https://www.niagara-central.com/ord?...onThread/15303
Not counting the ECC patch issue from a few years back (field recoverable), I have run into this only once in the last 6 years. Tridium QA guys would be interested in your findings.
Good day All,
I was curious if anyone else is seeing an abnormal amount of FX60 failures in the field? I ask as a few firms that I work with are seeing FX60's failing after 2-3 years in the field. One firm has seen 3 fail (at different sites) in the last 4 months or so. I took a brief look at the dead units and nothing was overly obvious (i.e. no burn marks, etc), but it does look like the RAM chips is damaged. My guess... and take that for what it's worth ... is that some level of input power disturbance (voltage spike, etc) is not filtered/protected within the FX and thus carries on to its internal power bus and damages the RAM. Since Tridum does not repair these I am going to doing some further forensics as well as changing out the RAM, etc to see if I can resurrect the units (and use them for internal testers if I get them working).
Anyway, I just wanted to see if anyone else is seeing this level of field failure or has any insight into this issue.
Thanks in advance!
Cheers,
Sam
https://www.niagara-central.com/ord?...onThread/15303
Not counting the ECC patch issue from a few years back (field recoverable), I have run into this only once in the last 6 years. Tridium QA guys would be interested in your findings.
Good day Digo,
Thanks for the info!
I will report back on what I find. I do know that the FX60's primary RS485 interface (i.e. for MS/TP, JCI N2 bus, etc ) is not electrically isolated and so is a weak link. Interestingly the external add-in module for additional RS485 ports are electrically isolated... That being said, I am pretty sure that the primary 485 interface was not a factor in the problem and I am inclined to look at the power input section. Like I said, I will do some analysis and will post what I find out. If anything if one knows of the potential weak areas, one can take steps to deal with them.
Cheers,
Sam
We haven't seen any here. What is the nature of the failures you are seeing and is it across the board with MSTP, N2, etc? What wire are you using for com and how are you terminating it? Are you landing the shield? How clean is the power?
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Good day DesertGuy,
I wish I could be more definitive, but I have yet to correlate the failures myself to see if I can see a common element. From the two units I have seen, one had a Flash Failure and the other a RAM chip. The third unit just happened and so I am unsure of its failure. The other units that other firm's mentioned to me I have no clue, as they were comments made as we were chatting. What triggered this for me was the recent third failure and then looking back and seeing the number of failures in the last several months... and so to me something is just not right.
As for the exact failure mechanism... I do not know yet. My "feeling" is that it is not an issue with the primary bus given the info that has been provided to me. It is possible, but until I do some forensics on the devices I will just not know. For example, if the RS485 device is knackered then I can be pretty confident that something came through the bus and entered the FX. If it is not, then the other likely entry will be the power supply input. Ethernet will not be the issue, as the electrical infrastructure of Ethernet effectively provide electrical isolation. I only commented about the FX60's primary RS485 interface lacking electrical isolation, as I was reviewing a project a month or so ago and discovered this shortcoming.
As for the incoming power... I have to get additional details on each site and whether there was any protection, UPS, etc. Secondly, I need to examine and analyze the FX60's power section to see if I see any potential weak links. I do know that on one site that the failure occurred (or seemed to) after their back generator test (which they do once a month or have been doing for years). It is still way too early to make any assumptions, but I just wanted to see if anyone else were seeing these type of failures. Interestingly the FX60 distributor does not provide any warranty on the units which I think is quite odd. I do not know what Tridium's warranty policy is, but I will be checking into this too to see if there is a disconnect between Tridium and the Distributor.
Cheers,
Sam