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Burnt FGS 223


Adrian Mare

Question

Hello,

 

I have 2 FGS-223 which in a couple of days got to the state in the images. Could you please advice on what could have gone wrong with them?

- Problem seems to have been between Q1 and N.

- The screw connections are clean, meaning the wires were not loose.

- Lights connected were @100 W power.

- The house has new wiring.

- Workers on site, cut off power every evening and turned it on every morning.

 

Thank you.

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So here is an older topic, I remembered this one. Also a "catastrophic failure" and probably an electrical problem (and a one-time event). But the devices are Wall Plugs.

 

 

 

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  • Inquirer
  • 1st room:

    10 x the following image - controlling a 9W spotlight

    Please login or register to see this image.

    1 x E27 LED Bulb

     1051521.jpg

     

    2nd room:

    5 x the following - controlling 3W led spotlight

    spot_1.jpg?1581419455281

    4 x the following with E27 Led Bulb

    1051521.jpg?1581419608248

    14 hours ago, Flash said:

    Hi @Adrian Mare

     

    Wich kind of 100W load. Resitive or Incandescent ?

    Then a inductive load will give this kind og trouble.

     

     

    I have posted the loads for each of the 2.

    The thing is that I have more of the same switches and of the same loads in other rooms (with even more spots) and they are working correctly and were used in exactly same conditions.

     

    Thank you.

     

     

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    16 hours ago, Adrian Mare said:

    Could you please advice on what could have gone wrong with them?

    This is very much an opinion, it is hard to tell based on photo''s alone. Here is one possible scenario. Based on the sooth marks and your description of what happened I would say they suffered damage from over-voltage, it looks to me,  parts in the power supply failed. At least, that is how the marks appear to me, it looks like the sooth was deposited on the relay, this means it was not the load that caused damage to the relays. But it is not 100% clear. This might happen if your house has "3 phase 400 V plus neutral" and either it was connected between 2 phases, (so giving full 400 V) or the "neutral wire" was in fact "floating" (and another load caused current to pass between another phase and N). Your electrician should understand what I am saying.

     

    I can imagine, this will lead to discussion about who is going to pay for the damage... So if you want proper advice, I would contact [email protected] to get expert advice and not from me...

     

    I've been on this forum since 2013, I can tell this does not happen a lot, if you count instances of all types (so Wall Plugs and Dimmers) maybe... 5 reported cases (in this forum, I don't know if any were reported via tech support or handled by resellers).

     

    29 minutes ago, Adrian Mare said:

    10 x the following image - controlling a 9W spotlight

    AFAIK some led drivers can cause high inrush currents but this usually leads to the contacts "sticking", so the light will stay on and the relay won't click. It does not cause that kind of catastrophic damage.

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    so, in this situation, given that they were correctly installed with leds of less than 100w, should the seller replace these 2 switches on warranty ?

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    Depends on the laws in your country, probably, it is not an easy question, who would have to pay for that damage. It can lead to some discussion!

     

    In Belgium you would argue that you did nothing wrong, that the device had a so called "hidden defect" which means some manufacturing fault that not can be "seen" (like a cracked piece of plastic).

    You would also argue, that you are a "non qualified aka dumb user" but did the right thing: ask a qualified electrician to install them.

     

    But... Unfortunately, the manual says this type of relay is for resistive loads, not LED lamps.

     

    This surprises quite a few users, but it is in the manual and has been discussed before. Do not shoot the messenger, I know in 2020 we rarely have "resistive loads" but it is in the manual:

     

    Please login or register to see this link.

     

    So... I am not a lawyer... I would say you can ask warranty after investigation they might argue you "over-volted them" and/or used an unsupported load.

     

    It is not a clear cut case, if you say you are a "total noob" (for the sake of argurent, I am assuming you know at least the basics but let us pretend you are a noob) then you might say it is all your electrician's fault. He might have an insurance for that (but usually not for small amounts of money)

     

    Also, in Belgium, this might be part of the insurance policy of your house. You can argue an "unknown electrical event" caused damage to some equipment.

