Comfort & Lightning?

[Ingo]

Hi,

Every time we have a major thunderstorm, with some serious lightning, my Comfort II goes into a funny state. I\'ve never had a direct strike but the EM generated by a nearby strike is large enough to cause the following:

Both my keypads start to beep with a communication failure message. If I was connected via the UCM/Ethernet it too lost communication as well as my UCM/CBus connected to PICED. It\'s like the system just froze.

To recover from this I have to do a reset on the Main panel and sometimes a reset on one of the Slaves. Nothing ever gets \'blown up\' but I was just wondering if all the inputs are isolated, the UCM/CBus en UCM/Ethernet have isolation and then most important, is there a wathdog timer in Comfort so when things go this wrong, it will reset itself?

Is there anything else I can do to protect my system? I already have Level-1 and Level-2 lightning protection on my power feeds. My UCM/Ethernet is connected via an Isolation device to the LAN and then obviously the CBus side is connected via the UCM/CBus.

Thanks,

Ingo

[slychiu]

We have not been able to examine this. All the inpiuits and outpiuts have protection against lightning surges so they are not damaged

Comfort has a watchdog timer which resets it. You can verify this by executinbg a Response which calls itself - this causes Comfort to reset and announce \"Security Off\"

There is also a TPB02 telephone protecxtion board which connects to TEL IN to provide addtional protection
The APB01 ADSL protection Board also does this as well as pases through the ADSL signals for broadband connections see http://www.comfortforums.com/forum25/1642.html

All other modules have built in surge protection on inputs and outputs

[Ingo]

Hi Chiu,

So if I understand you correctly then all Inputs , all Outputs as well as both my UCM\'s are isolated?? I currently also don\'t have a telephone/DSL line connected to my system. It\'s only PIR\'s and Contacts.

Why would an indirect lightning strike then affect it this badly? None of my other management systems, like CBus and my PC, which runs 24H a day, are affected.

Regarding the watchdog timer, shouldn\'t it \'kick\' the system back into life if it halts all code execution?

Ingo

[slychiu]

The inputs have protection from surge, they are not isolated

Surge voltages can come from magnetic contacts on doors and windows as the cabling run can be long

Hoiw often does this happen?

[Ingo]

This only happens if we have a big thunderstorm and a lightning strike is close to my house.

I also suspected that the long cable runs, all 64 of them, acts as a huge collector for all the EM energy.

[slychiu]

External surge prorection for each input in additition to the internal ones wiuld help

This company http://www.cal-lab.com/ apparently sells lighting protection which can cover all inputs

[Ingo]

I had a look at their products and it would certainly help to protect the inputs. Unfortunately I don\'t have the space to mount, the almost 64 units, near my Alarm panel. It seems I am stuck with my current situation.


Regards,
Ingo