Project Record
Version 1 – 11/15/2016
Returning Meter 2.0: Field Meters Troubleshooting
Testing
Energy Monitoring and Management Systems
Nathaniel Pardoe
Paul Tajiri
Project Record: Version 1 11/15/2016
ABSTRACT
Returning from the field in Burkina Faso were two of our Meter 2.0 meters. According
to our client, these two meters failed during operation and it was our task to determine the reason
for their failure. After testing the functionality of different sections of each meter it was
determined that the display box of the Rad House meter failed in its operation, causing the rest of
the meter to fail. On the other hand, the Team Hut meter functioned as desired and appeared to
have no problems.
VERSION HISTORY
Version
1
Author(s)
Nathaniel
Pardoe, Paul
Tajiri
Date
11/15/2016
Description
Troubleshooting faulty
returning 2.0 meters from the
field
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File Name
Returning Meter 2.0
Project Record
Project Record: Version 1 11/15/2016
Goal of Study
The primary goal of this MVP was to troubleshoot the returning 2.0 meters (Team Hut
meter and Rad House meter) from Burkina Faso in order to determine what causes their failures.
Then once the failures were identified, the secondary goal was to implement fixes in order to
restore the functionality of the meters.
Background
Returning from the field in Burkina Faso were two of our Meter 2.0 meters. These
meters were installed in Burkina Faso for our client Matt Walsh in the summer of 2014. One
meter was installed at the facility called Team Hut, while the other meter was installed at the
facility called Rad House. Over the course of time the individuals at these facilities came to the
conclusion that for unspecified reasons these two meters failed in operation. In the summer of
2016, Tom Austin removed these meters from their facilities in order to be troubleshooted back
in the states by the rest of our team. In addition, while out in Burkina Faso Tom Austin needed
to remove some of the capacitors on the command board and display board of the Rad House
meter. This needed to be taken into account when troubleshooting issues with the Rad House
meter.
Procedure
In order to properly troubleshoot the meters and attempt to identify the reasons for their
assumed failure, we needed to approach the meters in distinct parts. This means testing different
parts of the meter to see whether or not each individual part functioned as expected. In order to
do this, we looked at the meter in three separate test sections, the power supply, display box, and
command board.
Figure 1: Two 2.0 meters from Burkina Faso
We first started to test the power supply section of both meters. We did this by powering
the meter with 120V AC as the meter normally would be when powering a facility. The power
supply board should then take this 120V AC input and provide two different outputs: 12V DC
and 640mV peak to peak AC. The power supply sections for both the Rad House and Team Hut
meters worked as expected.
The next section that we tested was the display box for each meter. This was done by
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Project Record: Version 1 11/15/2016
powering on the meters and connecting the display box via ethernet cable to the command board.
The display board for the Team Hut meter worked as expected, as all functions were operational
and the information displayed was what was expected. The display box for the Rad House meter
however did not work as expected, as the display would not even energize. With further analysis
it was found that some of the capacitors were missing from the Rad House display box, and one
of the soldered on jumper wires broke off. Overall, it appeared that only the Rad House display
box was not functioning properly.
Figure 2: In the red box is the jumper wire that needed to be resoldered for the Rad House
display board. A broken capacitor on the Rad House display board is shown in the green box.
Moving on from the display box, we looked at both command boards by using the
functional Team Hut display box for both meters. When we put 120V AC through the Team Hut
meter and connected a load to simulate energy usage (basic lamp), it appeared that the Team Hut
meter worked as expected. We were able to allocate a specific amount of power to the meter and
saw the power allocation bar graph on the display box decrease over time when the load was
connected. Then once the allocated power amount was reached and the power allocation bar
graph on the display box reached 0%, power to the load was cut off (turning off lamp). On the
other hand, it appeared that the Rad House meter did not function as expected. When the meter
would be connected to 120V AC, the meter would energize and the display box (using the
functional Team Hut display box) would work as expected. However, after about one minute, a
“link connection error” message would appear on the display box, and the meter would power
cycle. After further analysis, it was found that additional capacitors were also missing from this
board as well.
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Project Record: Version 1 11/15/2016
Figure 3: These photos show the Team Hut meter working as expected. The left photos show the
meter when power is first allocated (lamp is ON). The right photos show the meter when power
allocation has been used up (lamp is OFF).
Results
After testing the functionality of the two meters, we determined that the Team Hut meter
worked without any issues, while the Rad House meter did have issues. We were able to narrow
down the Rad House failures to the following two issues: 1) the display box not energizing and
missing capacitors & a wire lead 2) the command board power cycling every minute and missing
capacitors (note: the missing capacitors as mentioned before were due to Tom attempting to use
these capacitors on the newly installed meters while in Burkina Faso). We then transitioned to
our secondary goal of attempting to fix the Rad House meter. The first step to do this was to try
and fix the Rad House display board by adding the correct capacitors to the board and
re-soldering the loose wire lead. Upon doing this, the display board still would not energize and
a fix for the display board was not reached. Since fixing the meters was not our primary
objective, we decided to stop our attempt to further fix the Rad House meter and move on to a
different task for the EMMS project.
Conclusion
In conclusion, after the testing the meters everything seemed to be working as expected
on the team hut meter. In the future, the project might try to perform long term testing to see if
any errors show up. On the other hand, the rad house meter was not functional. The display
board would not energize and the power cycle would reset every minute on the command board.
The project determined that the display board failed in Burkina Faso most likely due to a broken
connection, with the command board errors coming from when Tom took the capacitors off of it.
The version 2.1 meters had the same problems with the command board and were missing these
capacitors. With this information the project can conclude that the the errors were just a
durability problem and not any flaw in the electrical design. The project is currently working on
a new display box enclosure that should hopefully increase its durability.
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