Apex triac outlet is stuck on!?

[Rob A]

I went down to the basement (fish room) late last night and a set of my lights hadn't tuned off. It turns out that outlet #3 on an EB8 is just stuck on. I can switch the status of the outlet using the app from off to on (and the indicator changes as it should) but the outlet/lights stay on. It has two blue light channels from 2 LED fixtures plugged in which ought to be plenty of current to trigger the triac. I've had it running in the past with as little as one channel of lights with no problem. The only trouble shooting I've tried was to kill power to the eb8. I haven't made any changes to the system in over a month, no software updates or programming changes. 

 

Any suggestions?

[DaveS]

You'll need to send that back to Neptune. Costs like $30-$40 to fix and return.

[wangspeed]

If you are adventurous: http://www.reef2reef.com/threads/repairing-eb8-blown-triac.175639/

 

 

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Warren

[Rob A]

Thanks. I'm not opposed to fixing it myself...just need to see where I stand with any warranties.

 

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[Rob A]

If you are adventurous: http://www.reef2reef.com/threads/repairing-eb8-blown-triac.175639/

 

 

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Warren

 

 Well, after tracking down a burning smell in the basement my wife found an extension cord with saltwater on the end, melted and smoldering, that had been plugged into the EB8 outlet that had malfunctioned awhile back. So that must be why the triac blew. I had moved the cord to another outlet, so I guess I'm lucky it didn't blow that one too.

Anyway, I took the EB8 apart and ordered some replacement triacs (thanks to Warren for the link above). 

[Rob A]

Guidance needed!!!

 

I replaced the triac...3 times before I discovered that resistor R5 was blown (the original triac had been stuck "on"). It's a 180 ohm smd. I bypassed it with a 200 ohm resistor to test it and it works. Question is, can I leave it like that or do I need to get the 180 ohm resistor. If I get the 180, which one do I get? There are about 3,000 on digi-key.

In the attached picture I have R5 jumped by a regular resistor, but the R5 is the same as the R13 below it.

 

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Edited November 21, 2015 by Rob A

[Origami]

You're fine using the 200 ohm resistor in this case. The 180 ohm resistor sets up a control current and path to control the triac. It will, most likely, work just fine.

 

Can you replace the 180 ohm resistor in the right place? Did you remove the old 180 resistor body (you should). Also, you should clean up those solder joints with some flux remover and a tissue. It looks like you've got a lot of flux residue on the board. Some fluxes are hygroscopic (attract water) and will become mildly conductive over time in high-humidity environments. Some of those solder joints need some work.

[Rob A]

Thanks for the info and advice. I ended up buying a surface mount resistor of the right value (right # of ohms, had to guess at wattage and tolerance). I didn't have any flux cleaner but I cleaned things up as best as I could and re-flowed a few of the joints. It's back in service for now...  

I messed up one of the through-hole grommets from replacing the triac 3 times, so it wasn't pretty when I got done. I drilled a hole right next to that hole and ran a short piece of solid copper and soldered it to the land on the other side before soldering the triac to it to make sure the triac pin was in contact on both sides (the bulge on the top left of the left most triac pin). The 12 large solder spots across the bottom of the picture are factory.

[Origami]

As long as the board doesn't have internal power and ground planes, you should be safe running a bare copper wire through a hole in the board. I've replaced plated through holes in PCB's before, but it requires a special repair kit. Luckily, the techs here at work had the stuff on hand. 

 

It's hard to believe that, after all these years, Neptune still doesn't have a trained and certified assembly tech building these boards. I recall seeing similar workmanship on my old AC3 and, after opening the housing, decided to clean things up. It just looks unprofessional to me.

[Rob A]

As long as the board doesn't have internal power and ground planes...

Good lord, I've never even heard of those. I'm glad that wasn't an issue in this case!!!

I looked up some of those repair grommet/eyelet things online. I decided it was too hard to figure out what size I would need, plus I haven't done those before and didn't want to risk it on this board. I assume you can use a punch of some sort to set them.

[Origami]

Good lord, I've never even heard of those. I'm glad that wasn't an issue in this case!!!

I looked up some of those repair grommet/eyelet things online. I decided it was too hard to figure out what size I would need, plus I haven't done those before and didn't want to risk it on this board. I assume you can use a punch of some sort to set them.

Power and ground planes, if used, are internal to the PCB (printed circuit board). They're used in multilayer boards to simplify circuit routing on the routing layers. Multilayer boards cost more to produce so, if the circuit is simple enough, they're avoided. They're more common in high-density boards like computer motherboards an cell phones. A telltale sign of a multilayer board is a via (those grommet-like things that go through the board) that has no apparent signal lines connected to it or a signal line on one side, but not the other. In these cases, the via is connecting to an internal signal or one of the power/ground planes.  These planes are pretty much a wide patch of copper that, if you drill through the board in the wrong place, can expose copper to the side of the hole making it more vulnerable to being unintentionally shorted. If you can hold the board up to a bright light and see shadows of the traces on the other side, you don't have power and ground planes and are probably holding a simple two-layer board. Probably way more than you wanted to know. (I used to design stuff for various applications and some of my boards went to 20 layers.)

 

Many of the repair vias can simply be pushed in place and held in by friction. However, your repair approach is perfectly valid even though it's less pretty.

[Rob A]

That's pretty interesting stuff. I have seen those spots on the circuit board that didn't seem like they were connected to anything in cell phones and other boards and wondered what they were. Thanks for taking the time to share all that it's very interesting.

 

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