Pentair Easy touch no display or functions

[kharris69]

Hi, New owner of pool and I'll be honest I know nothing about pools or how to manage them but I'm great with anything mechanical or computers but lost here. This was running a few weeks ago before house was purchased and after closed on it I went to get it running and there is nothing on display and nothing functions. Here is a pic of panel. All breakersare on including the one inside house. Panel has power where it should. Need help or info please.

Thanks,
Karl

 

[JohnT]

Welcome to TFP!

My first thought would be to check for a breaker in your main panel that feeds the pool panel.

 

[Rocket J Squirrel]

What does "Panel has power where it should" mean? How do you know the ET is getting power if the display is blank? Or does "panel" refer to something else?

 

[Jimrahbe]

K,

Welcome to TFP... a great place to find the answers to all of your new pool automation questions...

Well it could just be the picture, but I cannot see were you are supplying power to the system transformer (The small one)

With the Yellow wire capped off it means that you should be powering the transformer from 120 volts... But I can't see where that voltage is coming from... Please follow the Black and Violet wires from the small transformer and see where they go. It appears to me that they leave the box, but again it could just be the pic. I have never heard of anyone powering the transformer from an external source, but I guess you could...

So confirm you have power to the system transformer and that all the circuit breakers in the upper right corner of the panel are not popped.

Let us know what you find..

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[kharris69]

It's all good. I checked that. It's a 100 amp breaker.

- - - Updated - - -

What I mean is I used a multi meter ti check for power coming to ET and then checked power coming out of all breakers and they are all good.

- - - Updated - - -

I'll check more tomorrow but all 220v and 120v is good and none of the low voltage breakers are popped in upper right corner.

 

[Jimrahbe]

K,

Can you see where the small system transformer is getting power from? If so, where??

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[ogdento]

After you verify that the system transformer is getting power, flip down your ET panel and at the top right of the board you'll find the J1 connector (also labeled "Transformer"). Check that the AC voltages (10, 18 and 24 or thereabouts) are good. You may have to disconnect it to get your meter probes in there.

**The 10VAC is converted to DC and runs the board/processor/display, the 18VAC is converted to DC and drives the relays, and the 24VAC is left as AC and drives the valves.

Let us know what you find

Tom

 

[Jimrahbe]

After you verify that the system transformer is getting power, flip down your ET panel and at the top right of the board you'll find the J1 connector (also labeled "Transformer"). Check that the AC voltages (10, 18 and 24 or thereabouts) are good. You may have to disconnect it to get your meter probes in there.

**The 10VAC is converted to DC and runs the board/processor/display, the 18VAC is converted to DC and drives the relays, and the 24VAC is left as AC and drives the valves.

Let us know what you find

Tom

Tom,

Thanks for chiming in on this one...

Can you tell where the system transformer is getting power?? Did I just miss it??

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[blakeusa]

I believe there are three low voltage breakers on the top right of the et control panel. Small like finger nail size.

 

[Rocket J Squirrel]

This was running a few weeks ago before house was purchased and after closed on it I went to get it running and there is nothing on display and nothing functions.

Beyond the technical issues, this is clearly a breach on the part of the home seller. If something was working when you bought the place, the seller is obligated to provide it in working condition at sale closing. If all else fails, you have legal recourse to either make them fix it or pay for any amount you incur for repairs. If you need to pursue this avenue, do not wait, get on it right away.

 

[ogdento]

Hey Jim, yeah I can't tell from the picture either but it does look like power comes in from that lower rear conduit with the load center feed - and I would not expect it to be wired that way either. Regardless of where the power comes from you are correct... you have to make sure the system transformer's primary input is getting juice.

Kharris - trace the system transformer feed like Jim described, and if it is getting power then look downstream from that... like Blake said, one of the low voltage breakers may be tripped so check those.

