Resolved Not good

[Neemer]

I will try to make this as succinct as possible.

Hardwired Watchdog surge guard fried.

Nothing controlled by KIB working. No HVAC, tank monitors, toilet flushes, house lights, etc. Switch panels illuminate, but that’s as far as it goes.

Left and right security lights illuminated and their switches are ineffective at turning them off.

Inverter is working and powering fridge, microwave, etc.

What I have done:
-Total shutdown and reboot of house and chassis batteries. No effect.
-Broke out my best bourbon. Some effect.

Any ideas? Planning to call shop in the morning.

 

[Richpatty]

Anyone else around you seeing issues?

 

[SteveMA]

Do you have Silverleaf on your coach? (What type of coach). Have you tried literally shutting everything down. Not just shut off the chassis battery switch (near the engine) and salesman switch near the front door- you also need to shut off the power to the Silverleaf and all electronics associated with TM102 etc. (if you have TM102 it is usually in your electrical reel bay, it’ll be a couple of white multipin plugs that plug into the bottom of the KB relay board.

Are you getting AC power to the coach or is that completely off due to the watchdog failure?. I had a similar problem last year, where the inverter ran the batteries down because there wasn’t any power and all the systems just basically locked up, there are some devices that are supposed to protect against that as well as the inverter, but for some reason, none of them did their job correctly. I had to completely power down the coach. Everything not just what seems to be the switches in the disconnects and then brought it back up again and overtime was able to figure out the various things that had to be reset, most of them cycling power back up after everything was 100% powered off

 

[Neal]

Turn on GENERATOR. Any change?

12V (salesman switch) OFF for 1 minute. Turn ON again.

Check fuses such as behind cord reel.

Do you show 50A coming in to coach from shore power? If so, when turning on 50A or GEN do you hear "clunk" in ATS (transfer switch)?

Is hard wired surge guard before or after ATS?

Does induction cooktop or Microwave work?

I'm trying to determine if you're getting 50A to your coach. Do you have a 12V or 120V issue?

Is fried surge guard bypassed?

Edit: I see you said MW is working, inverter is passing 120V to coach.

 

[Neal]

Check breakers and fuses

 

[lostinfla]

Could have lost just one leg of the power supply (120v) which would allow half of the 120v driven items to work while the others (maybe KIB control unit) to not work.

 

[Neemer]

Turn on GENERATOR. Any change?

No change.

12V (salesman switch) OFF for 1 minute. Turn ON again.

Tried that to no effect.

Check fuses such as behind cord reel.

Plan to do that today.

Do you show 50A coming in to coach from shore power? If so, when turning on 50A or GEN do you hear "clunk" in ATS (transfer switch)?

I have 50 amp shore cord disconnected from Watchdog. I will completely bypass the watchdog later today. However, when I turn generator on, the ATS clunks as it should.

Is hard wired surge guard before or after ATS?

Before

Does induction cooktop or Microwave work?

Will find out.

I'm trying to determine if you're getting 50A to your coach. Do you have a 12V or 120V issue?

I have 12v and 120v in the coach. The only missing piece is KIB.

Is fried surge guard bypassed?

Currently neutered, but will be bypassed later today.

Due to other unusual goings on with the S&B, I’m becoming more convinced this is due to a nearby lightning event yesterday afternoon.

Thanks for all the input, guys.

 

[Neal]

So it sounds like your KiB needs to be rebooted but I'm not smart on that, hopefully someone else can help. The salesman switch (12V cutoff) only cuts off "some" of the 12V loads. There are still many 12V loads that are always on and my bet is KiB is one of those. It would be smart to learn where the KiB main board is located, from what I understand (could be wrong) it's just a raspberry pi / arduino type device aka mini computer. If you could find it and remove power and re-apply power to reboot it that would be something to try.

Sounds like you need to rethink your electrical protection plan. I'm guilty probably of too many protection devices inline from a Progressive Industries surge protector at the pedestal, then to my Hughes AutoFormer internally mounted, and then to a Progressive EMS 50 internal mount and then to the ATS which is also a surge protector.

Hope you can get it squared away. Areas near me were without power yesterday from storms.

 

[DennisT]

On our Superstar the battery disconnect does get the KIB panel as well.

I’d check the fuse panels as we have a fuse for the KIB switches as well just in case the disconnect does not get it.

 

[MemoriesByTheMile]

After some of the earlier and easier suggestions - disconnecting or bypassing the watchdog would be my next step.
We are on our 2nd watchdog and there are times that we bypass it. For us the watchdog is a 2nd level protection as we have a surgeguard unit hard wired.
Hardwired units are nice as they are tucked away, but when they fail, they require more work to replace and aren’t just a simple unplug to see if the unit is causing the issue.

 

[GUS2000]

Neemer - Is your watchdog equipped with emergency power shut off or just surge protection??

 

[Neemer]

@GUS2000 , it has emergency shut off.

