Elk system restart

mikefamig

Senior Member
After running flawlessly for a couple of years my Elk is getting auto system restarts again. It has happened three times a few weeks or month between but it is disheartening. I refuse to spend hours trying to find the cause and am starting to wish that I had installed the OPII.
 
Mike.
 
Has the system undergone temperature cycles?  Anything change recently in your house?
 
Noting that you don't want to spend much time troubleshooting, can you possibly just check critical cables?  Anything pinched or shorted?
 
BraveSirRobbin said:
Has the system undergone temperature cycles?  Anything change recently in your house?
 
Noting that you don't want to spend much time troubleshooting, can you possibly just check critical cables?  Anything pinched or shorted?
 
No the system hasn't been disturbed in any way that I'm aware of but yes there are temperature and humidity  fluctuations in the detached garage. I have already checked on the 12 volt power leads and have wiggled and tugged on splices and connections and it all seems good.
 
How does temperature affect the system?
 
Mike.
 
Relating to my OP2 networking/serial issues way back (not sure if it helped though) I did
 
1 - back up configuration
2 - cold reset of the panel
3 - re upload of same current firmware
4 - import of current configuration
 
I went the serial way doing this rather than using the network port.
 
On Homeseer forum and related to Elk plugin current stable firmware versions are:
 
3.0.5723.33972
3.0.6370.28796
 
Tested and not so stable were:
 
3.0.6551.16372
 
Thread is here ==> UltraJones Elk thread.
 
mikefamig said:
How does temperature affect the system?
 
From the Elk manual:   
A suitable location would be inside a secure dry location where the ambient temperature inside the control box can remain at 32‘ to 120° Fahrenheit.
 
Not that this is the case in your situation, but I ran into a problem when installing a system for a friend in a small coat closet where it got to hot and we had to remove the front cover.  He replaced the door with a louvered one so that closet was at a lower temp and this solved the problem.
 
BraveSirRobbin said:
From the Elk manual:   
A suitable location would be inside a secure dry location where the ambient temperature inside the control box can remain at 32‘ to 120° Fahrenheit.
 
Not that this is the case in your situation, but I ran into a problem when installing a system for a friend in a small coat closet where it got to hot and we had to remove the front cover.  He replaced the door with a louvered one so that closet was at a lower temp and this solved the problem.
 
What were the symptoms?
 
It might just be because we have been getting temps as low as the teens at night here but the error has occurred once in the mid afternoon and twice in the evening. I don't think that there is any way to prove that theory.
 
Mike.
 
Frederick C. Wilt said:
Hi,
 
Have you replaced the battery?
 
Frederick
 
Thanks for the suggestion.
 
I just looked at the batteries. There are three in all, one on the panel and two on an aux power supply,  all warm and dry in the house. The main panel battery is 13.9 vdc and the other two are 13.5  and 13.6. All good but one of the battery terminals on the aux supply had a good amount of corrosion on it, enough I think to cause a problem. I cleaned it up but it will be hard to say if it helps because the restart occurs so seldom.
 
I know that in an automobile corrosion on a lead acid battery post can be caused by over-charging and maybe that is happening here. It is an Altronix power supply and I do not know of any way to manually activate the charger to test it's output so I have no way to test it.
 
Mike.
 
mikefamig said:
Thanks for the suggestion.
 
I just looked at the batteries. There are three in all, one on the panel and two on an aux power supply,  all warm and dry in the house. The main panel battery is 13.9 vdc and the other two are 13.5  and 13.6. All good but one of the battery terminals on the aux supply had a good amount of corrosion on it, enough I think to cause a problem. I cleaned it up but it will be hard to say if it helps because the restart occurs so seldom.
 
I know that in an automobile corrosion on a lead acid battery post can be caused by over-charging and maybe that is happening here. It is an Altronix power supply and I do not know of any way to manually activate the charger to test it's output so I have no way to test it.
 
Mike.
 
There shouldn't be any corrosion on SLA battery terminals under normal circumstances.  The fact that the battery is sealed is supposed to keep the electrolytes inside.  The spot where the terminals come through the case is a weak spot, though.  The battery can leak if overcharged, or from other damage.
 
Is there any sign of the battery bulging?
 
Measuring the voltage on the battery without a significant load on it won't tell you much.  An easy test would be to disconnect the AC power and measure the voltage every 15 to 30 minutes while the system runs off the battery and see how long it can maintain a reasonable voltage. 
 
If the batteries are more than 3 years old, they are at the point where they've lost 20% or more of their capacity.
 
No, no bulging of the battery but it definitely has leaked a little around the metal post/tab. They are at least three years old, I think that I installed the system in 2013 but I'll have to look to see if I can find a date stamp on the batteries.
 
The system is on it's own dedicated circuit so I can just power off the breaker to do the load test but I may just replace the batteries based on their age and the leak.
 
What I'm wondering now is why would a failing battery cause a system restart? I understand that a restart can be caused by the system losing power but the batteries are not powering the system when the restart occurs.
 
Mike.
 
mikefamig said:
What I'm wondering now is why would a failing battery cause a system restart? I understand that a restart can be caused by the system losing power but the batteries are not powering the system when the restart occurs.
 
Mike.
 
I agree, it's a little puzzling how an aging battery could cause a restart.  If it was a battery on the M1 itself, I can imagine that things go south during the daily battery test.  I'm not sure exactly how the M1 performs this test, but supposedly it places a load on the battery for 30 seconds and measures the battery performance.  If it did this by cutting off the AC power during that time, I could see where if the battery voltage dropped off very suddenly, that could cause a restart.  But that would indicate a severely degraded battery, and I would expect the M1 to have reported a weak battery long before it got to that point.  On the other hand, sometimes a battery can develop a sudden failure, so I guess it's possible.
 
You said the battery with the corrosion is on the Altronix.  I don't think the Altronix performs any kind of battery test, so it's more difficult to imagine how a bad battery there could cause the restart.  But if for some reason the Altronix battery was pulling down the output voltage of the supply, and you have a data bus device powered by it, that might cause a restart, too.  The fact that it is very intermittent is strange, though.
 
RAl
 
Yes the Altronix powers the detached garage with three data bus devices, a keypad, input adapter and output adapter and the power travels over 200' from the supply to the garage. The Altronix has an adjustable output so that I could tune it to compensate for the  voltage drop over the line and that has worked very well.
 
 
Mike.
 
Well it's been over a month with no problems so maybe it was the dirty battery terminal causing the restarts. I did not replace the batteries and just cleaned up the terminals.
 
Mike.
 
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