If the low voltage breakers are indeed ON (or appear to be), check the system transfomer's 10/18/24vac secondaries (outputs) as I described above. If the outputs are good then the board may have an issue.... but these things are pretty tough so that would surprise me.

 

[kharris69]

K,

Welcome to TFP... a great place to find the answers to all of your new pool automation questions...

Well it could just be the picture, but I cannot see were you are supplying power to the system transformer (The small one)

With the Yellow wire capped off it means that you should be powering the transformer from 120 volts... But I can't see where that voltage is coming from... Please follow the Black and Violet wires from the small transformer and see where they go. It appears to me that they leave the box, but again it could just be the pic. I have never heard of anyone powering the transformer from an external source, but I guess you could...

So confirm you have power to the system transformer and that all the circuit breakers in the upper right corner of the panel are not popped.

Let us know what you find..

Thanks,

Jim R.

I looked and the small transformer power is coming from the third breaker down there is a wire from that breaker that goes down to a wire nut and one wire in that wire nut powers the small transformer. All breakers are good and have power in and out. I haven't checked the low voltage with meter yet but I assume since the backlight on display works that the low voltage power is working. this was all working fine and only thing that changed was the power company disconnected power to the meter (weren't supposed to) and then reconnected power a couple days later then I tried to start pool up and nothing.

 

[kharris69]

Beyond the technical issues, this is clearly a breach on the part of the home seller. If something was working when you bought the place, the seller is obligated to provide it in working condition at sale closing. If all else fails, you have legal recourse to either make them fix it or pay for any amount you incur for repairs. If you need to pursue this avenue, do not wait, get on it right away.

No the house was purchased at auction "AS IS" but they had the pool up and running good both times we looked at the house and they claim it was all good and they spent $2000 on it recently to make sure all was good. I called pool place here in town and apparently they are all busy (most likely doing pool winterizing for people) and had no idea when they could even come look at it. pool is green with bugs and a couple mice in it now and would like to use it for the next month or so before shutting it down but can't. Also I need to look at the electric cover since it makes noise but no longer works either.

 

[ogdento]

ahhh... the backlight is ON?? that tells me that the system transformer clearly has power - but check the secondary outputs, maybe the 10vac output is low

the fact that the backlight is ON is important because now it seems like the board did not boot/start up correctly... is the backlight flickering or anything? does it look like the board is in a restart loop? do any leds ever light up (even for just a second) when you apply power?

 

[kharris69]

ahhh... the backlight is ON?? that tells me that the system transformer clearly has power - but check the secondary outputs, maybe the 10vac output is low

the fact that the backlight is ON is important because now it seems like the board did not boot/start up correctly... is the backlight flickering or anything? does it look like the board is in a restart loop? do any leds ever light up (even for just a second) when you apply power?

Yes the backlight is on and not flickering but nothing on display and none of the leds light up no matter what I push. How can you tell if board is in "restart loop"? I have to think it's something simple but I just don't know anything about the system and so far nothing I've read online helps. I will check the low voltages later because my voltmeter battery needed replaced so couldn't check. I did replace the coin battery on the back of circuit board because it was only 1.5v instead of 3v like it should. Does that battery only keep memory for the clock?

 

[ogdento]

Hey Kharris,
As far as i know the battery is only for the clock - but the board will still boot up without it. I shouldn't have mentioned the restart loop... it's hard to determine without an oscilloscope or logic analyzer, and if it's happening then your board is dead anyway.

At this point I would isolate the board from everything else and see if it behaves the same... If you disconnect everything from the board (maybe take a picture first), connect only the 10/18/24vac transformer connector, and power it up... the board should boot and at least let you into the menu system. If it doesn't, then either the power supply or the board is bad.

Even though the input is marked 10vac, you can power the board with a 12vdc wall-wart that can supply at least 600mA. I do that on my bench, and Pentair does it with their trainer systems. if you want to try it, see my 8/3 post in this thread for the correct polarity:
Easytouch Questions

Hopefully your transformer is just not supplying enough power - these things will restart and/or act all manner of crazy if they don't get enough juice.

