UPB severe problems started yesterday

[Basildane]

Ah, there you go. Whatever kind of spike hit your house must have fried it.
You might want to double check your controller and make sure all of your zones
and outputs are working. I took a lightning hit last spring and it killed the
output that was connected to the thermostat bus. I had to send the controller
board in for repair.

I'm just surprised that the PIM is intermittent. I would expect it to either work or not work. But it is working 90% of the time. Bizarre.

Anyway, I'm thrilled that this one problem is over.

Learn from my fail: If you have builders working on your house (big table saws), CUT power to all UPB devices.

 

[Basildane]

Folks, I need your advice.

After waiting 2 weeks for HAI to replace my bad PIM, the new one arrived today. You guessed it, it does exactly the same thing as the other one.
Pulseworx PIM shows perfect signal, HAI PIM shows zero. Its like the UPB devices don't even exist.

I went to the breakers and turned off EVERYTHING except the security panel and one light. The whole house was cut. The suspect UPS was disconnected.
The HAI PIM cannot communicate AT ALL with the devices. Pulseworx PIM shows around 80 - 120, excellent.

One more thing. For the past 2 weeks I've been using the Pulseworx PIM as a backup - while I was waiting for my new HAI PIM. What's been happening is that the lights mostly work, but it can take a full minute for them to respond! I brought up Upstart and I see the HAI sending the same commands over and over. Eventually a light may come on a minute after you open a door, but usually nothing. A full minute before a light responds is totally unusable as you can imagine. By the time a light turns on, we are already somewhere else.

I'm REALLY frustrated now. I've replaced almost the whole system now.
What really kills me is the system was perfect for a full 2 years. Then in one day, it all went to hell. I've wasted WAY too much time on this. There has to be a solution.

I've spent about 20 hours with Upstart testing. Clearly the HAI PIM and the Pulseworx PIM are 100% different in their abilities, but still, even the Pulseworx cannot reliably control anything.

For the record, I don't live in Amityville.

 

[Basildane]

Got up this morning and decided to test more.

I picked a device on the same branch as the PIM.
I shut off the whole house except for that one circuit.

Signal 77.

One by one, I turned breakers back on, checking the signal each time. I was hoping to find one breaker that killed it.

Unfortunately, each breaker lowered the signal by about 5 percent. No one breaker was extreme.
So, before I got halfway through turning on breakers, the signal was 0.

 

[JonW]

Is it possible the HAI panel is flooding the powerline with UPB commands and causing the delays/signal issues?

I would power down the HAI panel and check signal levels from both PIM's from a PC.

 

[Basildane]

update:

Yes, the HAI panel was disconnected during testing.

Today, I made a cable to connect my Pulseworx PIM to the HAI.
BAM! Instantly, everything is working.

So, I have multiple bad HAI PIM's, I guess. Weird.

I don't want to jinx it, but so far, the Pulseworx PIM is working perfectly. Levels are like 120.

 

[tenholde]

update:

Yes, the HAI panel was disconnected during testing.

Today, I made a cable to connect my Pulseworx PIM to the HAI.
BAM! Instantly, everything is working.

So, I have multiple bad HAI PIM's, I guess. Weird.

I don't want to jinx it, but so far, the Pulseworx PIM is working perfectly. Levels are like 120.

I just replaced my SAI PIM with a PulseWorx PIM and the signals reported by devices on the opposite leg doubled.

tenholde

 

[Basildane]

For anyone who is interested, here is the latest on this.

I have been using my Pulseworx PIM and it is working 100% perfectly.

I have received 2 additional HAI PIM's, for a total of 3. All three of them are unusable. Signals average around 2 or 3. Most devices are 0, no response at all. Noise is usually 0, max of 2.
Plug in the Pulseworx, and 100% perfect, signals around 100 - 130.

For some reason, HAI PIM's will no longer work in my house. (They did work before October 2010).
HAI support doesn't have an answer for this, they continue to investigate... They have one of my PIMs to look at.

I have now hard-wired my Pulseworx PIM to the HAI panel and will use it permanently, but for future installs, I really would like to know why I cannot use HAI PIMs. I don't like mysteries since I may be recommending UPB to some clients.

One other thing, all the devices in the house are relatively new HAI units.

 

[electron]

I definitely look forward to finding out what is causing this, very strange!

 

[pete_c]

Can you detail the wiring of the Pulseworx PIM to the HAI panel?

My signals are good with my HAI PIM on both phases although the opposite phase is showing aboutn 50% less or so signal. I initially had a bad HAI PIM and didn't even know it. It appeared that the two way communications wasn't working correctly; where as I could send but not receive any signals on my OPII panel. I initially thought it was me not seeing the status via the panel of my UBP status. HAI promptly replace the PIM and I was good. I utilize two other UPB PIM's in the house (SA) and had never connected the HAI PIM to the computer for UPB configuration. Unrelated (?) I was using an SA UPB coupler and went to a PCS UPB coupler and my signals improved dramatically. This past year for whatever reasons sometime during the summer my UPB signals took a dive (and came back). I attributed it (but it didn't make sense) that the neighbors pool pump might have caused some of my issues (?).