Lock Up's
26 February, 2012 - 20:00
I seem to be suffering with lock ups due to high power switching.
I use seperate PSU for HAH and relay after relay's (HAH relays power seperate mains 12v relays on a seperate PSU) they are switching quite high loads circa 750W-2KW on the same spur as the HAH is powerd and i noticed that the LCD goes Booting 3.4 (but that both hah and pcb keep working). But saying that sometimes it locks up and only a full power off/on resolves this.
the symptoms are the livebox loses the HAH pcb and this becomes apparant after a software reboot 304/1.0 as oppossed to 304/3.4
This happens on 2 totally diffo bit of hardware, 2 liveboxes 2 psu's 2 hah pcb's.
Tommorrow i am going to run a sepearate supply and i have purchased some transit suppressors (purchased is not the right word, found in my junk box would be better)
Has anyone else who switches high loads noticed this?
Dean
P.S Super HAH is coming :)
http://www.packetradio.co.uk/gallery/index.php/HAH/IMG_1107
See http://www.packetradio.co.uk/gallery/index.php/HAH/IMG_1107
6 March, 2012 - 19:01
#4
0.1V drop is pretty normal
From memory, I see 4.8V on the HAH PCB. My 'uptimes' are like weeks and weeks between planned resets.
Don't go by colour on the MMJ to RJ11 cable. I've supplied various cables and orientations ... any one cable should be good. On the RJ11, you should see Gnd at one end of the connector (pin 6) and 5V (ish) on the adjacent pin 5. Pin 1 connects to one end of D6, so you can work out which way around things are.
LCD contrast change is due to the slight voltage drop when relays pull in - quite normal. The LCD isn't really designed for beauty ... it's a basic part that gets you a quick view of the boot sequence and the assigned IP address.
If the comms between the HAH PCB and the Livebox break down, you will see the 305/1.0 report instead of the correct AVR firmware version.
Are you using different RJ11 to MMJ cables (or just one)?
I'd be happy to send you a 'soaked in' HAH PCB/MMJ to RJ11 cable to remove two important variables in the loop.
Derek.
6 March, 2012 - 21:05
#6
The ATMEGA328P-PU is pretty tolerant
Hi Dean,
We used this part instead of some cheaper micros because it will keep going even if the Vcc drops a 'lot'. Datasheet has this part working between 2.7V and 5.5V at the xtal frequency used on the HAH PCB.
I'm not at home just now, but I'll be happy to test & report back on the weekend.
Derek.
6 March, 2012 - 21:56
#9
Test Results
Hi Dean,
Here are my measurements :-
All relays off : 4.8
relay 1 on : 4.5
Relays 1 & 2 on : 4.2
Relays 1, 2 & 3 on : 3.9
Relays 1, 2, 3 & 4 on : 3.7
The readings did fluctulate a bit, but I guess your looking at a 0.3 drop each time.
Karl
7 March, 2012 - 01:46
#10
INI file corruptions - yeah
INI file corruptions - yeah this is a real worry. What I would like to do, and this is MAJOR surgery, is have a configuration file for each program rather than combing them all into one monolithic file.
So /etc/xap/livebox.ini, /etc/xap/currentcost.ini etc..
At least this way the I would hope to minimize any cross corruption that could occur. Also it would make it easy to locate and edit the configuration file for the program in question.
To do this would take a bit of work, I'd also need to create some sort of AUTO UPGRADE program that would on first boot up automaticallly break all the sections out into their own configuration file.
One thing I did fix in the latest release was caching of the 1wire label. Before this release it would lookup the ini file EVERY time it required its value. This woudl mean a lot of I/O and possibly a read, when something else was trying to write, and I thought that could result in a corruption. If you are on the latest release and are still seeing this then I can at releast rule out constant 1-wire lookup's as a possible cause.
Brett
7 March, 2012 - 21:43
#14
Clean Update
Have you tried a clean update, this wipes everything off your system but could be a good base of trying to work out what's wrong. The filesystem may have become corrupted at some point in the past and this might be causing the lockups.
8 March, 2012 - 09:43
#17
Clean Build
To carry out a clean HAH update run the command below :-
# /etc/init.d/update clean
This will erase everything, scripts, your config, the lot, so you might want to copy these off before running the command.
Karl
9 March, 2012 - 16:48
#20
rf same string
If an rf string was the same as another rf string e.g. rf1 = rf2 but only on the off position could this cause problems?
or
I found 2 aliasApplet.lua files the difference between them was one started witha capital letter.
one was version 1 the other 1.1
is it possible this was part of my problem?
I am trying to hammer down WHY?
one thing i noted was when i turned off an RF device sometimes a lock up would occur (i have started to time the lock up's) and i found that the off string was the same for 2 devices.
Its just i found already if joggler is trying to get info on something that does not exist it polls a lot causing hich xap messages, i solved this and have helped 2 other people ref this, so if i can figure out my "lock up" problems it should help others :) picture of my "new" set up, Just need to get some trunking to hide cables but it is in the garage/office/shack/clothes drying place (its in same room as boiler) so not that important and yes 3 thermostats :) 
Dean
Dean
Cant comment on your problem unfortunately as only use them to trigger house alarm and have not had any issues.
However I must say the super HAH looks awesome. Makes me want to go tidy my install up right now!
Cheers for sharing
Garry