I removed the watchdog from the coach earlier and opened it up expecting to see signs of high heat or burning. I could not identify any. Yet, there sure was smoke coming from it when I tried to reset the pedestal breaker.

When my son the electrician gets home, I’m going to have him wire the cable back together sans the watchdog.

BTW @Neal , I have a progressive surge unit plugged into the pedestal, and the watchdog was supposed to be second in line to fail. Didn’t work out that way.

I’m putting together a list of things that work/don’t work. It makes no sense. For example, with house batteries disconnected, the entry lights come on and go off as they should. If house batteries are connected, the entry lights go on and stay on.

My scalp is getting raw from all of the head scratching.

The good news is it will start.

Still waiting on a callback from NIRVC.

 

[Neemer]

Into the shop near the end of July. When I called to make the appointment there was another DS there for the same thing.

 

[GUS2000]

thats interesting.. makes me wonder if there is possibly something inverter related going on.. I had read on a FB post someone had an "internal" surge that was out of warranty that had caused close to 15k worth of damage.. sounds like something that Magnum should be covering?

 

[Joe Hogan]

The Watchdog has an easily replaceable Surge Fuse, a sacrificial part. Call Hughes if you have any questions, I am sure they will be happy to help.

Power Watchdog - The World's First Smart RV Surge Protector - Hughes Autoformers

hughesautoformers.com

 

[Neal]

How many have had a failure of this same watchdog device? I am wondering...if this was not an external electrical issue but simply a failure of this device that caused issues within your coach as a result? I don't know if that can be proven and if so if Hughes would cover damages as a result? I know back in the day of computer surge protection APC for example offered coverage if their product failed to protect you. My hunch is the watchdog is the failure item and cause for damage.

 

[Neal]

I don't know if anything changed in newer model year Newmar's but one thing I did on my '17 Ventana was put a cutoff switch to kill the connection between the batteries and inverter in the event of fire, etc. I don't know if there is a way to complete cutoff 12V (house battery) supply in your coach @Neemer to force a complete reset. In my SES overhaul of my batteries to LiFePO4 last November they also install a cutoff switch. I would be inclined someway to disconnect your battery bank (positive going to Inverter) and/or any other connections to get a complete 12V reset of the coach.

 

[Neemer]

I had a pretty good conversation with Hughes Autoformer yesterday. I won’t replay it here, but the thing that has people stumped is how and why 12v was affected.

Obviously, there was a short somewhere in the watchdog. My son is troubleshooting it now attempting to locate the area that shorted.

 

[Neal]

Keep in mind while we think of an inverter as just an inverter, it's actually an INVERTER/CHARGER in our coaches. So the 50A does make its way via the inverter/charger to the house batteries to charge them as does the GEN and Alternator. I don't know the intricacies and current flow and protections inline, for example, could a faulty inverter/charger be a suspect in the cause? Or some other component? Could the Watchdog send a short down the line through the inverter into the 12V system? I don't know. Maybe @Chuggs if he gets this alert could chime in on possibilities.

 

[Chuggs]

Unless his house has more than one catastrophic fuse…or the house disconnect has fried…I’m unaware of a way a portion of the house is dc powered and another part is not. It’s easy to trace with a voltmeter… if you know the wiring route. I can only speak of my Ventana…but the DC power flows…

Battery >> catastrophic fuse in battery compartment >> (behind cord reel) meets one side of the house disconnect latching relay (cascade of wires piggybacking on same terminal going to a couple of self-resetting dc breakers and a fuse panel for “continuous battery power” branch circuits. The other side of the house disconnect latching relay is only hot when the use/store switch has latched the relay in the connected position. If that side is hot…it has a cascade of wires on that terminal which go to a handful of self resetting breakers and also another separate fuse block which is designated as disconnect battery powered…as these are what loose power when the salesman switch is in the store latched position. I keep saying latched because this relay, unlike others…doesn’t need power to a coil to hold it in a particular position. It only needs a momentary flash of power to energize a coil to polarize it…the polarization causes it to move open or closed..,but once the power has stopped..lathe relay stays mechanically latched in that position. Your disconnect battery powered fuse block has two rather large fuses…and these provide power to the distribution fuse block in the half bath cabinet…and those include a lot of things. Reading the legend decal in there is a good read. The back of the plastic cover behind the cord reel should also have a legend of fuses and breakers…although sometimes they get in a hurry and don’t install them when building the coach.

Silverleaf??? Sorry, I have the black Carlisle switches thru out my coach good for 250,000 cycles… yeah, not a fancy as Taptic switches…but I’m good with that. Less likelihood of failure, quite honestly.

Anything in your dc system should be sharing a chassis ground…so holding the ground lead to a chassis member, while probing with the multimeter positive lead in DC Volts…should let you quickly follow the pathway and find the issue.

Your inventory of things working vs things failed is a fantastic way to troubleshoot where the issue is..lubricant will require you to reference those fuse legends to properly identify where the link is inoperative.