Comfort Automation/ Security System Forums

Description of problem

Until today my Comfort II system has worked fine with a single door station. Today I installed a DM02 board and Fermax CityMax 1-way doorphone. Every time I connect everything up I get a continuous quiet beep-beep-beep on the door station and on all the (3) keypads. The keypads LCDs read \'Keypad 1\', \'Keypad 2\', and \'Keypad 3\'.

If I try to sign in to any of the keypads then as soon as I touch the first button it gives a double beep. I enter the rest of my sign-in code and the keypad hangs. This happens with each keypad. If I then pull off the short connecting cable from Comfort (containing 12V/0V/KA/KB) the keypads all start working as normal again and the system announces \'Communications failure 49\' and the LCDs all say \'Doorstation 1\'.

I have checked and double- and treble- checked all the wiring and can\'t see what I have done wrong.

Questions

Can anyone tell what mistake I have made in my installation on the basis of the information above?

The cable to my old doorstation (and hence the new one too) was 8 core screened cable, but not cat5 cable. I see the literature which came with the DM02 refers to cat5 cable between the DM02 and comfort. Is this important? Might this be the cause of the problem? If it is, can I mount the DM02 much closer to the door station and connect back to comfort using the non-twisted pair cable?

Should I be making any changes to my comfigurator download to tell Comfort the DM02 has been installed?

Many thanks

Graham

Have you set the number of door station in comfigurator to two units?
Check the jumper ID (SW1) on the DM02, it should be set to ID number 2 i.e. SW1-A open and both SW1-B and SW1-C are closed.
It\'s recommended to use cat5 cable as it has higher resistance to noise.

Thanks

I still only have one doorstation; the DM02 and Fermax unit replace the previous one. Do I still still need to change comfigurator to 2 units?

Does the error behaviour I am getting mean the cable between comfort and DM02 needs to be cat5, or the cable from DM02 to the fermax unit? The distance from comfort to DM02 is only short, but is daisy-chained via my Ethernet module.

Graham

In that case, don\'t change the ID configuration. It\'ll remain as 1 unit.
Check that KA/KB connection is not reversed. Check that jumper J1 setting on DM02  is shunted to positions 2-3. (Note: position 1 is the one with a white dot).

If none of the above helps, can you give me your detailed connection from both Comfort system to DM02 and DM02 to fermax unit? No, non-cat5 cable won\'t cause such error; will only make it more susceptible to noise. The wrong connection does.

Hi Graham

We have installed a few of these and invariably put the DM01 in the Comfort panel and run Cat5 screened to the Fermax, although the requirements for the DM01 to door station are not too critical, the instructions from Fermax talk about a non screened multicore cable.

The symptoms you are experiencing seem to indicate you are losing the RS485 Ka/Kb buss system wide when connecting the DM01. Check for reversed connections.

How are you powering the door station? We\'ve always used a separate 12v DC PSU run to the door station (it could be an AC PSU if you want).

We\'ve always set the jumper on the DM01 to ID1.

Also disconnect the door station from the DM01 and see what happens when the DM01 is connected back into Comfort?

HTH

Nick

SORTED!

Thank you for your advice which was much appreciated.

As it happens the solution turned out to be something different, which I ought to have thought of before. I purchased the DM02 a few months back and fitted it into its purpose-made enclosure at the same time. I then used a similar enclosure for an RIO module and had a problem with the RS485 going down. I eventually found that by removing the lower two screws holding the module into the enclosure the problem went away.

And I remembered this today, removed the lower two screws (at which point the board moved very slightly, presumably having been under slight tension) and the whole system worked perfectly.

Thanks again; knowing that somebody would answer my plea definitely helped me sleep better last night!

Graham