) and that still works but shows only a pool, not a Pool and Spa. Further the Intelliflo VSF control panel is lit and the pump can be run from its controls. He tried powering down everything at the breakers with no change to the dead OCP.

So I had him turn on the pump at 2400 RPM that restored pool circulation. I had two cases of liquid chlorine left from the pool opening and had him put two gallons into the pool and a splash into the spa. That was his routine when checking the house until I returned. I told him where to pickup a few more cases of liquid chlorine. That kept the pool circulating and chlorinated.

The Intellichlor cell was dark since it was powered from the filter/pump relay which was open while the IntelliFlo pump had constant power from the LINE side.

So when I returned I confirmed the IntelliCenter was dead. However the PCB had 24V AC since the ICP was powered and the Engenus WiFi had its LED lights on. So there was power to the PCB board but it looks bricked.

I should also mention that the storm killed a Chamberlin WiFi garage door opener that I installed in March and I found the GFCI CB tripped for some of my outdoor landscaping lights. So what ever hit around the house set off the alarm and took out electronics in one area with the pool equipment on the other side of the garage wall. I do have a Siemens FirstSurge protector in my IntelliCenter panel and its status lights still glow green. So whatever hit was external to the high voltage feed.

First thing I wanted to do was get the IntelliChlor running. I took the wires off the filter/pump relay and used tow 3 wire Wago connectors to connect the pump CB, Intelliflo, and IntelliChlor power to run 24/7. I love those Wago connectors and keep various ones to splice wires. I also used a Wago to splice together the firemans switch to the MasterTemp heater to give me local control of it. The other thing i did was pull the actuator off the return diverter, put the handle on the diverter, and crack the spa return open to get constant spillover and keep the spa chlorinated with the pool. Now I had the basics running old school non-automation.



Now to the dead PCB. I looked closely and cannot see any burned components. I labeled each wire and disconnected all the wires to it and removed the board. @ogdento @JamesW @Jimrahbe here are both sides of PCB to see if you see anything I don't.




The board is 3 layers with two boards stacked and the display screen on plastic standoffs. I tried to remove the four screws holding the two boards together and they did not simply separate as I expected. So I have not got a good look at the other sides of either board. I don't think it really matters as I think the PCB is bricked with the storm frying the CPU or memory.

I went shopping online for a PENTAIR INTELLICENTER REPLACEMENT BOARD 523050 and to looks like they are hard to source. Polytec Pools has them on backorder. I also don't know if my i8PS Personality card P/N 521968Z is good or not.

The main PCB costs about $800 and the i8PS card another $800. PolyTec Pools has a full i8PS bundle with IC60 for $4,000. The IC60 is worth $1,600 and the two Intellivalves are another $500. The bundle lets me replace the Engenius Wifi with the more reliable 900MHZ link which costs about $500. And now I have a cabinet, 8 relays, temperature sensors, spare surge board, and other miscellaneous parts for free. What I don't need I can sell and come out ahead.

Unless anyone has other ideas for getting my IntelliCenter going quickly I think the quickest path is getting a new bundle from Polytec, using it as a parts doner, keeping some spare parts, and selling the rest.

Tom, @ogdento , would you like my bricked IntelliCenter PCB to autopsy? Maybe we can learn something about why it failed. I seem to not be the only one where a storm bricked their IntelliCenter. In 20 years my Aqualink never blew out.

Now onto my Chamblerin garage door opener that I bought from Home Depot in March and Chamberlain is saying the PCB is obsolete and not available for $120 so I have to get a new unit for $190. This is fodder for a different thread.

 

[ogdento]

Allen that is terrible news!! I'd love to check out the blown board, but before we get to that point... separating the two boards was a bit of an act of faith the first time I did it - if you remove those 4 screws (with the blue painted heads), get a plastic tool to gently pry the boards apart at each of the two 40 (or so) pin IDC connectors... they'll just pop apart. when i get home i'll look at the boards and see if i can tell you what parts to look at

I just bought a "broken" Intellicenter to play around with, but I'm pretty sure the main board is working fine. I'll shoot you a PM

 

[ajw22]

I got out my spuger and separated the boards. Here are the other sides.

