Timer lockup

ScottW · Post by **ScottW** » Tue Jun 05, 2007 5:45 pm

I headed into the kitchen this morning and was greeted by a stone-cold V-II. Oh the horror... The timer didn't turn it on!

I looked at the timer display, and the second line -- which normally alternates between showing the current time and the "next on/off" time -- was just showing the current time.

I disconnected power for a few seconds, then reconnected. The timer display looked normal, flashing the next on/off event time. So presumably it just got a bit "confused" and the power cycle fixed it.

We'll see what happens tomorrow morning...

Post by **Niko** » Tue Jun 05, 2007 6:22 pm

Scott, sorry to hear about this.
I haven't had this one happen, yet.
Hopefully it was just one of those glitches that a few of us experienced on that other thread.
Hey, it happens...computers crash, electronices get nutty and timers take a time out.

If this also happened to any of you out there, please post it here so we can have a record of it.

It just dawned on me, maybe the battery in the timer is dying causing it to crash...?

Post by **Niko** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 10:37 am

...Only a matter of time.
I just had an issue with my timer this morning.
The machine never turned ON! The timer looked normal, it just failed to turn it on the machine so I woke up to a cold machine!

Stupid electronic gizmos!

ScottW · Post by **ScottW** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 12:09 pm

Niko wrote:...Only a matter of time.
I just had an issue with my timer this morning.
The machine never turned ON! The timer looked normal, it just failed to turn it on the machine so I woke up to a cold machine! Stupid electronic gizmos!

Sorry to hear that, Niko! On one hand, this has only happened to me once since November (one day out of 240?) so I've tried not to let it bother me much. On the other hand, that timer was $185 and for that amount it should work flawlessly, right?

I considered making a timer like the one Antonio Elias prototyped (see link below), but it doesn't (yet) provide a way to turn the machine OFF, only ON -- and I really like the automatic OFF provided by the VII timer.
http://mysite.verizon.net/antonioe/site ... itimer.pdf

There's also the home control (x10, etc) method, but unless one already has some investment in that technology for other home control, it would be kind of expensive just for controlling one device.

So I guess the VII timer is still the best option for me, and I can tolerate a couple failures per year. Good thing the group boiler only takes a few minutes to come up to temp!

Post by **Niko** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 12:25 pm

Scott, I didn't unplug it like you did.
I wanted to see what happens so I just manually fired up the VII, oh the horror! The horror of having to use my finger to start up the VII!
The timer never displayed the next "ON" time like it normally does, it just sat there in wait like the village idiot waiting to have the townsfolk throw stones at it, I felt sorry for it so I pushed and held the button for 3+ seconds and away it went into it fury of heating the boilers.
I left it on to do its thing so we'll see what happens when I go home for lunch, the timer is supposed to shut it off by 9:00am and this time I left it on its own (usually when I leave in the mornings I just hit the power button to turn it OFF).
At least it displayed the next OFF time after I fired up the machine.
I can live with a couple of glitches per year, hell...the Vivaldi has less crashes than Windows, right?

ScottW · Post by **ScottW** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 3:33 pm

Niko wrote:Scott, I didn't unplug it like you did.

It will be interesting to see if it "recovers" on its own. It appeared to be "locked up" to me, not flashing the next on/off event, which is what led me to momentarily unplug it -- after which it started working normally again.

No complaint here, since it is so infrequent and easily fixed (so far). It was just a "shock" to find a cold machine because I have gotten so used to it always being ready to go. I sort of stood there in a state of confusion for a moment until I realized I needed to hit the "on" button myself!

Post by **Niko** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 3:48 pm

I went home for lunch and it seems to have recovered on its own. I found the machine powered OFF and the timer is displaying the next ON time for this afternoon.
We'll see how that goes when I get home later....

Post by **jackiechang** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 6:14 pm

Maybe it's by solar activity.

chas · Post by **chas** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 8:05 pm

The thing we don't know from these sporadic anomalies is whether the timer is messing up or if the timer is doing exactly what it is supposed to and the control board in the V2 is not responding correctly to the signal from the timer.

