Channel Damaged?

[DL84]

Hello all -

Had a situation come up last night that to me, seems to indicate a hardware problem.  Let me know what you think...

I've got a cFP backplane (4 slot) using a 16 channel 24VDC switching card in it. (cFP-DO-403).  I'm using the card to control tower lights, each channel corresponding to an incandescent bulb.  With 16 channels total, I am using 12.  At any given time only 4 channels will be on.  There is a slight delay though when the program I am running changes channels and 1 extra might be on for roughly 1 second.  So the total would be 5 in theory if only temporarily.  Full load we're talking about 4-4.5A (Assuming 5 are on instead of the 4 standard.)  The program controlling the fieldpoint module has been running without any problems for the past 2 months nearly 24/7 for industrial production running situations.

So thats the situation, now here's what is happening...

The program had crashed and I went out to take a look.  Upon restarting it I noticed the fieldpoint module itself wasn't working correctly.  The 4 initial lights that were to come on were flickering on/off real quick about once every 2 seconds.  As though the signal was received, and each was switched - only instantly afterwards they all turned off.  To troubleshoot I opened MAX and checked each channel individually.  All of the channels worked just fine when manually starting them except channel 0.  When each was set to on, the corresponding bulb did come on as it was supposed to on the test stand.  Now, for channel 0 I noticed....it behaves as the others did when turning it on, a quick blink on then off.  It does not try to turn back on though regularly as before, likely because there isn't a program loop telling it to.

I also noticed that both of the LEDs near the ethernet port blink on when trying to set channel 0.  None of the other channels cause that.  Also probably more significant, the DC OK light on the PS5 power supply goes out right when the channel switches, and comes back on after it clicks off.  Even when loading the other 15 channels it doesn't so much as dim.  Finally, the "STATUS" led indicator on the cFP backplane comes on and goes off when I try to load channel 0.

I did test out setting other channels, then setting channel 0 while the others were still set.  It behaves as it did in the program by shutting off all the set channels.

Sounds strange, but to me I would think its a burn out situation...The amp draws are well within tolerance though.  In fact its only at about 1/3 capacity when under full load.

What do you think could have caused this? What might be happening?  Anything else I can test? (I did try resetting the module also in MAX, which was successful reboot but didn't help.)

[DL84]

Update:

Coded a quick loop that lets you turn on and off lights, all lights work like a charm as fast as I can click.  Seems like the output on channel 0 produces an error 32828 at FPwrite.vi.

The connection to a remote device timed out.  Why would this happen with only one channel?

[DL84]

Bump

[eek]

In regards to the error code that you receive when you performed your simple test, here is an explanation of what typically causes it to occur:

32828: The timeout period has expired at FP Read.vi
This means that the network module did not respond to the read request from the PC. This could be the result of one of the following situations:
-The complete read request did not get sent by the PC.
-Enough of the read request from the PC was garbled or corrupted that the network module did not recognize it as a read request.
-The network module did get the request, but the response was garbled or not received.

The possible root causes: A noisy serial connection or an inability of the serial driver software to keep up with the serial board.

If this explanation of the error code does not apply to your situaion (let's say you're not communicating serially) then this definitely sounds like a fautly hardware issue. If this is the case, your best option is to call into NI's customer support line and explain to the Customer Support Representative that you believe you may need to troubleshoot for a repair or return of merchandise. This will allow you to speak direcly with an Applications Engineer who can assist you in identifying the culprit to this problem over the phone.

I hope this discussion is helpful to your situation. Good luck.

Cheers,

Emilie