mastervolt generator control panel

Sea Devil

Sea Devil

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Boulogne sur mer & Marbella Spain, Guadeloupe
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I have a Whisper 3.5 / 3500 3000/3600 RPM * 50900500 generator march 2004. Mastervolt remote control generator combined with Mastervolt battery charger which works well.

The digital diesel remote control panel seems to have given up the ghost! The display has vanished and it does not react to button pressing at all. The genny has been regulaly serviced and used and its own independant 12v battery is fully charged. the connections to the back of the control panel appear to be OK.

Before Iash out nearly 500€uro on a new control panel is there anything else I should check? I cannot tell if the charge from the 12v indepenant battery is getting back to the panel - not sure where to check this? not sure how to confirm the panel is in fact US

Would be grateful for advice - 500 is a lot of dosh if I am wrong!

thanks

Michael
 
The blister panel on my Mastervolt whisper started to break up so I bought a replacement for a generic Westerbeke, so it said Westerbeke, but was much cheaper. Try Advance Yacht Systems of Romsey. Likely the same story for the complete panel.

However, the electrics on these engines are not overly complex - the load indicator device is the most complex part, so it might be possible to make a new controller panel, and possibly recover the load indicator from the old one. I will see if I have the 12v control diagram.

These generators are generic of Paguro 3.8 / 4.5. I think they are 3.8 KVA at 50 hz and 4.5 KVA at 60 hz. Fischer Price also sold the same unit with its badge on.

Mastervolt 12v wiring diagram here ...
https://www.dropbox.com/s/u7m2hs17q3qb9vm/Mastervolt wiring diagram.pdf?dl=0

Fischer Panda manual here ...
https://www.dropbox.com/s/oevo965v8u9vcyl/Fischer Panda 4200 FCB Operation Manual.pdf?dl=0

Paguro parts manual here ...
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9bcb5hmyn6i8wsb/Paguro 4000 parts.pdf?dl=0
 
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They are incredibly sensitive to moisture - one drip, yes one - on the front of the unit will destroy it. We're on our third one now. I have recoverd functionality on the most recent one however by taking it apart and scrubbing by hand (using a tiny wire brush appropriated from the Dremel) with Isopropyl alcohol, aka surgical spirit, all over the PCB. I then dried it carefully with a hair-drier before trying it back in circuit.

1. The board uses high impedances throughout - stupid in a marine environment and quite unnecessary.
2. It is not cleaned properly after manufacture and so there are flux residues all over the solder joints of the leaded components, a bit less so on the SMT ones.
3. And then it's not coated with, for instance, conformal coating.

Frankly it's a disgrace and a rotten design rottenly executed.
 
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jdc said:
They are incredibly sensitive to moisture - one drip, yes one - on the front of the unit will destroy it. We're on our third one now.
Frankly it's a disgrace and a rotten design rottenly executed.
Click to expand...

That is exactly what happened! My fingers were wet when I touched the front of the panel some lights flashed and it went dead but an expert in a marine shop told me it had nothing to do with damp as they were designed for the marine enviroment!!!!

Michael
 
Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I've an update (and it must merit an 'honourably mentioned' in the 'most disgraceful bodge of the week' award).

I got sick of my controller complaining about communications failure and occassionally stopping the generator at random, despite my having previously cleaned the PCB and apparently fixing its issues with moisture. I guessed that the cause must be occassional resets or other clocking issues and looked at the PIC data sheets. The crystal oscillator circuit has internal feedback resistors around its unbuffered gate, with value around 2MOhms. This means that the slightest leakage to ground at the input pin will probably cause the oscillator to stop, and certainly run unreliably.

I then measured the voltage on it while running and it was 0.8V at the input but 2.5 at the output whereas it should be the same at both ends of the crystal, so I soldered a resistor across the crystal to reduce the impedance. First I tried 470k which imprved matters but didn't eliminate the problems, so then I soldered a 47k across that: pic here:

gen_controller.JPG


(Now you see why it's a disgraceful bodge! I tell myself that I really should tidy it up sometime in the winter, but know that I won't...)

The value of 47k was not entirely a random choice: it reduces the real impedance of the crystal at resonance from 4.8k to 3.4k, a 30% reduction. The minimum value of the Gm of the oscillator is 0.5mA/V at 3V supply and 85C, but more like 1.5mA/V normally. That gives a minimum loop gain of 1.7 which was as low as I dared go, and a typical loop gain of 5 which is what Arizona Microchip recommend as minimum typical gain.

It now works reliably and hopefully it'll continue to do so. So before spending money on a new one you can try cleaning the board with isopropyl alcohol as well as possible, and then soldering a resistor of somewhere around 47k - 120k across the crystal. It's worth a try anyway!

PS: To fiddle with it on the bench or at home, the large electrolytic capacitor at the front of the photo carries the input 12V supply. So to run it on the bench solder wires across this cap (the pins are accessible underneath) and you can apply 12V and it'll power up safely.
 
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jdc, I realize this was several years ago but really awesome post you had put up about these control panels and makes a lot of sense, I was wondering if you had photos yet from this (I can't see the photo in your post, perhaps timed out or original location is gone). If you still have these accompanying photos I'd be really grateful. Thank you very much for the time you spent in figuring that out and sharing.
 
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