Few issues i've been facing with HAI

[mohab]

i've found a few issues that keep happening over and over in mainly 2 of our projects
 
Project 1 : Omni Pro II with Omni Bus 220v and Hifi2
Project 2: Omni Pro II with Eloka Switches and Hifi 1
 
Here are some of the issues
 
1- after a few months all of the sudden the Speaker of one of the touchscreens stops working..u can no longer hear the intercom ringing or the clicking sound or when u video call another screen, no settings have been changed prior to that happening i tried to download new firmware and re-upload automation studio file and no improvement. (this happened on one screen in each project)
 
2- in Project 1 the bus readings are completely messed up, and the 8-way splitter (in this project and other ones) seem to be crazy..when u put the cable in one port it gives a reading..and when you put it in another port in the 8-way it gives a completely different reading (HAI said that shouldnt happen as the 8-way splitter is just like a switch it doesnt matter which port u use)
 
3- in Project 1 it seems like after a short while the RJ45 jacks can get busted..leading to the Omni-bus power supply interface shutting down the whole system..i know this could be an issue of RJ45 jack and crimper quality..but has anyone else encountered the same problem?
 
4- In Project 2 the Eloka switches keep getting busted every while and we find that the fuse and sometimes the bridge has gone capoot although the load hasnt changed
 
5- In Project 2 the HiFi after a few months stopped playing the music on either left or right speakers...it would work on the left speakers only in some zones and the right only on other zones, then after we changed the HiFi board with a new one..we noticed that the VSCs give a constant Er (Error) when connected to the new Board
 
6- In Project 1 we found that also after a few months a couple of Omni-bus relay channels that are frequently used got stuck..so it doesnt go on and off..its always on, Now from my experience only the bad quality relays have that issue and from what i understand is that Clipsal makes the Omni-bus modules for HAI..could they be scamming them using really bad quality material?
 
Has anyone encountered so much maintenance problems with HAI products in such a short time (a few months time)? all these problems are making us look bad infront of our clients and we dont know if this is due to bad quality products or we're doing something wrong

Can anyone help with that or tell me if you are having the same/similar problems?

 

[kerry]

4- In Project 2 the Eloka switches keep getting busted every while and
we find that the fuse and sometimes the bridge has gone capoot although
the load hasnt changed
 
What load you have connected? It happened during installation stage ?
 
Make sure to fix the lighting fixtures and then turn on the switch. Fuse will blow off due to improper wiring or improper fixtures.

 

[kerry]

It seems that you are new to HAI and describing your installation errors as HAI errors.

 

[mohab]

4- In Project 2 the Eloka switches keep getting busted every while and
we find that the fuse and sometimes the bridge has gone capoot although
the load hasnt changed
 
What load you have connected? It happened during installation stage ?
 
Make sure to fix the lighting fixtures and then turn on the switch. Fuse will blow off due to improper wiring or improper fixtures.

 
no this happens on usual basis a few months after installation..everything was fine during installation stage
 
All of these issues i encountered months after the installation stage
 
also the loads are mainly incandescent bulbs and i've measured the load before turning on the switches and it worked fine for a while then every once in a while a fuse gets randomly blown...so i dont see where the miswiring is? 

It seems that you are new to HAI and describing your installation errors as HAI errors.

 
how can it be "installation errors"? when all of these happened randomly a few months later and before that everything was working fine
 
for example, how can the speakers of the touch screen stop working a few months later due to an installation error? and what kind of installation error would that be?
 
and if these are installation errors, my point of this post is to try to find out if im doing anything wrong. so if you have an logical explanation to why my "installation errors" are causing all these problems can you tell me what they are?

 

[electron]

This is probably a stupid question, but have you contacted HAI about this? I'm sure they have an internal database with common issues.

 

[mohab]

yea i have, they never tell me why these things happen. they just say its broken and needs to be sent for repairs..

 

[electron]

Are you dealing with extreme conditions, such as high temperatures? This is really odd, and besides conditions, all I can think of is that there is some sort of shipping problem.

