**FIXED** Shutter circuit fried...replacement or repair?

[tooth_dr]

As luck would have it my dome shutter mechanism has packed in too.  No longer opening or closing via the switch. I checked the obvious things like the travel switches and on off switches. Its getting 12v power good enough. The bluetooth circuit is working fine and it’s sending the signal to the relays but again nothing happening.

In my series of diagnostic tests I foolishly applied the 12v battery to the motor directly to test it.  The motor does turn but a secondary effect was to set fire to the circuit board - I melted a track on the board. I have soldered in a wire to replace the track but it’s still not working.

So now I have a telescope I can’t collimate and a dome that doesn’t open.  I wonder what else is next.  Anyway obviously not the end of the world but dampening my spirits slightly.

Its a Rigel Shutter Controller supplied by pulsar but presumably now superseded.  My google search came up fruitless.

Any help or suggestions welcome 

  

 

Edited October 4, 2020 by tooth_dr

[discardedastro]

Well, it's a Microchip PIC16F628A microcontroller, which is well-suited to DC control applications:

https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/40044G.pdf

Plus a pair of SSRs - presumably either wired for a direction switch and on/off, or to drive one way or the other from a common rail. Looks like a couple of optoisolators, and then the usual glue to make 5V from a 12V supply for the PIC and make the PIC tick.

Hard to say what's toasted but if you can trace motor +/- to the driving components you might have a shot. Otherwise, making a new equivalent of this would be pretty easy if that's what you're looking to do - you can sub an Arduino of any flavour for the PIC, SSRs are cheap as chips (and available on breakout boards, for ease of wiring etc), and presumably your inputs to this are just open/shut plus a few switch NO/NC contacts for limit switches, which the Arduino should be able to internally manage (worst case you'd need an external pull-up resistor or two).

[DaveL59]

quite possible that you've just fused the relay contacts (the G5LE-1's) and hopefully nothing more. Had similar with a couple Miele appliances where a jump in load fused the relay and it had to be replaced.

Looking online they're a couple quid so worth a try, you may only need the one as you might be able to tell by the burned track. With luck the track didn't reach over and shunt 12v elsewhere in the circuit where it'd do harm. If you remove the suspect relay from the board you'd be able to test it easily enough.

Edited September 28, 2020 by DaveL59

[discardedastro]

2 minutes ago, DaveL59 said:

quite possible that you've just fused the relay contacts (the G5LE-1's) and hopefully nothing more. Had similar with a couple Miele appliances where a jump in load fused the relay and it had to be replaced.

That's true, and could make sense if basically ended up with a dead short through the motor - easy fix if so, and a cheap thing to try out; they're easy enough to get hold of.

[tooth_dr]

Thanks guys, you make it sound easy!  But I don’t think I would have the time to put into this right now, and anyway i would still end up getting it wrong, as I’m no electronics expert (clearly).

It wasn’t working before I burnt it so even if I repaired the damage I did, it then it still probably wouldn’t work, unless it was a failed relay to begin with? 

Does stuff this still be available to purchase or is this not how it works?

Edited September 28, 2020 by tooth_dr

[DaveL59]

it's possible the relay had already burned, depends how close to load limit it was being run and any added load on the motor for sticking runner etc could push the relat too far. 

[discardedastro]

Yeah, agree with Dave, if they were running continuously or doing a lot of switching or just pushing up against current limits, could easily have burned them out - hard to say for sure without knowing more about the motor ratings.

You can definitely get these off the shelf - ~£8 for a bag of 5: https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/non-latching-relays/3998225/

Probably worth a punt for a very quick bit of soldering.

[tooth_dr]

@DaveL59 @discardedastro thanks tie the link above. I ordered them and have since replaced both the relays, and still it is not working. Before I burnt it I noticed a little mark on the board beside one of the capacitors but thought nothing much of it.  I removed the capacitor earlier this afternoon.l and tried to test it via resistance reading. It appears to be at least functioning. But I get continuity (multimeter beeps) across the terminals intermittently. Would a faulty capacitor cause problems?

Edited October 1, 2020 by tooth_dr

[DaveL59]

you'd ideally want an ESR meter to test the cap unless your multimeter already has a capacitance function? Quite possible it blew if it was underrated for the applied volts but that'd make me wonder if the 12v applied managed to find it way across to the 5v side of the board. Which cap failed btw?

Wondering too about this resistor that shows discolouration

Edited October 1, 2020 by DaveL59

[tooth_dr]

1 minute ago, DaveL59 said:

you'd ideally want an ESR meter to test the cap unless your multimeter already has a capacitance function? Quite possible it blew if it was underrated for the applied volts but that'd make me wonder if the 12v applied managed to find it way across to the 5v side of the board. Which cap failed btw?

It was the one bottom left of board. I believe it was faulty before I fried the board, would that explain the shutter not working?

[DaveL59]

not knowing the circuit it's hard to say but yes it might have the effect of making the board intermittent or not work. What mark had you noticed, like a leak around the electrolytic? Some go domed at the top which I've seen on some netgear switches and washing machine control boards when they start to function intermittently, think another of my ProSafe switches may be getting to that stage so it'll be a candidate for repair in the near future I think.

If you want to replace the electrolytics, pick the same uF but a higher operating voltage, might goe you a better service life.

[Davey-T]

A pic' of the other side of the board might be useful, presumably it's only a single layer.

Dave

[tooth_dr]

On 01/10/2020 at 16:43, Davey-T said:

A pic' of the other side of the board might be useful, presumably it's only a single layer.

