Altronix power supply weirdness

C

chrisexv6

Active Member
Came home last night to a zone trouble on one of my CO detectors. its a CO1224 from System Sensor, but was making a beep that is not listed in the manual. It wasnt a temp4 like a valid CO alarm (I even had the fire dept out just to make sure), but it was just a constant beep beep beep beep....with no pauses or pattern.

I finally found the cause: the Altronix power supply it was connected to was NOT showing as connected to AC. The Green led wasnt lit, only the DC LED was lit. There is no explanation for that set in their manual,. I measured 120V at the input, and checked the supervisory contacts and they were both set to fail (A/C fail and battery fail).

Pulled the plug from the wall, plugged back in but no go. Shut everything down (including the PD9 in the Elk box that it powers), unplugged and replugged, no go.

I unplugged the Elk power adapter and re-plugged it in, then did the same for the Altronix and now all of a sudden its back to life.

The only thing out of the ordinary to happen lately was that we lost power 2 weeks ago and were running on generator for a day.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

-Chris
 
I can't really help you, but did you measure the DC voltage out? I'm curious as to why the CO would start beeping if it was still receiving power.
Also, your supervisory contacts didn't trip but you did measure 120V; so.....
Perhaps it finally started working again once a capacitor was drained???
 
It looks like the supervisories DID trip, I just dont have them wired into the panel (need a zone expander). I checked them with a multimeter today and the NC contacts were Open and the NO contacts were showing resistance.

I didnt measure the DC out voltage BUT if the thing has been running on battery since we needed the generator, that means the battery is probably pretty depleted by now. I just figured the sensor was going nuts because it wasnt getting enough voltage. Nothing in the System Sensor manual mentions what happens with a low voltage condition, but I may email/call them to find out.

The only thing that bothers me is if this might be a regular thing....if I lose power then switch to generator and then back to line power, is the power supply going to automatically do what it should? Im not quite sure why it DIDNT, or at least it seems not to have.
 
First, Elk's low battery/power switch does not play nice with Altronix power supplies because of the current limiting resistor value. All sorts of funny stuff happens with them, but I had a 4 hour long conference call with the 2 of them which resulted in a nice tech note on Elk's site and within the white papers.

Gensets cause all sorts of weird things to happen with panels and supplies, even those with true inverter and pure sine technology. Unless you can run the power through filter caps to pull the ripple out and smooth the power, there's not much you can do, but the standalone gensets are usually the worst for dirty power and electronic issues.

That said, assuming your CO is run off the power supply, what you describe sounds like power rising and falling. Sounds like the power dropping close to the operating voltage cutoff to me, causing the unit to power up and down rapidly.

In the event of a deep cycle or a battery being drawn down significantly, the increased load tends to cause the supply to not put out enough voltage or even power off. What compounds the issue is if the supply does not have a 0V cutover rating, meaning that when it switches to DC, a lot of supplies lose a volt to 1 1/2V off the rated output of the battery, IE: your normal 13.5~13.2 output is now already at 12V or less, then start discharging the load....very easy to fall to unacceptable levels quickly. Draw a battery down enough and deep cycle it, it's very likely it's damaged and either won't take a charge properly or at all, just be a huge sink to the supply's output.

I'm not sure how the Altronix is being powered, assuming straight to 120VAC via a whip and then internal transformer? The AC LED being out meant that something is wrong with the AC rectifier portion of the supply, not seeing 120 VAC (or the step down voltage, depends on the supply) Elk's PTC in their transformer can also trip if it see's a high enough initial load, basically enough to heat up the PTC, but the unit can't self reset with some current draw attached to it (there was a tech note regarding similar operation with Bosch/Radionics panels).

If you don't have a regulated output from your generator, you're worse off connecting your equipment to it than running it on battery alone. Electronics don't like voltage or frequency variations. Sounds like you might have cooked your supply. Disconnect the battery altogether and cycle power, see if you get AC back to normal, DC output back to within spec (about 13.5 or so) and a DC charging voltage....if so, sounds like at minimum, your battery is cooked.
 
DELInstallations said:
First, Elk's low battery/power switch does not play nice with Altronix power supplies because of the current limiting resistor value. All sorts of funny stuff happens with them, but I had a 4 hour long conference call with the 2 of them which resulted in a nice tech note on Elk's site and within the white papers.

Gensets cause all sorts of weird things to happen with panels and supplies, even those with true inverter and pure sine technology. Unless you can run the power through filter caps to pull the ripple out and smooth the power, there's not much you can do, but the standalone gensets are usually the worst for dirty power and electronic issues.