Post by **Niko** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 2:06 pm

Back in business.
This morning was back to normal, I did notice that the timer displayed the next ON time last night (past midnight) like it should in normal operation when the timer is ON.
Now I wonder if the timer somehow shut itself OFF the previous night. The timer can be OFF but the display will still look normal, it just won't flash the next ON or OFF time.

...then again, maybe it's the control panel

jackiechang wrote:Maybe it's by solar activity.

It's California! ....anything is possible.

Post by **Niko** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 12:37 pm

My machine just powered off while I was grinding my beans into the PF! I was locked and loaded and ready to pull the shot and the machine was blanked out...kind of like the other morning when I woke up to a stone cold VII. I figured it immediately when I looked at the next ON time flashing, the timer is not programmed for 2 ON/OFF's on the weekends. The timer thought it was Friday, July 14th!! Talk about a weird Friday the 13th carrying over to the next day, I had a strange enough friday the 13th as it is.

This probably explains what happened the other day.
I woke up to a cold machine because the timer thought it was a weekend? Maybe, but that happened on a Tuesday and if we go by this malfunction today, the timer would've thought it was Monday.
Sorry, it does sound confusing now...I'll shut up.

chas · Post by **chas** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 1:07 pm

So did the date get off by a day in the timer? Maybe I'd better check mine in case the Italians think there are 31 days in June! I use the same program on weekends so I wouldn't notice this issue unless I specifically check for it.

Post by **Niko** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 1:46 pm

That's it!!
The Italians must've added another day on one of the months...?
No wonder you haven't had this issue, along with many other people. I run different times of the day for weekdays and so on, ScottW must be running a different schedule for the weekends as well.

Everyone, check your timer dates, etc..

I just noticed that Scott and I had our troubles on Tuesday. Something about Tuesday....

chas · Post by **chas** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 1:54 pm

I seem to have a bigger problem. My timer thinks it's May 14th! Good thing I have the same program every day! The time of day is OK, maybe a couple of minutes fast.

I guess I'd better start watching the date frequently to see when and/or how often it is screwing up!

Post by **Niko** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 2:02 pm

I don't understand this!
Why is the timer doing this? It's not just yours.
I had an interesting conversation with someone form Spaziale a couple of months back, they mentioned an issue with some of the timers. They wouldn't elaborate on it, I didn't want to push it either...I'm beginning to think that this is the issue. Maybe when the machine is unplugged or loses power somehow, the timer gets screwy by a day or so....in your case a couple of months! But it kind of makes sense, any little interference can change the digit to another number, look at your day (correct @ 14) but wrong on the set month. Mine was the correct number day (14) but wrong on the actual name of the day, it thought it was Friday.
This is getting odd.
I think if we stay on top of this, like every week when we have a maintenance for the machine, the timer should be checked.

UPDATE:
I think I have an idea of what's going on.
I did unplug the machine several weeks ago to check some noises, it was unplugged for several hours and maybe plugging it back in tripped out the timer. I know the timer has a battery but this doesn't always guaranty all your set programs are kept.
Did you recently unplug your machine for anything?

chas · Post by **chas** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 2:28 pm

The cleaning crew keeps unplugging it to plug in their vacuum cleaner even though there are plenty of other plugs in close proximity. I guess I need to put a multi-lingual sign on it! Can anyone translate "Don't unplug" into Spanish for me?

Plus it's thunderstorm season so we get sporadic second or two outages that cycle the VII off.

I seem to remember once in May noticing that the month was set to March and everything else was correct. At the time I blamed myself for setting the date incorrectly in the first place. I guess not. My sample size is too small to make assumption yet but it is a strange "coincidence" that only the month was off and by exactly two months each time.

Post by **Niko** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 2:36 pm

Well I just yanked the plug while it was ON.
...nothing happened to the timer when I plugged it back in.
Everything was OK.
I wonder if it has to be down and out of power for an extended time, like the amount of time it takes to vacuum a couple of rooms!
Sorry, I can't translate that in Spanish for you but I can translate Greek :D fluently if you'd like.

chas · Post by **chas** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 7:30 am

So far so good since I reset my timer earlier this month. I am interested to see what happens during the 31st-1st roll-over tonight.

Post by **Niko** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 12:03 pm

I just hope your timer (and mine) doesn't roll back a month instead of forward

.
I'll keep an eye on it around midnight, I'll be cupping past 1am anyways...

