Classic 150 Incorrect Log Date

[crunnells]

So my brother-in-law has a Classic 150 that I helped him setup, but something I noticed shortly after we set it up is that the History screen shows an invalid date and time. The date shows 15/31/2127 and the time shows 31:63. This may change, but it's WAY outside of normal parameters. The daily KWH meter never resets either, so the number keeps going up cumulatively. Neither if these are really *problems* per se, BUT they cause a secondary issue.

A side effect of this problem is that the Classic never resets it's charge state from Float back to Bulk at midnight like it's supposed to. When I finally noticed that this was a problem, the batteries were low and I had to initiate a bulk charge manually.

So, I tried resetting it to factory settings, AND we updated it to the latest firmware last week, and no change. I suspect that there's a register that is set incorrectly or something. Any thoughts on how to fix this, hopefully without sending it back?

[zoneblue]

For recent firmwares so many registers changes occured, that a VMM is essenital. Your symptoms sound consistant with that. Give it a try.

[TomW]

For recent firmwares so many registers changes occured, that a VMM is essenital. Your symptoms sound consistant with that. Give it a try.

In case you wonder what a VMM is:

Power off the Classic.

Hold left and right arrow keys on the MNGP down and power it up hold them down until the Midnite logo appears. Confirm your settings in the screen that will come up and you should be good to go.

Might lose custom settings so might log those values so you can put them back in. Been awhile since I did it, I forget.

Tom

[boB]

Sounds like the MNGP/Remote is not setting the time and date inside the Classic.

Is this a Classic Lite which does not have an MNGP ?

If it does have an MNGP, maybe the "Time Sync" in the TWEAKS menu is OFF ?

Does the date and time change from one log to another ?

Remember also that the Classic may not change from Float to Bulk exactly at midnight until the next wakeup...  (Not that your
clock actually becomes midnight)

Even without a properly running clock, the Classic should start a new bulk once every 24 hours unless you have SKIP BULK
days enabled for some amount of days.  This is because some Classics are Lites and do not have an MNGP to tell them what
the date is.  A Classic without an MNGP should actually start at year 2003 and not year 2127 in any case.

This is probably something very simple (I think and hope)

[crunnells]

zoneblue, TomW, one of the first things I told him to try was a VMM after he updated the firmware. No change to that problem tho. Keep in mind it came like this out of the box when we first set it up too.

boB, it's a Classic 150 with a MNGP from Q2 or Q3 last year or so. Out of the box it had the pre-WBJr firmware. I've never checked the time synch in the tweaks menu, but I'll take a look. I suspect this isn't the problem. The time and date are set correctly in the menu, and they update correctly, but the date doesn't change at all in the History menu. There's no way to select a different date because the screen shows "Invalid date" then shows the invalid date (15/31/2127) so no logs are selectable. I don't recall if we've tried accessing them from the Local app or not.

I can say with certainty that it does NOT reset from Float. We had a span of cloudy days here, where I was running the generator every other day, and their Classic was on Float while their batteries were at ~22v. I had to re-initiate it via the menus, and it hasn't reached Float again (since it hasn't been sunny). We're not using the Skip Bulk settings at all.

[crunnells]

Any ideas guys?

[boB]

Any ideas guys?

I would read the time and date that the Classic itself thinks that it is....

To do this, from the MNGP, go to the MISC menu and then the TIME menu which will
bring up the time and date from the MNGP/Remote itself...
Then, holding down the LEFT-ARROW key, press the SOFT-RIGHT key (upper right)
and the MNGP will read the Classic's internal time and date.

The MNGP should write the time and date to the Classic about once every minute.

If the Classic does not agree with the MNGP's time and date, we will go from there.

[crunnells]

Date and time on both the MNGP and the Classic are correct, so the Classic is getting set correctly. It's on Float again right now even tho it's at 68% SOC (according to the Classic) so setting to rebulk now.

