Whoa! Rosie shut down.

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Boys and girls...

Last night my wife and I were enjoying some TV when out of the blue, Rosie shut down. That knocks out power to roughly 80% of our house.

Checked on Rosie. She's off line. Red alarm LED is on.
Battery voltage is 48.8V (flooded lead acid)
temp inside garage is 44.5ºF
MMGP firmware is 24.1.17
Rosie firmware is 23.6.6.4

SOC as reported by wizbang in Classic reports 79% charged.

I checked system faults this morning and none were displayed.
I don't know why the alarm LED was on, but suspect if was a LBDC condition.
Which begs the question, "Why disconnect from the battery bank if the SOC reports 79%?"

Right now, I'm heading to the solar panels with a long handle broom to sweep snow from them.

Mike

[Weldman]

Could be lower in voltage, turn everything on and then see where it says on voltage. One thing with nothing on or small draw to say 48.8VDC, turn everything on and you might see the LBDC problem of around whatever you set it at to shut off.

[boB]

temp inside garage is 44.5ºF
MMGP firmware is 24.1.17
Rosie firmware is 23.6.6.4

This is pretty old Rosie firmware.  Newer may help quite a bit ?

I have heard of this happening but I think it may have been fixed by newer FW.

If nobody responds here to your issue, please call MidNite tomorrow or email support@midnitesolar.com

Voltage is fine.  Rosie should work down to 40V.  There was a Rosie here on the forum that we think shut off due to cold temperature but we (and I) were not able to replicate that. It may have been a lemon unit or some component or solder or connection problem in that Rosie.  We are still looking into that.   

Also, I think the newer FW takes care of the red LED coming on but no issue being recorded.

Hopefully your Rosie came back to life after re-powering it at least ?

boB

[qrper]

temp inside garage is 44.5ºF
MMGP firmware is 24.1.17
Rosie firmware is 23.6.6.4

This is pretty old Rosie firmware.  Newer may help quite a bit ?

I have heard of this happening but I think it may have been fixed by newer FW.

If nobody responds here to your issue, please call MidNite tomorrow or email support@midnitesolar.com

Voltage is fine.  Rosie should work down to 40V.  There was a Rosie here on the forum that we think shut off due to cold temperature but we (and I) were not able to replicate that. It may have been a lemon unit or some component or solder or connection problem in that Rosie.  We are still looking into that. 

Also, I think the newer FW takes care of the red LED coming on but no issue being recorded.

Hopefully your Rosie came back to life after re-powering it at least ?

boB

Hi, boB, I've been a bit gun shy with updating firmware—I'm still running Windows '98 on one of computers. I had bricked the MMGP twice but was able to recover from both times.

It was cold in the garage, but certainly not cold enough to shut down the inverter.
Couldn't figure out what the alarm LED was glowing for. Perhaps the new firmware will correct that.

Tomorrow, I'll take a stab at updated Rosie with the newest and greatest
Will let everyone know.

mike

[FNG]

What do you have low battery cut off set to?

The RED LED will stay for about 90 seconds, the error clears as soon as it goes away.

New firmware also has an event log with time stamps so we can go back and look why it shut down. Your Rosie probably has this as well

SEETUP---> INVERTER CONFIG---> INVERTER SPECIFIC---> ROSIE  scroll down to event log

[qrper]

What do you have low battery cut off set to?

The RED LED will stay for about 90 seconds, the error clears as soon as it goes away.

New firmware also has an event log with time stamps so we can go back and look why it shut down. Your Rosie probably has this as well

SEETUP---> INVERTER CONFIG---> INVERTER SPECIFIC---> ROSIE  scroll down to event log

Low battery cutoff is 45V

I'm not sure if I like having an alarm LED self cancel after 90 seconds. I mean I'd like to know if something went amuck if I was out and about. How would you know there was a fault, unless you look into the event log all the time.

Speaking of which, I'll take a look at the log and let everyone know.