.

chas · Post by **chas** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 1:02 pm

Niko wrote:I just hope your timer (and mine) doesn't roll back a month instead of forward .
I'll keep an eye on it around midnight, I'll be cupping past 1am anyways... .

As much as you love coffee, might that be called cuppulation???

Post by **Niko** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 2:07 pm

chas · Post by **chas** » Wed Aug 01, 2007 12:00 am

Scratch one more theory. My timer just rolled over to Aug 1st!

Post by **Niko** » Wed Aug 01, 2007 12:15 am

That's just your timer!
... :D I got 2hrs, 45 minutes left.

chas · Post by **chas** » Wed Aug 01, 2007 12:22 am

We've had a few thunder storms recently but the power never went out. And the cleaning lady didn't unplug it the last time she was here either.

Post by **Niko** » Wed Aug 01, 2007 10:45 am

Mine says Aug 1st also, damn....

chas · Post by **chas** » Wed Aug 01, 2007 1:54 pm

Well, if our timers handle the Aug 31-Sept 1 roll-over OK, then it's on to the theory that the timer only handles months with 31 days correctly.

Post by **Niko** » Wed Aug 01, 2007 2:18 pm

I forgot to check the year on mine.
Who knows with these things!
...I'll run through the entire program this evening and make sure nothing changed besides the new month. Those lightning storms and vacuum cleaners might have something to do with yours being off by a couple of months.

Post by **admin** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 11:35 pm

Find any problems?

Post by **Niko** » Fri Aug 03, 2007 1:48 am

No.
Damn it... :? ...I was hoping to find a problem.

Can you imagine if these timers were made pre-Y2k? I'm certain they wouldn't correctly roll over to the next millennium .

chas · Post by **chas** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 11:05 pm

I was out of town for 3 days and unplugged the VII. When I plugged it back it the timer was spot on!

Post by **Niko** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 12:51 am

Get outta' here...No way!!
...oh wait, you were out of here :D out of town.
OK, so that rules out the battery backup theory.
Now I'm banking on electrical surges, remember your vacuum cleaner and lightning situations?

chas · Post by **chas** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 1:27 am

I missed my opportunity for power glitches. My son said there were several while I was gone. Of course the VII was unplugged during that time so no luck with that test.

chas · Post by **chas** » Sat Sep 29, 2007 10:10 pm

I've had power glitches and have been out of town a couple of times in the last two months with S1 power off and the timer has been working fine. However, tomorrow we have the first 30 day month roll-over since the last time I noticed a timer screw up, so Monday may tell the tale.

BTW: I noticed about 10 days ago that the unit has turned off again with the temp lights still one. So that's three occurrences for me.

Post by **Niko** » Sun Sep 30, 2007 1:41 am

It's only been that one occurance for me so far.
Monday is not the day, Chas.
Remember? - It's always on a Tuesday for some strange reason :?

Post by **bbqnut** » Sun Sep 30, 2007 1:43 am

Ahhhhh....Italian electronics....so romantic....so unreliable.

A friend of mine just bought an Elektra espresso machine (a fixer upper). He got everything going, only to do one last tweak.

He fried a very simple control panel. New cost? $500 - IF you can find them. He is trying to get it repaired, but that will still probably run about $250, because of the odd Gicar part that burned up on said board.

I wish the Japanese would make an espresso machine.

chas · Post by **chas** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 10:23 am

My timer made the 9/30-10/1 transition just fine. Scratch another theory.

My timer gains about 1 minute per week. I think with the %error spec on the cheap 32KHz crystals they use, I must have one of the +10% ones!

Post by **Niko** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 11:15 am

You're not alone, mine makes the same time as yours.
I had to subtract 5 minutes the other night because the machine was shutting down early.
Imagine that, pulling a shot at 11pm and the machine cutting off in the middle of a shot!
We can't have that....

chas · Post by **chas** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 4:07 pm

Nothing like a ristretto nightcap, eh?

Post by **Niko** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 4:24 pm

I need to correct you on that, Sir.
I only pull "Double Ristrettos" at night :D , need to stay awake for those middle-of-the-night eBay forays.

chas · Post by **chas** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 9:39 pm

That goes without saying. None of us do singles, do we?