Dave

It’s only a single layer board Dave. I’m actually embarrassed about the state of my soldering but I’ll post it back of the board below.

I replaced both capacitors last night and it still isn’t working.

I really need this working now. What are my options here 🙁

 

 

[DaveL59]

am wondering about these 2 marks in the back of the board, is there a component we can't see from the angle of shot for the other side?

Pin-out for the relays looks like:

so that track that burned looks to be connected to the switched pin-1 that leads to the left-most pin on J1. Does imply a short when you applied voltage direct to the motor wires. Did the fuse on the board survive? Worth testing with a meter as some can look intact but have failed tho with a track burning I'd expect a fuse would be very blown too.

[tooth_dr]

4 minutes ago, DaveL59 said:

 

am wondering about these 2 marks in the back of the board, is there a component we can't see from the angle of shot for the other side

 

There isn’t anything on the other side and I checked the continuity is ok. 

[tooth_dr]

The fuse is actually ok, again tested with multimeter. I was surprised it didn’t blow as well. 

[DaveL59]

looks then that the relay was switched to connect that output pin to com/ground

Which would explain the burned track and the fuse not being affected.

Quite likely that the relay was toast internally, can you continuity test that pin 1 against the others? If you get continuity across to pin 2 or 5 then your 12V would have hit the 5v side of the circuit which may not be the best news, especially if the board was also still powered at the time. Are Rigel able to offer a circuit diagram at all or troubleshooting tips?

[tooth_dr]

On 01/10/2020 at 16:11, DaveL59 said:

Wondering too about this resistor that shows discolouration

Dave - I'll work through any questions you asked as I may have missed one.  This resistor has a reading of 1.02k ohm, and the other resistor on the board with the same bands is reading the same value.

 

52 minutes ago, DaveL59 said:

can you continuity test that pin 1 against the others? If you get continuity across to pin 2 or 5 then your 12V would have hit the 5v side of the circuit which may not be the best news

 

I tested both the removed relays.  The one marked 298 (closest to fuse) is giving a continuity reading between pins 1 and 4 only. The other relay marked 093 is also giving the same reading, with continuity between 1 and 4.  This is the same as the new relays, and appears to be consistent with the diagram you have posted.

59 minutes ago, DaveL59 said:

Are Rigel able to offer a circuit diagram at all or troubleshooting tips?

 

I emailed Pulsar who supplied it - they no longer have any spares, and cant offer a repair, and the new shutter system they sell isnt compatible with my rotation system, so I'm looking at £2600 basically to buy new.  Bit of a dead end there.  Currently trying to locate the company Rigel

[steppenwolf]

26 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

Currently trying to locate the company Rigel

I don't think that there is a company 'Rigel' - it is to the best of my knowledge just a cool name given by Pulsar to their control system.

27 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

so I'm looking at £2600 basically to buy new. 

Don't you dare!!! There are other options to resolve this. For example, when I got my original dome control system, it was based on the LesveDome system which is open source and actually very good. However, the shutter control system was pants (no fault of the LesveDome system) and failed numerous time on me for which I did kick up a bit of a stink which partially led to me be invited to have a little bit of input to the latest system which is SUPERB (although not because of my minor input!!). However, before the new system was introduced, I had given up on the old shutter control system and produced my own which worked absolutely faultlessly and cost under £20.00 to make.

To determine whether my solution would work with your existing system, I would need to know what the outputs are from your Bluetooth board - a clue to this would be a close-up image of the inputs marked on the board that has died.

All that said, I hope that Dave can help you resolve the issue on the existing board as that might simply require the replacement of various components but I can't assist there as I know nothing about the Microchip PIC16F628A microcontroller.

[DaveL59]

can you check  that the electronics side if the circuit is getting 5v? Should be present across this small capacitor for example.

at least that'd prove the 5v regulator side is still working and not gone open circuit. I'm assuming that is the regulator next to the cap and that D3 is a protection diode against reverse polarity. Worth checking that diode is passing correctly too if you don't find 5v coming off the regulator.

[DaveL59]

4 minutes ago, steppenwolf said:

 

All that said, I hope that Dave can help you resolve the issue on the existing board as that might simply require the replacement of various components but I can't assist there as I know nothing about the Microchip PIC16F628A microcontroller.

hehe I've never messed with PIC's but at this stage I'm thinking along the lines of basic circuit diagnostics. With luck it might just be something simple, if it is the PIC then I've no clue how we get that tested or programmed, esp without the original code. At least part of the upside is it's old pin-in-hole stuff, much easier to work with 😉 

Edited October 3, 2020 by DaveL59

[steppenwolf]

Just now, DaveL59 said:

hehe I've never messed with PIC's but at this stage I'm thinking along the lines of basic circuit diagnostics. With luck it might just be something simple, if it is the PIC then I've no clue how we get that tested or programmed, esp without the original code.

You're dong a great job at the moment, Dave so fingers crossed!

[tooth_dr]

Thanks @steppenwolf

Ive attached photos of the Bluetooth board and the connectors on the burnt board. 
 

I didn’t realise Rigel wasn’t a company, but that explains it. 

[DaveL59]

worst case I wonder if something like this could full the role?
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GSM-ROLLER-SHUTTER-OPENER-MOBILE-PHONE-REMOTE-CONTROL/321125300037?hash=item4ac48f3745:g:uIIAAOSwcOFWatKP

 

[steppenwolf]

15 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

Ive attached photos of the Bluetooth board and the connectors on the burnt board. 

I have some really good news for you (!) - if the original control system can't be repaired, my totally different system will simply connect to your CEBEK TL-2 board 👍