Something Not Right

[Niko]

I just finished installing the board.
The machine fired up in VI mode, then I put it into VII mode.
Then machine fired up with the fan running right away and the Econo light flashing :?
The steam boiler was actually heating up right away while the group did nothing, it didn't even heat up - as a matter of fact, the group dispensed cold water when I hit the button
OK, maybe not so funny...but I know something is awry.
I'll call Chris' techs in the morning.
I double and triple checked things, no loose wires etc..
? ? ?

[chas]

Mine came up in VI mode and in Economy mode, too. I didn't have any issue with the group though. You sure you didn't swap the group and steam boiler cables?

Consider what happens normally. The group boiler comes on first. When it is at temp or almost at temp then the steam boiler comes on.

Now suppose you connected the two boiler cables backwards. The controller activates power to the group boiler cable which is actually plugged into the steam boiler connector. The steam boiler would start to heat but the VII controller would think it was turning on the group boiler. The controller is monitoring the group boiler temp sensor which never warms up. So the controller never activates power to the other cable which is actually connected to the group boiler. Consequently, the steam boiler heats and the group boiler never comes on. Sound familiar?

Arrows point to the two cables I'm betting you have swapped.

7-2-2008 11-27-58 PM.jpg (68.09 KiB) Viewed 16954 times

[Niko]

That's an excellent observation, Chas.
I'll give it a shot when I get back home in a bit, I scrambled over to mom's house so I can cry (actually was invited over for dinner).
I carefully marked each and every cable with EXTREME caution but anything can happen, especially to me (lately). I already went into different scenarios in my head....like damn, I'm back to camping out again until I (again) get my board re-reprogrammed or better yet get my brain reprogrammed. This reminds me of the Hottop out-of-box experience last year.
I'll report back later, hopefully with good news.

[chas]

How long did you leave it on? I would suspect that eventually you'll get a Boiler Probe Blocking alarm or the overpressure valve on the steam boiler will blow.

[chas]

In a non-Italian manufacturing world, the wire colors would be he same on each machine and you could compare to the photo in my last post to see which connector had the orange wire and which has the red wire. However, based on my experience with these machines, your wires might just as easily be green and blue!

[Niko]

I think everything is OK now.
Thank God for someone who is alert around here 'cause it shore 'ain't me today
I think everything is OK because the expansion valve started to leak as it always did when the group heated up (and the group boiler was getting warm).
Aah, now I can battle the side panel.
Thanks Chas!

[Niko]

OK.
Machine is fired up.
I wonder why the Economy mode light is always ON at startup?
I think they did that on purpose knowing how much I hate economy mode - they probably read all my posts about it and said "we'll fix him!"
Anyways, time to get out of Economy Mode and into test mode starting tomorrow.
It's been a long day

[chas]

I guess I was a little out of it the day I reinstalled my board, too. I immediately recognized the fact that I was in VI mode but the ECON light staying on threw me. I finally called Roger at Chris Coffee and he reminded about holding the BOILER button in for 10 sec to get out of Economy mode. As soon as he said that, I had a real Duh moment.

On both the VI and VII website home pages, I show a pic of a small magnetic cheat sheet I made that I put right over the control panel on my machine. That cheat sheet has the instructions for getting in and out of Economy mode. Ouch!

It is very interesting that your board defaulted to VI and ECON on. My board was not an upgrade to my old board. It was one Chris got directly from LaSpaz. So I didn't assume that the defaults I saw were necessarily the same as someone would see that got their old board upgraded. However, I guess this is going to be the case with all the board upgrades after all.

Knowing that being in VII mode is critical to being able to use the upgrade functionality even though I didn't know for sure that all upgraded board woulds default to VI mode, I put this info into the upgrade instruction manual. However, I didn't add the ECON mode info since it isn't functional critical.

[Richard]

. . . board defaulted to VI and ECON on.

That's congruent with what I have experienced, too. I installed the reprogrammed board yesterday. At initial power-on, it defaulted to:

• ECON on
  V-I mode
  O degrees offset
  O seconds preinfusion delay

In January, I installed a new board (not my old board, reprogrammed) with +- 8-degree offset, and my recollection is that it defaulted to the same conditions, sans preinfusion.

[Niko]

Thankfully I remembered that my offset was set to "0" before the reprogram, I may need to go to +1. It'll be interesting to see what the pre-infusion does to the temps, time to bust out the Scace this weekend.

I've temporarily changed my avatar to a more fitting description of how I feel

[chas]

. . . board defaulted to VI and ECON on.

That's congruent with what I have experienced, too. I installed the reprogrammed board yesterday. At initial power-on, it defaulted to:

• ECON on
  V-I mode
  O degrees offset
  O seconds preinfusion delay

In January, I installed a new board (not my old board, reprogrammed) with +- 8-degree offset, and my recollection is that it defaulted to the same conditions, sans preinfusion.

The latter two will always happen since the switch from VI to VII mode will always result in resetting those to 0. If you change these two settings, then switch to VI mode and back to VII mode you will see that they are both back to zero again.

[chas]

Thankfully I remembered that my offset was set to "0" before the reprogram, I may need to go to +1. It'll be interesting to see what the pre-infusion does to the temps, time to bust of the Scace this weekend.

I've temporarily changed my avatar to a more fitting description of how I feel

What I did validate with mine is that whatever offset was dead on with the Scace before the upgrade, it'll be the same after the upgrade as well. Of course if you were using zero before and still not quite getting there, then +1 might be the ticket now.

[Niko]

I pulled two doubles this morning, quickly and furiously to see what happens with not too much care in distribution and so on. I immediately saw the forgiveness factor that pre-infusion has, a few days ago the Vivaldi would've killed the shots with channeling. I know it's a bit too soon to be praising it but I know my machine well enough to say this.
I also noticed that my offset might need be to be bumped up a notch, the shots tasted a little "different" - less chocolate and more fruit tells me that this bean needs a bump or two north.