     

    Lots of different ways to look at this question... You can ask to get a repacement and maybe they'll do that because they want you to be a happy customer, that posts nice things on social media these days. I don't say you should blackmail them with that argument though...

     

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    the funny part is that i told the seller over the phone last year when i bought them that i'm building a new house and i will have leds installed in all house and they said is working fine with this switches , now, of course the seller`s tehnical department won't admit that he said that after paying thousands of euros for all the products i bought. It should have been common sense for them to recommend me aotec instead when they knew i'm installing leds but they had no idea either that only fibaro has this kind of problems with inductive loads. 3 aeotec switches that were also installed are still working perfectly .

    How i am supposed to know as a simple buyer this kind of technical data and that fibaro is useless for the most common kind of lights that are standard now? They could have written clear that their relays don't support led lights but of course they rather use technical information so the average joe won't get it to end up buying their products.

    Is ridiculous these kind of relays don't have any kind of protection on this normal usage scenarios , the last time i encountered this kind of problems with electrical devices was in the `90s when electrical devices had bad protections and randomly got broken when electricity was coming after a failure . Fibaro clearly has a low build quality. It calls itself smart but it can't handle the most common type of leds in 2020, doesn't seem too smart for me.

    1 thing is clear, i;m going to get rid of the other 4 double switches from fibaro and replace them with aeotec dual switch before my new house burns down . I am the customer, op is the seller and i find it funny he posted this problem on a public forum rather than just get in contact with fibaro directly. Here is aeotec answer

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    Edited by adrianu
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    I understand. As I predicted, this quickly leads to some discussion. I have a few of the older relays (15 or so) since 2013 with no issues and nothing burned, but tht is anecdotal and I do use an "inrush current limiter" on some of the nasty LED loads... Not to protect from issues like the one described here, but to avoid sticking (welding) of the contacts. This happens on some no-brand stuff...

     

    We still do not know what made your modules to fail. 

     

    Did you contact Fibaro for expert advice, as I recomended here?

     

    On 2/11/2020 at 12:48 PM, petergebruers said:

    I can imagine, this will lead to discussion about who is going to pay for the damage... So if you want proper advice, I would contact [email protected] to get expert advice and not from me...

     

    It is worth trying, imho!

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    7 minutes ago, petergebruers said:

    I understand. As I predicted, this quickly leads to some discussion. I have a few of the older relays (15 or so) since 2013 with no issues and nothing burned, but tht is anecdotal and I do use an "inrush current limiter" on some of the nasty LED loads... Not to protect from issues like the one described here, but to avoid sticking (welding) of the contacts. This happens on some no-brand stuff...

     

    We still do not know what made your modules to fail. 

     

    Did you contact Fibaro for expert advice, as I recomended here?

     

     

    It is worth trying, imho!

    well, if they refuse to replace them i'll just fill a complaint to our's country buyer protection and let them decide, let's see how they explain that 2 other double switch installed at the same time with the faulty ones still working with even higher amount of spots leds and also another 2 double switches that i installed as a replacment in the same rooms where the faulty ones were, are still working perfectly fine after 3 weeks.

    I see it as a hidden defect too since neither before or my seller have big written in their website that their relays don't work with the most common type of lights and just hide this data under technical warnings at the bottom of their manual.

    I have used the contact form from fibaro website but they haven't answered me yet for almost 24 hours.

    Thank you.

    Edited by adrianu
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    44 minutes ago, adrianu said:

    Is ridiculous these kind of relays don't have any kind of protection on this normal usage scenarios

    This statement kept nagging at me... The FGS-223 has thermal (EDIT: I am not 100% sure about overheat protection on this relay, it is not in the manual, I might confuse with FGD-222 aka Dimmer 2, that one certainly has "overheat" alarm) and overload protection. You seem to assume it failed because the load damaged it. As I have said before, based on the pictures, it does not look like the relays caused the damage... That is why speculated "over voltage" as the cause. So nothing to do with your load. But please understand, this is a "motivated opinion", I cannot say this with certainty.