Is there any trick to sliding out the ribbon connector for the display? The display has clips that hold it onto the board and I have those loose. I tried to slide the ribbon cable out and it looks fragile so I don;t want to pull on it too much. Is it clipped in with anything that needs to be unlatched?

 

[ogdento]

the ribbon cable doesn't slide out, it pops off... gently pry up either side of the reinforced end of the cable and it will pop off

 

[ogdento]

you can kindof imagine what the mating connector on the board looks like:

 

[ogdento]

the comm chips are U12 and U13 (Intersil/Renesas 83085EIBZ) in the top right corner of the board (to the right of the rectangular hole where the LCD ribbon cable comes through)

 

[ajw22]

Glad I asked.

I now have four pieces...

 

[ajw22]

the comm chips are U12 and U13 (Intersil/Renesas 83085EIBZ) in the top right corner of the board (to the right of the rectangular hole where the LCD ribbon cable comes through)

 

[ajw22]

the comm chips are U12 and U13 (Intersil/Renesas 83085EIBZ) in the top right corner of the board (to the right of the rectangular hole where the LCD ribbon cable comes through)

If you think the Comm chips blew out why would that take out the display?

The LCD is totally dead. No glow. Nothing on it.

 

[ogdento]

Forget I said anything about the ports... They are usually the first things to die on an easytouch/intellitouch during a storm, but who knows with the intellicenter. As you suggested it could be the CPU, the flash, or one of the power supplies on board (the board takes 24 and 18vac, the 24vac is for the valves while the 18vac makes 24vdc to drive the relays and then 12vdc to power the comm port and 3.3? for digital parts of the board... And there may be a separate power supply for the LCD)

 

[ajw22]

Forget I said anything about the ports... They are usually the first things to die on an easytouch/intellitouch during a storm, but who knows with the intellicenter. As you suggested it could be the CPU, the flash, or one of the power supplies on board (the board takes 24 and 18vac, the 24vac is for the valves while the 18vac makes 24vdc to drive the relays and then 12vdc to power the comm port and 3.3? for digital parts of the board... And there may be a separate power supply for the LCD)

What was interesting is my ICP which is powered through the four wire connection to the OCP was alive and displayed. It has its own processor and firmware since when you update the Intellicenter firmware you separately have to use the USB on the ICP and bring it up to the same Rev level. The ICP mirrors the OCP display.

So power to the ICP was correct but the ICP displayed what looked like a default screen showing only a pool since it could not communicate with the OCP.

And the Engenius WiFi which is also powered from the board had its LED lights on.

So it looked like the transformer was providing correct power to the PCB and the PCB distributing power to other accessories.

 

[ogdento]

Hey Allen, sorry I couldn't get to this last night... but here's a picture of how I power up the Intellicenter with a bench supply. You can use a 24 volt DC source on the 18vac pins because it will get converted to 24vdc by the rectifiers/caps... just be sure to use the polarity indicated in the pic (if I use less than 21vdc, the the machine doesn't boot). Of course, if you only have an 18vac source you don't need to worry about polarity.

The other two 24vac input pins can be left disconnected if you don't need the valves to work, or you can use any 24vac source you've got (I use a sprinkler system transformer)



If you have a variable dc supply - or can cobble one together - I'd try powering up your board and measuring the current draw to get an idea of what's going on. I usually start with only a volt or two... that won't power the board of course but it'll make sure there's not a dead short. If that checks out then I'd try 24vdc with a current limit of 300mA.

For reference, my board draws 60-120mA while booting**, about 105mA with the screen and backlight OFF, 70 with the screen on and backlight OFF, and around 62mA at idle with the screen totally off.

**The boot sequence draws about 60mA until the screen turns on, then it goes up to 100-120 and then once booted settles back down to 100 until the backlight shuts off, at which point it goes to 70-ish until the screen totally turns off.