 

[mohab]

i dunno..i know that our 220v is unstable but that shouldnt affect the touchscreens...and for example the PoE hub after a few months also stoppped connecting to the network..it powers up the omnitouch but it wont connect to the network anymore...and we havnt changed any settings or even got near the Hub or omnitouch...

 

[electron]

Unstable power can definitely affect equipment, especially if you are dealing with frequent brownout/surges.

 

[mohab]

it could be but why would that mess up a device that works on 12 or 24 volts..i dont know..im sure there is a missing link somewhere..has no one ever encountered these problems?

 

[kerry]

Which Country are you from?

 

[kerry]

BTW I am from India we have installed atleast 100 such projects till now we did not faced any such issues such as touchscreen or POE problem. Seems to be some electrical issues in the site, Ground leakage or various other electrical issues that you may not even know you need to keep Lighting circuits in a seperate Load and make sure to add a surge protected outlet for your networking devices such as POE, Ethernet switch, Power Adapters etc.
 
You can attend training sessions prior to install.

 

[mohab]

i'm from egypt, ground leakage and electrical instability can be some of the reasons but i dont think thats all the reasons..i just cant get over the fact that the speaker of the touchscreen stops working because of electricity...its only using a data cable that transmits low voltage..so im guessing theres something else to that?

 

[electron]

Electrical problems can affect anything which is powered by electricity, even low voltage stuff.  A surge could easily damage only parts of a product, have had this happen many times (example: lightning hit my house years ago, and while I had a lot of damage, I also had minor issues such as a dead network card in my PC).

The issues you are describing aren't that common with this equipment.  Combine this with the fact that you are dealing with unstable power, it really doesn't leave any other options on the table.

If you want to be sure, then build a test environment which has filtered/conditioned power, and compare the results.

 

[pete_c]

in Project 1 it seems like after a short while the RJ45 jacks can get busted.

.
I am constantly playing with my OPII board.  That said I have noticed that the 5 ports (mine are all populated) covers appear to be loose or get loose and typically the electrical connection remains stable.  That said I have recently changed the network cable to a standard RJ-45 connector with a cover to just a standard RJ-45.  I did this after about 10 years.  (5 years with an updated OPII flashable board).  It seemed that removing the connection always pulled a bit up on the socket.  Mostly probably because it was difficult to both pinch the RJ-45 cover and remove the connector at the same time.  I am not sure if this affected the network connection though.
 
The above noted I have had wierd networking/serial issues that occassionally crops up on the OPII.  I cannot say for sure even after seeing the effects of this and not really ever being able to replicate.  That said the timing/clock on the board goes out of sync (like almost 1 minute per 10 minutes).  I also see some errors on the serial ports while this is happening.  Most evident are the communications seen on the Omnitouch screens serial thermostat communications. Validating of serial communications issues though was always via PC Access.  Historically I would remove the network cable then I would see the timing sync errors and serial errors go away.  Doing this though I would lose my network'd HAI devices connected to the OPII panel.
 
This last time I just replaced the network cable and it appears to have gone away by itself.
 

after a few months all of the sudden the Speaker of one of the touchscreens stops working..

 
I have multiple Omnitouch 5.7e and legacy Omnitouch 5.7's.  I am currently using an Omnitouch hub for the legacy Omnitouch 5.7's.  I do have a similiar issue with one of the legacy Omnitouch screens.  I never really paid attention though.  The sould goes from the normal beep to a click or a dull buzz.  I never have understood though why it does this.  (not sure if its due to the serial com issue noted above).  When it does this though and I am aware of it then I just reset it and it works fine afterwards (beep sound comes back).
 
As noted above though I would personally recommend ruling out power issues starting with the power supplies to all of your HAI stuff, expansion boards et al in some sort of test environment.  Then test out the serial connectivity hardware and transport one device/step at a time. Then move on to validation of the network transport (starting with the hardware then the transport itself).