[qrper]

temp inside garage is 44.5ºF
MMGP firmware is 24.1.17
Rosie firmware is 23.6.6.4

This is pretty old Rosie firmware.  Newer may help quite a bit ?

I have heard of this happening but I think it may have been fixed by newer FW.

If nobody responds here to your issue, please call MidNite tomorrow or email support@midnitesolar.com

Voltage is fine.  Rosie should work down to 40V.  There was a Rosie here on the forum that we think shut off due to cold temperature but we (and I) were not able to replicate that. It may have been a lemon unit or some component or solder or connection problem in that Rosie.  We are still looking into that. 

Also, I think the newer FW takes care of the red LED coming on but no issue being recorded.

Hopefully your Rosie came back to life after re-powering it at least ?

boB

Okay... long story short as they say..

Tried to upload the newest firmware and it looks like I seriously screwed up.
When I pulled down the new beta firmware, uploaded it to the system. It sat there and didn't do much of anything. So, thinking the upgrade had been installed, I shut Rosie down, waited a few minutes, and powered it up.

Guess what? Instead of the newest and greatest firmware, I got factory default. The beta updater only saw the 23.1.12.1, which is what Rosie reports.

I uninstalled the uploader, restarted the Android tablet, said a few prayers and utter many bad words. Nothing worked.

So, I called tech support.


Apparently, it takes up to ten minutes to decompress, and install new firmware. I got impatient and powered down Rosie. So, it defaulted to the factory firmware.

The fix was to run the production updater, install the current production firmware, then run the beta updater and install the latest beta firmware. That corrected the problem.
I'm sure I'm not the only person that stood there looking at Rosie and wondering what was going on after a new firmware upload. At the very least there should be something on the display that says 'do not turn off power to the inverter while updating' or something like that. A progress bar would be great!

It does look like the update has been installed.
The event log reports the shut down and restart for the firmware install

Mike

[boB]

Mike, I totally agree that the MNGP2 needs to tell you to NOT turn off the power to Rosie !

A progress bar would definitely be nice, too.  But at least a do not disturb the Rosie message.

Even the newer MNGP2 software tells you (for a moment) not to turn IT off while it is updating.

Other things needed too, I agree.  But this is a biggie.

boB

[qrper]

Mike, I totally agree that the MNGP2 needs to tell you to NOT turn off the power to Rosie !

A progress bar would definitely be nice, too.  But at least a do not disturb the Rosie message.

Even the newer MNGP2 software tells you (for a moment) not to turn IT off while it is updating.

Other things needed too, I agree.  But this is a biggie.

boB

While I haven't sat in any of the meetings, I would think from a service point of view that this should be pushed to the top of the to do list. It's way too easy to do something stupid like I , and flip the power switch off/on and interrupt the entire updating process.

If the procedure that i was told to do didn't work, I would have had to ship Rosie back to the factory to have a new boot drive ROM installed.  And while I'm no coder, I don't feel it would be too hard to incorporate a simple, don't turn me off message on the MNGP2 while the updater does its thing.

Mike

[Weldman]

I agree, wondering what is going on after a update and afraid to do updates since you don't know if they are going to work or might be a bug is major factor. Out here without power you lose communication with outside world unless you drive 40 miles to get signal.

[Wizbandit]

I did send reports and the GM answered so things are moving...  As you see it's not as simple...

Jim,
Thank you for the information.  We met on this exact issue last week.  We are working on a two prong approach.

First, we are I trying to start a five minute timer on the MNGP2 once the MNGP2 loses communications with a device.  During the five minutes, the message will state "Updating .... ".  This is a short-term Band-Aid since we know that it normally does not take a full five minutes; but it is better than nothing.  Justin will be working on the long-term fix which will include communication from the bootloader to the MNGP2 indicating that the firmware is being updated and the percentage remaining.  Once the firmware has completed the update, the MNGP2 will return to the home screen.

The tricky part is that we cannot update bootloaders in field, so the MNGP2 will need to be flagged when to use the five minute timer for older units, and when to use communications from the bootloader for newer units.