Meaco DD8L junior - remote switching

[mlines]

My Meaco is away on the boat so I cannot investigate the answer to this myself......so can anyone tell me if the DD8L junior will carry on after loss of power (and power restored of course).

It has one of those touch membrane switches for off/on rather than a physical switch so it is digitally controlled. If the power goes off whilst the unit is "on" on the switch but is not running as the humidistat has determined it is dry enough, will it work normally once the power is back on?

The reason I ask is that I have picked up a TP-Link WiFi mains plug with power monitor in the Black Friday sale. I have it happily remotely switching off/on with it using a 4G MiFi as its WiFi source. As it is a power monitoring plug it is reporting the current drawn back over the link as well, so I can see if the device attached is running flat out or in the case of the Meaco is not running as the humidistat is off. I could then command the plug off for a few hours remotely.

I realise the Meaco should go through its cool down cycle to preserve the dessicant so the power monitor will left me see that it is idle before powering off, just want to know it will come back on again when I power it back up?

Martin

 

[yotter]

Martin,
You are in luck, since mine is at home at the moment. I have just power it up, then removed and reinstated power at the 13A socket and it went back to the same cycle, so the answer is yes it can be remotely operated. Although as you state, not sure how the desiccant will be effected by the rapid shut down.
Best regards
Angus

 

[neale]

Failing to allow a desiccant dehumidifier to cool down properly will eventually kill it. I have two here that sound like they are working, ie they power up and blow air etc, but they no longer collect any moisture. Both of these were run on a time switch. They can be repaired, but it is about 60% of the cost of a new one. I bet it is actually quite a simple fix if you know what you are doing. I might have to strip one down and take a look.

 

[yotter]

Perhaps you need to find a way to switch the membrane on/off switch remotely. Would require some surgery I suspect, but not impossible. I use a Quark GSM switch and that would do it, but I do not intend to switch the Maeco remotely.
Angus

 

[mlines]

Angus,

Many thanks for that.

Neale - I know from the instructions that you have to let it go through a drying cycle on power down to preserve the dessicant which is why it doesn't power off immediately when you manually press off. However as the WiFi plug remotely reports current draw I can see when it is fully "quiet" after the humidistat has stopped it dehumidifying.

For example I can already see it was off this afternoon just from the humidity report my boat has sent me. You can see where the cold dry weather came across the Thames Valley this afternoon and I could have sent a remote power down command at this time knowing it was not running anyway

 

[neale]

Angus,

Many thanks for that.

Neale - I know from the instructions that you have to let it go through a drying cycle on power down to preserve the dessicant which is why it doesn't power off immediately when you manually press off. However as the WiFi plug remotely reports current draw I can see when it is fully "quiet" after the humidistat has stopped it dehumidifying.

For example I can already see it was off this afternoon just from the humidity report my boat has sent me. You can see where the cold dry weather came across the Thames Valley this afternoon and I could have sent a remote power down command at this time knowing it was not running anyway

Good plan. That would probably be ok. I've often wondered if the randomness of these things breaking when used on time switches is down to where in the cycle the thing is at the time of power off.

 

[yotter]

Martin,
That does make good sense that you can establish that the Maeco has gone to standby before powering down. I am very impressed with your graphs, in fact quite jealous, prey do tell how does it all work,
.
Angus

 

[mlines]

Angus,

Last year I built a little Arduino based circuit (documented here : https://www.sportsboat.org.uk/index.php/our-boat/news/entry/boat-monitor-full-write-up ). This reports back every 10 minutes via GSM to my webserver and my website can then use "Google Graphs" to turn this into nice looking data. A little winter project that actually worked

 

[cpedw]

Martin,
You are in luck, since mine is at home at the moment. I have just power it up, then removed and reinstated power at the 13A socket and it went back to the same cycle, so the answer is yes it can be remotely operated. Although as you state, not sure how the desiccant will be effected by the rapid shut down.
Best regards
Angus

That's not been my observation. Did you leave it disconnected from power for several minutes? I find it restarts in its "flat-out" mode (I think they call it Laundry) after the power has been removed for an hour or so.
Could be there have been subtle changes to the model.

Derek

 

[mlines]

Derek,

That correlates with what I have seen in the last couple of days, the dehumidifier seems to be running flat out (ie. laundry) after a power switch

 

[yotter]

Derek,

That correlates with what I have seen in the last couple of days, the dehumidifier seems to be running flat out (ie. laundry) after a power switch

Martin, Derek,
Apologies, I only removed the power for a very short time and assumed it restarted in the same mode as shut down from.
Angus

 

[mlines]

Angus

No problem, all part of the learning!

I switched the power last week and as we have now found it went into "full on" mode, continuously running. This can be seen by the black arrow on the graph where the humidity drops as it goes into full on mode. The red arrow shows where I reset it yesterday back to a more conservative mode and the humidity rises back to the mid 40's which is better.

 

[Steve_N]

That certainly isn't the published behaviour of the DD8L Junior, so either the spec. has changed (but not the documentation) or some are faulty. To quote the Maeco website:
If the power fails, when it comes back on the DD8L Junior will just start again in the mode you left it in.

My own which is about 6 months old performs as Maeco describe even if it's been switched off for a few days whilst I'm working onboard in the yard.

 

[mlines]

Mine is getting near 2 years old and defaults to full on drying mode

 

[RupertW]

Mine is getting near 2 years old and defaults to full on drying mode

That is poor and not my experience which I've tested a few times and have seen marina power supplies go up and down without it changing mode from my last setting. It's clearly faulty and if the supplier won't do anything then I personally would replace it with a new one.

 

[mlines]

I dont think its faulty. It looks like how the early ones are programmed to work. Its not too much of a problem as I can see remotely what its doing and my son works in the marina so he can push the buttons if necessary

 

[RupertW]

I dont think its faulty. It looks like how the early ones are programmed to work. Its not too much of a problem as I can see remotely what its doing and my son works in the marina so he can push the buttons if necessary

Fair enough - the power-down memory was the most important part for me of choosing that one as we can go up to 6 months without visiting the boat over Winter so needed to be sure we would neither rack up huge bills or come back to a mouldy boat.