 

[kharris69]

Hey Kharris,
As far as i know the battery is only for the clock - but the board will still boot up without it. I shouldn't have mentioned the restart loop... it's hard to determine without an oscilloscope or logic analyzer, and if it's happening then your board is dead anyway.

At this point I would isolate the board from everything else and see if it behaves the same... If you disconnect everything from the board (maybe take a picture first), connect only the 10/18/24vac transformer connector, and power it up... the board should boot and at least let you into the menu system. If it doesn't, then either the power supply or the board is bad.

Even though the input is marked 10vac, you can power the board with a 12vdc wall-wart that can supply at least 600mA. I do that on my bench, and Pentair does it with their trainer systems. if you want to try it, see my 8/3 post in this thread for the correct polarity:
Easytouch Questions

Hopefully your transformer is just not supplying enough power - these things will restart and/or act all manner of crazy if they don't get enough juice.

Ok thanks I appreciate the help. I will try what you recommend and see what happens. I do hope it's something simple. Funny you mention oscilloscope, I have a couple of those and some nice electronic repair and test equipment because I used to do electronic repairs for my dad. He had a business repairing and calibrating radiation detection instruments for nuclear power plants and the government. Unfortunately I never learned the diagnostics just the repair. I have a nice setup so if I have to I can replace any component on the mother board if I could figure out what's bad ifc anything. The question I have is what about the processor or what runs it how is that programmed or how does that work?

 

[ogdento]

hah, it sounds like you've got a great tool kit then!

Depending on how old your board is, the processor is either a motorola 9s12a64 or 9s12a128 (made by motorola, freescale bought it, now nxp owns it). The early v1 Easy Touch boards (before mid 2007 i think?) used the 9s12a64 chip which is too small for 2.xxx firmware.

there's a bootloader on the processor, and the pentair firmware lives on top of that (so to speak). the firmware is programmed with a BDM interface (bdm is a generic thing, but all the firmware files are targetted to a pe-micro bdm device). JerryT started a great thread about updating firmware here:
How to perform firmware upgrade on Pentair* controllers

You got me thinking - you should be able to use the bdm to see if the processor is starting, but the firmware code isn't available and the pe micro bdm can run you at least $100... and you need $$$ pe-micro software... so at that point i'd just buy a used easytouch 8 board on eBay for $150.

 

[ogdento]

hey karl, I just got an easytouch board with a backlight that turns ON but nothing shows on the lcd. what are the odds??

I did some testing and in my case I think the display is bad:
- if I press Reset and then any button F through 3, the corresponding LED illuminates
- if I press Reset and then the Valve button, a couple LEDs illuminate
- if I press Reset I see a very brief flash of text appear on the display
- if I connect an indoor controller it will connect/communicate with the outdoor board (don't try this unless the above tests work - if your board is truly bad, you don't want to smoke an indoor controller)

you said nothing functions on yours... but what happens if you try any of the above tests?

I fiddled with my LCD and actually got it to work!! If the above tests work you may have the same result. These LCDs have an elastomeric strip that connects the glass to the LCD's board... it's a rubber strip with a bunch of carbon in it - moisture/salt/dirt gets in there and fouls things up. I powered down my board, wiggled the black metal lcd cover, powered it back up and I saw text on the display! Some characters were garbled so I think I'll carefully remove the black metal cover on the LCD and clean the strip, glass and pads on the board with isopropyl alcohol... that usually fixes these things. Only handle the elastomer with tweezers because the oil on your skin will mess it up.

 

[kharris69]

Ok so I tested low voltage at the J1 plug and got 13.6, 20.7 and 29.5. I also tried to press those button sequences you told me Tom and no leds light up. Now since I tested the low voltage when I plugged it the connector the display has all kinds of crazy things on it but still nothing works.