On 08/27/05 07:12 ET, simoneales said...
Power amps...we recieved 3 of the power amps that
had the problem of blowing fuses. The amps weren't
blowing fuses with audio. They would blow fuses
when the power switch on the front was turned
on, even without any audio zones on the pad 8
/ pad 8A being turned on. We were told (by the
Crestron Distributor at the time) that it was
a design flaw and that the amps were drawing too
much current at startup. What would happen is,
when power failed or was turned off, when power
returned the fuse would blow on startup. The curcuits
were redesigned and subsequently amps sold since
do not have this problem. Crestron were aware
of the problem at the time of shipping.
This must be a 220v issue as I know of no 120v issues.
Yes, every job with CNXAMPs gets 2 20A breakers to mitegate the possibility of the breaker tripping. While the amps are OEMed it would be Crestron's problem if true. The same amps are found in Europe so something seems off here.
Audio bleeding on Pad 8......
Yes it was the original pad 8 not the pad 8A.
My gripe is that the product was released that
way and that i had to fix the issue myself on
our time and at our expense. I had only just recieved
the unit and again crestron were already aware
of the problem at that time of shipping.
This is an old issue and someone was fired because of it. The relay ( the reason for the led signal definition ) was installed but not connected on the circuit board. While I feel your pain when in bloody hell would you expect them to do but offer you a field solution? The PADA came out a year later with new circuit boards and the relay in the circuit.
Firmware upgrade......
In this case we had an established program that
worked fine. We had to make additions to the system
and (AS SPECIFIED ON A SHEET SUPPLIED WITH EVERY
SINGE CRESTRON PRODUCT) our programmer installed
the latest firmware. After that much of the system
behaved in an eratic but intermittent manner.
Yes we reverted to the original firmware but not
before wasting time and money trying to source
the problem as it was not immediately obvious
what the problem was and and didn't show itself
straight away.
Such is life in the lovely world world of automation. Does not mean your original problem was not the result of bad programming, especially Simpl+ that the new firmware brought out. First time this happened to me was in 1998 on a job with chainned touch panels. Uploaded new firmware and all touch panels ceased working. 5 days and 60 hours later tech support infromed me that the new firmware did not support chaining and I had to revert back to the previous version. Lesson learned: If you have a working system and it begins to evidence problems immediately go back to the previously working firmware. It's called installation experience.
While i'm at it, crestron should update thier
IR learner. A marantz 5200/5400 remote can learn
codes that it can't.
Just curious. What files have you been unable to load? I cannot say as I have had any issues here but I do confess that I learn fewer and fewer IR files as we do more and more serial.
I have to say that the service we get from the
disributor here is excellent and most of these
problems occured when it was being distributed
by another company, however i cannot blame the
previous distributor as they did not build the
faulty products and they did not send me the lead
manufacturing diagrams to fix the problem myself.
Good service would have been to not send out product
known to have issues in the first place or at
the very least to have supplied the fix themselves.
I think my gripes are pretty resonable.
Reasonalbe? I guess you also think Olivia Newton John can sing. Can you name a company that makes as many products as Crestron? Apart from the eastern electronics giants who rarely produce cutting edge products and whose failures are more numberous ( only you have chosen to ignore or overlook them ) you adduce 2 hardware faults, of which only one seems legit ( and why are you relying on your distributor when Crestron, even from Oz, is but a tech support call away ). You mix togther hearsay, old news and some legitemate complaints which you have decided to exagerate and reach the conclustion that Crestron is a bad company and guilty of making worse products. Therefore, if I have one bad experience with an Austrialian ( such as what happened in Munich in'72 when a few drunken idiots from Oz hijacked a few trolly cars ) then I can extend that experience to all of you blokes from down under?
Does Crestron screw up? Yes. Do I like it when they do? No I do not. Does it cost me money? Yes. Am I aware that this can happen when dealing with cutting edge products, even when the cutting edge product is power supply or amplifier? Yes. Might this be part of the reason for the magins in the Crestron skew? If you really knew your stuff you might include the entire X-gen processor skew--which remains with us in the form of the CNX-RMC. No company in my experience makes fewer errors nor tries as hard to fix their errors. As an example, not long ago we did a sports bar with 33 32" LG LCDs. LG knew they had issues with the chips in that unit but sold them to us, and then took their sweet time admitting it and took even longer to warantee the repair. How many hours do you think were spent troubleshooting why some TVs seemed to turn on but did not display an image. How many hours do you think it took to drop 32 displays from their ceiling mounts, open them up, replace faulty chips, remount them and reconnect and retest all wiring; and that is not including my R&D into the problem, extra coding to try to eliminate the problem, and swapping out emitters, IR splitters, an new wiring. This is a normal day in the automation/installation business. LG only had to drop new chips into its displays while they were in the warehouse. How about the infamous Sharp/Pioneer plasma that once turned off could not be turned back on via serial? Integra's 5 disc CD changers that failed and failed and failed ( Tom tells us because of a faulty design of the cable between laser and board ) or the Sony receivers whose component video never worked.
Alan