I just recently bought a Simplex 4010. Up until a few days ago, it was working flawlessly. About 5 days ago, it went into trouble out of nowhere. It said Channel Failure. So, I thought it was my wiring. So i shut it down, and left it off for a few days. Yesterday, when i powered it on, it started up like normal, but still had the trouble. I also noticed it wasn’t polling. I couldn’t hear the “rapid clicking” sound it would make normally. So, I though it was shorted out somewhere in my wiring. I checked it 3 times, and it was fine. So I attempted to run an earth fault search. Nothing turned up. But then it started working again. So, I figured that it was fine. But not 20 minutes later, it went back into trouble. This time, it said “Bottom of stairs pull station trouble”. I checked the IAM, and the resistor was still there. Then, after a while, everything entered trouble. Then after about a minute, I got the channel failure trouble again. The entire time, the “rapid clicking” noise was speeding up, stopping completely, and slowing down at random. I’m pretty sure the board is dead… Is there something on my addressable loop that could be causing this? Or am I correct about it being dead? I have a video of it here: https://youtu.be/eTh5ug2z-j4
Then after this, I shut it off again. And when I booted it up, it had a power supply missing trouble that went away after 20 seconds. What are my options?
Your problem could be in the wiring, field devices, or the panel.
There are 3 relays associated with the IDNet channel. One is the “Class A” relay that activates to connect the ends of class A wiring if the panel senses an open in the wiring. That trouble and relay latch until reset.
The other 2 relays are associated with short circuit isolation. If the panel senses a short on the IDNet it will attempt to isolate that short in conjunction with field mounted isolator modules. Could be these that are clicking.
Channel Failed comes up when the IDNet cannot communicate with any devices. This could be the result of a wiring fault, bad device, or internal hardware. It is possible for one bad device to kill a channel if it fails into a “jabber” mode that interferes with the communication of the other devices. This does not happen often but it does.
There are some checks you can make to isolate these problems. Let the panel run for a while and fail a few times. Then scroll through the Trouble History Log to see if there is any type of repeating pattern to the failures.
Disconnect the IDNet field wiring and connect your devices at the panel one at a time. See if any devices fail after running for a while. If only one of the devices fail that is probably the one causing your problem. If it fails with every device either all are bad (very unlikely) or the problem is in the panel. If there are no failures connect them two at a time.
Pull the system revision up on the front panel. Revisions below 3.01 had more software problems that sometimes caused issues. Also look at the rev of the SFIO chip (part # 742-147). This is the small PLCC chip under the upper right corner of the display frame directly below the piezo. Usually they have a paper label but really new ones may be factory masked. Revisions below 2.05 had a number of issues. Above that the changes were mostly feature enhancements.
One more piece of information. When a point is in the display either by ACKing an alarm or trouble or through the Control/View menu, more information is available. Push the ENTER key and then NEXT▼ key. The display will scroll through the additional information. There may be a hint as to what is happening in that information.