That said, assuming your CO is run off the power supply, what you describe sounds like power rising and falling. Sounds like the power dropping close to the operating voltage cutoff to me, causing the unit to power up and down rapidly.

In the event of a deep cycle or a battery being drawn down significantly, the increased load tends to cause the supply to not put out enough voltage or even power off. What compounds the issue is if the supply does not have a 0V cutover rating, meaning that when it switches to DC, a lot of supplies lose a volt to 1 1/2V off the rated output of the battery, IE: your normal 13.5~13.2 output is now already at 12V or less, then start discharging the load....very easy to fall to unacceptable levels quickly. Draw a battery down enough and deep cycle it, it's very likely it's damaged and either won't take a charge properly or at all, just be a huge sink to the supply's output.

I'm not sure how the Altronix is being powered, assuming straight to 120VAC via a whip and then internal transformer? The AC LED being out meant that something is wrong with the AC rectifier portion of the supply, not seeing 120 VAC (or the step down voltage, depends on the supply) Elk's PTC in their transformer can also trip if it see's a high enough initial load, basically enough to heat up the PTC, but the unit can't self reset with some current draw attached to it (there was a tech note regarding similar operation with Bosch/Radionics panels).

If you don't have a regulated output from your generator, you're worse off connecting your equipment to it than running it on battery alone. Electronics don't like voltage or frequency variations. Sounds like you might have cooked your supply. Disconnect the battery altogether and cycle power, see if you get AC back to normal, DC output back to within spec (about 13.5 or so) and a DC charging voltage....if so, sounds like at minimum, your battery is cooked.
Click to expand...

My generator does have voltage regulation. I was able to get everything running again. The battery was down to 8.5v but charged back up to normal 12.8 or so. DC voltage is at 13.7. Not sure if anything was permanently damaged but all sensors are working as expected.

I have an email in with altronix support to see if they know of the issue.
 
Maybe the output PTC tripped and took time to reset (cool down).
Maybe I missed it but what is the Model of the Altronix you are using AL400, AL600, etc...?
 
Model Al600ulx usind a pd8cb distribution board that feeds an elk pd9 and my uplink 2500 communicator

I think the battery got so low that it threw everything off. No built in low voltage cutoff seems like a design flaw to me but they do sell one separately... I'm just trying to find a good place to order it from.
 
Altronix had me RMA the power supply board. Not sure what they think went wrong but Ill be sending it in shortly.

Stinks they cant cross ship a replacement but hopefully wont be down too long.
 
chrisexv6 said:
My generator does have voltage regulation. I was able to get everything running again. The battery was down to 8.5v but charged back up to normal 12.8 or so. DC voltage is at 13.7. Not sure if anything was permanently damaged but all sensors are working as expected.
Click to expand...

It may, but voltage regulation is half of the equation when dealing with power generation and off-grid sources....trust me, I have 5 very large sites in state that specifically run large generators and test them weekly. If the frequency of the sine changes on the AC, even waveform, a lot of funny things start happening to supplies, up to and including damaging the units themselves. The sites I deal with have large banks of VFD's and more, but strangeness still happens.

While it may be possible the board simply started go bad, the item that gets me questioning that is it worked prior to being run on a generator source and since, it doesn't work properly, which makes me point to one item as a more likely culprit. Again, not placing blame, I've got hundreds of these supplies literally around the corner from your house and haven't experienced a faliure like you experienced, but the failures I have witnessed occur when the voltage and frequency regulation starts fluctuating (such as under heavy load or startup/shutdown, no matter how good the controller on the genset is supposed to be)
 
Thanks for the info.

I think Ill be putting a UPS inline with the alarm stuff, so in the case I ever need to run off generator the UPS will be taking "the hit" of any dirty power coming in (the UPS I have actually has real voltage regulation and buck/boost for line conditioning)

The fact that its all running OK again now makes me wonder if the board really is bad. I asked Altronix if they could hint at what they think might be wrong with it but got no response.
 
Just an FYI and a chance to give props to Altronix:

I shipped the board in (per tech supports suggestion) on Monday. Last night I got a brand new replacement board from them, so basically 4 days from shipped to returned. It helps Im on the east coast, but I was impressed with their service and the fact that there were no runarounds regarding a replacement.
 
They're across the water from you by an hour or so, so you can't go too wrong. ^_^

Altronix makes good stuff, there's quirks but IMHO, you get what you pay for.
 
Yeah, hats off to them. Plus made in the USA. I honestly didnt really see many more brands of power supplies....sure there are a ton of cheapos out there but they are clearly just some chinese knock off thing.

Im still curious as to what happened with the first board....if it really is my generator causing the issue, I would like to know so as not to run the supply on it ever again!
 
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