I'd be curious to see what yours does.

 

[ogdento]

I thought of another potentially more important test... I'd first check the current draw with the 24vdc connected to ONLY the top board where the power connects... i.e. leave the cpu and personality board and display off. Mine draws 3mA... if yours is much more than that then there's likely a problem on that top board - could be a shorted comm port, blown power supply, bad relay driver or maybe a dead ethernet jack (i believe these are magjacks or equivalent- the ones with built-in coils)

you said that your engenius was working, and afaik that's powered by the tiny rectifier next to the gas heater connector, but the rest of the electronics are power by a switch-mode supply (to the right of the comm port, above that coil marked 3r3)

 

[ajw22]

I don't have any type of bench test equipment beyond a good multimeter. Whatever stuff I need I will need to purchase.

Which of these power supplies would you recommend?

https://www.amazon.com/variable-dc-power-supply/s?k=variable+dc+power+supply

I will see how far I want to dig into this versus sending the boards to you.

 

[ogdento]

ahh ok, sorry - i know you're the source for all things electrical and code related, wasn't sure how much electronic junk you had!

a lot of those power supplies look fine... they all seem to be some variation of this one, which looks good enough since it's got a CC (constant current) setting:

Amazon.com

I've got these dp3003 and dp3005 units built into small cabinets, and I actually use them more often than my more expensive HP/Agilent power supplies (the only hitch is you have to feed it with a DC source whereas the one above just plugs into the wall outlet):

Amazon.com

there's a pic of my cabinet here: Powering a Pentair Easytouch or Intellitouch controller

it doesn't matter much for our purposes here but it's worth pointing out that the above supplies are "switching" rather than "linear" (my HP/Agilent supplies are linear, with big transformers)... and the switching ones are electrically noisier. but like i said, I use the dps3003/5 for all kinds of stuff.

 

[KevMo]

@ajw22 I am in a similar situation.

My Intelicenter i8PS bricked as well last Wednesday night coincidental with a storm in the Houston area. My display does not work and I have no comms. I too have surge protection device in the panel thst feeds my Intellienter load panel. Neithrt it or thr whole house one i have on my primary panel tripped. have been running my 3 Intellifo3 pumps via local programs using the Pentair Home app. For other features like My pressure side Polaris cleaner and adding some landscape lights I have been temporarily changing the wiring from the load side to the line side of the relays.

I am very curious as to what you find out with yours and what course of action you take fix it. I am also interested in whatever advice the gurus here for preventing this happening again in the future.

 

[ogdento]

Another bummer. Couple questions... Ignoring a whole house surge protector for the moment (since it won't help with data lines)...
1. Have you got lightning arrestors on the rs485/comm port?
2. if you have hard-wired Ethernet, have you got any sorry of protection device there?
3. Do you see any evidence of blown chips on the board? Like cracks, bubbles, melting, burn or smoke marks etc. (You won't always see damage, but if you do then we know there's an issue)

 

[BDY]

Posting to follow as I lost a bunch of stuff in a Houston storm a month ago.

What’s a lightning arrestor?

 

[ogdento]

@BDY, Allen put together an excellent summary of the options... Electrical Surge Protection - Further Reading

the lightning arrestors I'm talking about are specifically made for the rs485 and ethernet lines, you'll see some discussion of them toward the end. **disclaimer, I don't have any on my system because we hardly get any lightning storms here - so I don't know how effective they are against storm damage. it's encouraging that @MyAZPool has had them on his intellicenter for a few years now

 

[ajw22]

My game plan as of this moment is I am working to find a source for a replacement board.

Once I get a replacement board to figure out if just the board failed or other things are involved.

Once I get my IntelliCenter working I intend to send my failed board(s) to Tom for an autopsy. I suggest others do the same and them maybe Tom can figure out is something in common is failing and how we can protect the system.

So far we cannot see any indications of blown chips on my boards. Tom did comment that these boards are more miniaturized and densely packed then the IntelliTouch board. They will be more difficult to repair. We will see where the post mortem takes us.