Aprilaire 8870 Power
- Thread starter magrann
- Start date
IVB
Senior Member
Oy, positively frustrating day HVAC wise. My aprilaire system has been non-integrated for 12-18 months, ever since I added a thermo to my kids room and put in an aprilaire 8818 distro panel.
Well, i thought i got lucky, i was mentally prepared to run a new wire which would have taken hours. I started pulling the old wire out, and realized there was a kink/break in the wire 18" into the wall. I happened to have more than that in slack in the wall, so I got that dealt with. I ringed out all the wiring, and confirmed that it was copasetic. "Bada Bing", i thought, this'll be a quick fix.
That's where the luck stopped. First, I somehow shorted the 24VAC transformer feeding the Aprilaire, so I had to go to RatShack to get another one. Then, no matter what combo of wiring I tried (just thermo 1. Thermo 1 & 2. Thermo 2. Using 8818 distro panel. Don't use 8818 distro panel.), it just don't wanna work.
I really want to get this damn HVAC back integrated, this inability to turn it on from outside the house is killing me. Cranking it when we got 10 mins away from our house was one of our favorite bits about the system, and it's been down for too long. I don't get much of an oppty to do this, i still have 1 week off work, i may fedex a new 8811 from somewhere online to see if that's it.
Well, i thought i got lucky, i was mentally prepared to run a new wire which would have taken hours. I started pulling the old wire out, and realized there was a kink/break in the wire 18" into the wall. I happened to have more than that in slack in the wall, so I got that dealt with. I ringed out all the wiring, and confirmed that it was copasetic. "Bada Bing", i thought, this'll be a quick fix.
That's where the luck stopped. First, I somehow shorted the 24VAC transformer feeding the Aprilaire, so I had to go to RatShack to get another one. Then, no matter what combo of wiring I tried (just thermo 1. Thermo 1 & 2. Thermo 2. Using 8818 distro panel. Don't use 8818 distro panel.), it just don't wanna work.
I really want to get this damn HVAC back integrated, this inability to turn it on from outside the house is killing me. Cranking it when we got 10 mins away from our house was one of our favorite bits about the system, and it's been down for too long. I don't get much of an oppty to do this, i still have 1 week off work, i may fedex a new 8811 from somewhere online to see if that's it.
With the adding of the 3rd Thermo have you set the addresses correctly in each of the 3 Thermo's. Plus you need to set the total number of thermo's in the system otherwise communcation will not work. At the 8818 panel shut every switch off. Then just turn on the POWER switch for each thermo and leave the communcation switch off. Verify that each thermo can operate what it has been wired for heat/ac. Follow the programming instructions for system installation for setting up the addresses and the total thermos in the system for yours that would be 3. Turn on the communication switches and see if your system works. I have an ELK system and I have 3 8870 the 8818 plus the 8024 relay due to the heating system I have and works great.
Hopefully this helps.
IVB
Senior Member
Success! Of sorts, anyhow.
After re-re-rewiring and also getting a 2nd 8811 protocol adapter, i've now gotten 1 8870 to work if I wire directly to the 8811. Well, sorta, it'll work with my laptop's RS232 port or via the Elk, but not either of the servers. Clearly some form of com port setup issue. But at least it's all functional.
Either tonight or tomorrow, i'll get brave and put the 8818 distro panel back into the mix, then if that works i'll see if i can get the 2nd 8870 to work. If that all works via the Elk, then i'll see if I can get it to work via CQC and those fussy serial ports, which is what I really want as there's some add'l fxnlty possible.
After re-re-rewiring and also getting a 2nd 8811 protocol adapter, i've now gotten 1 8870 to work if I wire directly to the 8811. Well, sorta, it'll work with my laptop's RS232 port or via the Elk, but not either of the servers. Clearly some form of com port setup issue. But at least it's all functional.
Either tonight or tomorrow, i'll get brave and put the 8818 distro panel back into the mix, then if that works i'll see if i can get the 2nd 8870 to work. If that all works via the Elk, then i'll see if I can get it to work via CQC and those fussy serial ports, which is what I really want as there's some add'l fxnlty possible.
IVB
Senior Member
IVB said:
Hoho, schawing, it works! Well, it didn't in the beginning, it turns out the issue was that I had to strip the CAT5 A+/A-/B+/B- signal wiring @the 8870 waaay back, and I mean something crazy like 1/2 inch. Once I did that, it all started talking. It's still only talking to the Elk or my laptop, something crazy is going on with my server's RS232 ports, but at this point I'm content.
Well, by "content" I mean that my LSI RAID5 replacement card just showed up via Fedex, so it's time to see if I can get that working. All our shows are starting up over the next few weeks, and given that we have 3 HD OTA tuners, 1 DirecTV-HD tuner, and only 1 DirecTV-SD tuner, I suspect we'll be out of hard disk space very quickly. I need to get that 4TB array up quickly.
IVB
Senior Member
Oho, and the gifts keep on coming! Thanks to jrlewis and his help giving me a macro, i've added 3 buttons on my webpage to modify the HVAC. His macro-code was a wide-open, change anything, but all I had to do was clone it once per field that I want to change, and hardcode the driver & field names into it. Since it's been done inside the macro, even if someone bypasses the authentication, all they can do is turn my HVAC on & off. Not that much fun, not that much of a risk.
Check it out, here's the image. I tested it on my cellphone, works fine.
There is one issue, and that is that pressing the button takes you to a blank page. So I have to hit the back-arrow, then refresh. I'm looking into how to make that go away, but for a quick&dirty 1 hour thing, this works just fine!
NOTE:The last button "turn on and set to 75", is strictly my "coming home" sequence. I'll hit that when i'm 10 mins away from home so the house is nice & warm when we walk in, then i'll use the Elk rules to automatically turn down to 71 once the system is disarmed.
Check it out, here's the image. I tested it on my cellphone, works fine.
There is one issue, and that is that pressing the button takes you to a blank page. So I have to hit the back-arrow, then refresh. I'm looking into how to make that go away, but for a quick&dirty 1 hour thing, this works just fine!
NOTE:The last button "turn on and set to 75", is strictly my "coming home" sequence. I'll hit that when i'm 10 mins away from home so the house is nice & warm when we walk in, then i'll use the Elk rules to automatically turn down to 71 once the system is disarmed.