Installed 3.50-34, relays deactivated

The code has been running so well at other sites, I loaded it into a site that has a relay board on the raspberry pi. All appeared to go well. I was reading battery charge state and voltages. But this tower has a camera and a thermistor to measure battery temperature, at 5C the first relay is supposed to pull in and turn on the battery heater, the 2nd relay is used to control power to a camera on the tower. I noticed that after loading the beta the camera was no longer accessible. I checked Relay #2 it indicated it was on, I cycled it but got no changes. I went to the site thinking that something had happened with the PoE injector or one of the RJ connectors was not making proper contact.,
One accessing the equipment it appeared that power was not reaching the PoE injector, I shorted across the relay contacts and the camera came alive. Again I checked but there was no response from the relay. I tested the temperature relay and got the same results.

I returned the device to VenusOS 3.42, the camera came alive and the panel indicated it was turned on as it should have been.

The camera is no big deal but the relay for the battery heater is.
Is there other testing I can do to gather information on this?

Hi @kp4djt , we haven’t made any changes to raspberrypis and control recently - I’m not sure what changed here.

You’ll have to dive in and see how / via what process those relays are controlled.

Interesting, the only way I got control of the relays was to go back to VenusOS 3.42. When I set it up, I just went into the “relay” area and setup relay #1 to be temperature controlled. Turn on at 5C and off at 8C. Relay #2 controls the power to the camera. I am not sure what I can do to trouble shoot it, is there a log or some other file I can pull and send? We can live without the camera until spring, but the temperature control for battery heat is prime importance, moving into winter.
I want to make sure 3.50 will not block the relays. But I really like it and want to move as much as possible to it.

Hi again @kp4djt , we have double checked the functionality on a normal GX device (not a raspberrypi) and all works OK.

In our test, when configured like below screenshot, and having a potmeter on the temperature input, it closed both its relays below 5C and reopened it again once above 8C.

I’m not so sure what to do or advise you next; one thing you could do is check, when running Venus OS v3.50, is if those relays work on the pi, or not.

Our involvement with support on a Pi is limited, as I hope you understand.

ps. I see a typo in the screenshot, Deativation instead of Deactivation - thats a nice catch and we’ll make sure to have that fixed before release!

Matthijs,
Thank you for the quick response see my comments below:

| Matthijs Vader mpvader Victron Staff
23 October |

  • | - |

Hi again @kp4djt , we have double checked the functionality on a normal GX device (not a raspberrypi) and all works OK.

OK, I am going to see if I can set one up here at my home, and also maybe I just need to put in a clean install
I will try that.

In our test, when configured like below screenshot, and having a potmeter on the temperature input, it closed both its relays below 5C and reopened it again once above 8C.

I’m not so sure what to do or advise you next; one thing you could do is check, when running Venus OS v3.50, is if those relays work on the pi, or not.

That is what I did, I installed V3.50 on the RPi at the solar powered site with heated batteries. I caught it when
I saw that the camera on the tower lost connection I looked and saw that the camera was off line and not
powered up, traced back to relay not closing. I went in and gave it and open command and closed it again but it
did not work. I rebooted the RPi, but still the relay stayed off even though the screen said it was on.

Our involvement with support on a Pi is limited, as I hope you understand.

I quite well understand, for us the use of the Pi is a space thing. We want the box that holds all of this as
small as possible (the smaller the less attractive to vandals) so anything we can reduce size on we work
at that

ps. I see a typo in the screenshot, Deativation instead of Deactivation - thats a nice catch and we’ll make sure to have that fixed before release!

Glad you saw it. I had not noticed it myself, was concentrated on getting the relay to work or get info
to you, brain sees what it wants to see.

Again thank you very much.