Legacy Unison Contact Card

First, this in not an emergency.

In my legacy Unison system, I have approx. 30 contact closure cards.  P/N 708085036 Rev. C

Yesterday, I noticed that one of the cards was cycling the relays for the local indicator lights in high rate pulses.

Is this card something to be repaired or just replaced?

To give more information than the average reader will want... 

I reset the card with power and signal, and it seemed to come back online.

This morning I attempted to troubleshoot more thoroughly.

The card was not functioning this morning.  I reset the Unison processor.  The card started the pulsing again.

I was able to check and see that the signal wasn't causing other contact cards that control the same lights to react, so I believe it is isolated to the one bad card.  I will investigate a little more when I have some staff to assist.

I have spares.  I can reassign the new card to take the place of the old card with Light Manager.  Oh, and the lights that this card controls are normally turned on by a preset on a different contact card.  So, as I said, not an emergency, and I will call Tech Services when I get a chance if no response is forthcoming.

Just trying to figure out what to do with this bad card.

Thanks,

John

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  • Hi John;

    Ya know.. you could have called me [:)]

    When you say pulsing. is it happening all the time or only when a closure is made? The default behavior for these and all other Unison stations is to cycle their LED's or outputs in the case of a contact station when they are unbound and a closure is made.

    If this is what is happening and it is happening repeatedly, then something is causing the station to come unbound. It could be config related, or it could be hardware related.

    A few thing to check on the hardware side:

    Confirm power

    1. Meter the ULP lines (black and white wires) you should see 40VDC between them and 20VDC on each line when measured to ground (+/- 1 volt).
    2. Meter the AUX lines (Red and black wires) you should see either 12VDC for old systems ( non-backlit processors) or 24VDC for new systems ( backlit processors). 
    3.  Check to make sure the ground wire is secure and actually connected to a grounded source. Unison hates ESD it makes it grumpy

    Check Connections

    Is the card used to receive an input, send an output, or both? Has anything changed on the switching or output side? Remember we want a dry (no voltage) closure on the input side, so check your inputs to make sure all you are seeing is a closure and no voltage. Wet closures will certainly cause issues. You can also check your outputs for shorts. when an input is triggered or whenever Unison fires the closure you should voltage output matching the Aux power input.

    You can swap the station with one of your spares, remember you need to bind the new station or it won't work.You don't need to use LightManager to do this, you can do it from the processor.  If the problem goes away, then hardware was indeed the issue and we can look at repairing the station. 

     

    On the software side:

    1. When the problem is happening, check for unbound stations at the processor and see if the station is simply offline. If this keeps happening, then it might be time to save and reload the config. 
    2. Is anything else acting odd?

    Hope these things help. If not call me anytime.*

     

    *DISCLOSURE John and I have known each other for more decades than either of us care to admit. 

  • Luckily, I hadn't messed with it recently (in the last 3 years). I have some changes to the config that I am going to make, but I hadn't implemented them. (Yea, first question on the troubleshoot flow chart...Did you mess with it...No)
    I will check to see if it is unbound.
    I will take a closer look at voltage and make sure the switches haven't gone bad so that the indicator lamp power is making it through. My gut is that that isn't it, but my gut has been wrong before. Also, since this is a TCP designed, Colortran built, ETC upgraded 25 year old worklight panel, anything is possible.
    What is happening is that all of the relays on the card are pulsing together. They cycle 6-10ish times rapidly. Stop and then start again.
    I pulled the ULP connection, and the pulsing continued. Pulling the aux power caused the cycling to stop.
    Thanks for the troubleshoot list. I will investigate and give you a call next week.
    Be well,
    John
  • John;
    Pulsing all together like that can indicate that the station is locked. Do you have any controls that lock your worklights? Or is there a take control button or key?
    Is the pulse cycle continous?
    Do the other cards inthepanel have the same behavior?
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