[crunnells]

Another slightly alarming thing I discovered is that there's a tiny arcing sound (bzzzt) coming from inside the Classic, behind the main board. It's intermittent, but still probably not good. Also the chassis seems to be energized as I received a tiny shock when touching the bare metal of the Classic logo in the front panel.

Thoughts on that? None of the other two Classics I've installed do either of these. Although, this system is ungrounded because my brother in law is too lazy to pound a ground rod thru 8' of solid lava rock ;-)

[Resthome]

I don't think you ever said what version the Classic and the MNGP are on. My experience with new Classic's and historical data is it all seems to have strange data in the EPROM until you clear the entries for the first time. That seems to zero out the settings and from there on it tends to record the history correctly. Although I had one unit that keep erasing data that was stored beyond the 256th day.

[Halfcrazy]

Another slightly alarming thing I discovered is that there's a tiny arcing sound (bzzzt) coming from inside the Classic, behind the main board. It's intermittent, but still probably not good. Also the chassis seems to be energized as I received a tiny shock when touching the bare metal of the Classic logo in the front panel.

Thoughts on that? None of the other two Classics I've installed do either of these. Although, this system is ungrounded because my brother in law is too lazy to pound a ground rod thru 8' of solid lava rock ;-)

Try putting the Ground Fault jumper on and see if it takes away the shocking results. It may also beep and say Ground fault if there really is one.

[vtmaps]

Try putting the Ground Fault jumper on and see if it takes away the shocking results. It may also beep and say Ground fault if there really is one.

I'm a bit unclear on the concept of GFP in an ungrounded system.  Care to elaborate?

Crunnells, for safety reasons, if you have an ungrounded system you need fuses/breakers on both pos and neg lines.

--vtMaps

[zoneblue]

And a bit of static build up is to be expected on an ungrounded system. In fact you might find 1/2 Vmp on the dc side. Using the GFP might bring that onto the case?

Other things:
- i hope the Voc isnt large though?
- whats he doing for AC/inverter earthing?

[crunnells]

I discovered that the minor chassis voltage was coming from the Midnite Lightning Arrestor... I disconnected the MNSPD ground from the main DC ground bus and the shocking went away. I really need to lean on my brother-in-law to ground his system, because there's no point in having a MNSPD if there's no ground for the surges to go into (not to mention the whole system is somewhat unsafe). It was all originally grounded, but we moved the system to another building which had a south facing roof for the new panels, but there wasn't a ground rod installed near the new building. I also noticed that the GFP jumper was OFF, but the settings in the panel were ON, so I put the jumper back in place.

Anyway, the original issue, @Resthome, the firmware was updated to the latest about 2 weeks ago, so whatever version that is.

Again, the issue is that the Classic doesn't reset it's timers every 24 hours like it should. I just checked the Logs screen again, and as far as it's concerned, "today" is all of the data accumulated since we updated the firmware (about 2 weeks ago). Yesterday is everything since we installed the LAST firmware update (some months ago). So, KWH counts are 54kwh for "today" even tho it's a 1.6kw system, and ~550kwh for "yesterday" even tho both of those are impossible.

[boB]

Have you looked at the Classic's last few "minutely" (Hourly, recent history actually taken every 5 or 10 minutes)
logs entries from the MNGP ?  Either in text form or graphics form ?
Do they show wrong also ?  This would certainly be strange if the Classic's internal clock and calendar are
showing correct.

If that is still the case (showing wrong) then it must be an EEprom problem.  If the EEprom is not working
correctly, then the Classic may not even remember what its set point voltages and times should be when
it is powered up after being off.  You may need an RMA on that Classic if it has good firmware in it and
it still doesn't show proper times and dates in at least the recent history logs.

Also, that ground shock thing...  Isn't the Classic's case connected to the rest of your systems ground ?
The system ground should not be left floating...  The SPD will draw something less than 1 miliamp to
light up its LED and that is problem where the shock is coming from.

The SPD will not be able to do its job unless its green wire is connected to earth ground.