     

    13 minutes ago, adrianu said:

    well, if they refuse to replace them i'll just fill a complaint to our's country buyer protection and let them decide, let's see how they explain that 2 other double switch installed at the same time with the faulty ones still working with even higher amount of spots leds and also another 2 double switches that i installed as a replacment in the same rooms where the faulty ones were, are still working perfectly fine after 3 weeks.

    If anything else fails that is worth trying. Like you say, it is probably not caused by the load, see my remark above...

     

    13 minutes ago, adrianu said:

    I have used the contact form from fibaro website but they haven't answered me yet for almost 24 hours.

    If you did not get any response, try [email protected] - you should receive a confirmation email with a "case number".

     

    I hope this ends well for everyone...

    Edited by petergebruers
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    26 minutes ago, petergebruers said:

    This statement kept nagging at me... The FGS-223 has thermal and overload protection. You seem to assume it failed because the load damaged it. As I have said before, based on the pictures, it does not look like the relays caused the damage... That is why speculated "over voltage" as the cause. So nothing to do with your load.

     

    the seller denies my warranty saying my spot leds caused this over voltage because they are inductive even tho my leds had less than 100w by their specifications all together, that's why i keep saying is because of their overload protection. 

    But in the same  way the other double switches from fibaro and aeotec were fine under same conditions , so the way i see it is either a low build quality and is just a matter of time until my other fibaro double switches get melted down or those 2 were defective products.

    You said yourself that worst case should have been my lights being stuck at ON position but melding down seems too far fetched .

    Let's hope i can find at least some middle ground with the seller

    Edited by adrianu
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    26 minutes ago, adrianu said:

    You said yourself that worst case should have been my lights being stuck at ON position but melding down seems too far fetched .

    The "sticking" of the contacts has been reported quite a few times, while reports of"melting" on this forum are rare. I would not say melting is impossible, the contacts of a relay degrade over time and then their contact resistance increases. So they become hotter. Based on those photo' it is hard to tell what happened first, there are other explanations possible. I friend of mine had lightning strike in his neighborhood, that is the ultimate over-voltage event. The damage it caused was really weird. Most things survived, while one of his light bulbs shattered to pieces and one of his light switches popped out its box... I've seen TVs with damaged traces on the PCB that worked fine after replacing those traces and sometimes you see no obvious visual damage but every active component is damaged. I am telling you this because I would not want to jump to conclusions... What you see is the result of a cascade of events and I find it very difficult to find out what exactly happened.

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    Just now, petergebruers said:

    The "sticking" of the contacts has been reported quite a few times, while reports of"melting" on this forum are rare. I would not say melting is impossible, the contacts of a relay degrade over time and then their contact resistance increases. So they become hotter. Based on those photo' it is hard to tell what happened first, there are other explanations possible. I friend of mine had lightning strike in his neighborhood, that is the ultimate over-voltage event. The damage it caused was really weird. Most things survived, while one of his light bulbs shattered to pieces and one of his light switches popped out its box... I've seen TVs with damaged traces on the PCB that worked fine after replacing those traces and sometimes you see no obvious visual damage but every active component is damaged. I am telling you this because I would not want to jump to conclusions... What you see is the result of a cascade of events and I find it very difficult to find out what exactly happened.

    well, there wasn't any lighting for sure and the relays were installed for 2-3 days before this happened while the other 4 double that i have now in my house has been working fine for almost 1 month, my electrician did turned off the electricity at night and turn it back on in the morning for few days but this is the same as normal power failures from electricity company 

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    3 hours ago, petergebruers said:

    The "sticking" of the contacts has been reported quite a few times, while reports of"melting" on this forum are rare. I would not say melting is impossible, the contacts of a relay degrade over time and then their contact resistance increases. So they become hotter. Based on those photo' it is hard to tell what happened first, there are other explanations possible. I friend of mine had lightning strike in his neighborhood, that is the ultimate over-voltage event. The damage it caused was really weird. Most things survived, while one of his light bulbs shattered to pieces and one of his light switches popped out its box... I've seen TVs with damaged traces on the PCB that worked fine after replacing those traces and sometimes you see no obvious visual damage but every active component is damaged. I am telling you this because I would not want to jump to conclusions... What you see is the result of a cascade of events and I find it very difficult to find out what exactly happened.

    sorry to bother you again but i have a question you may be able to answer. Do all led lights need 12v/24v adaptor ? The seller keeps naggin me that is because some of those leds have an external adapter and is the adapter`s fault but from my knowledge even those leds without an external adapter still have a built-in internal adapter to convert that 240v to 12v/24v ...is this right?

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    why is some cases the fibaro modules works fine with led lights and in some other cases not? 

    I need to avoid such kind of issue?? at  the end can somone tell me if i can use the fibaro module with led lights or not?

    Your advice is really aprreciated 

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    Initial load of DC adaptors for LEDS or even of 230AC LED bulbs can exceed the declarations from theirs respective specs. So even a 15W LED bulb could drain a 150W for a sec initially. Please consider this when using a switch from Fibaro or any other manufacter.

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    i didn't get your idea ?please explain me more .. 

    so led light are inductive lights right?? with the adpater of 12-24 VDC right?? and in this case its written on the fibaro manual that io shouldn't use those with inductive load right?

    Thanks

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    2 hours ago, DomoAutomation said:

     

    i didn't get your idea ?please explain me more .. 

    so led light are inductive lights right?? with the adpater of 12-24 VDC right?? and in this case its written on the fibaro manual that io shouldn't use those with inductive load right?

    Thanks

    yes, it is written small at the end of the manual but it doesn't specifically say on the manual and neither on their website that the most common type of lights...leds from which most of them come with an external adapter are NOT working, it refers at them in technical form  as inductive loads which no normal person could possible know what that means and you might end up in my situation with 2 melted devices and seller refusing the warranty saying is my fault even tho i told him what kind of lights i want to install being a new house and he said it works fine. This looks to me like a big hidden defect. They are not hiding under tehnical terms that the relay doesn't work with your old grandpa conventional light but with probably the most common and standard type of lights.

    My advice is STAY AWAY FROM FIBARO. I got confirmation from both aeotec and qubino that their switches are working fine with inductive load too which  clearly forms an image about the quality of fibaro overall . I'll be moving all my currently 4 double switches fibaro relays on something lighther and replace them with aeotec dual switch so i won't have to worry that my new house will burn down 1 day.

    I have filled a complain to buyer protection since the seller refuses the warranty 

    Basically the main post is the seller searching for reasons and after days of private conversation he found deep in fibaro manual that i shouldn't have used inductive lights, so if the seller that works in the domain and has technical knowledge didin't know about this, how was i supposed to know as an average joe? is ridiculous 

    Edited by adrianu
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    All this has been discussed before, but I understand it is sometimes difficult to find such posts on a fprum. They should be FAQs...

     

    Inrush current, why your contacts may stick (weld), why the true cause is (low cost) LED driver and why it is difficult (if not "impossible") to measure inrush current.

     

     

    Why the physical size of a relay matters, why a "wall plug" is more robust than a double relay and why neither of them might be enough to turn on a motor

     

    Qubino.. Aeotec... Fibaro... Does not matter, it is the size of the relay used internally, the bulk of the contact, the gap size and the "spring force" (to pull contacts apart).

     

    I even talk about "solid state" relays and their downsides.

     

    The FGD-212 uses MOSFETs to drive difficult loads but this comes with an interesting "caveat"... It detects overcurrent and will not drive itself to death when you attach a "difficult" load, it will simply try briefly and send a message to your HC2 ('"over current")

     

    I would like to repeat... No expert analysis was done on the dead modules and without that we can only speculate about the cause. This post may lead you to think those "blown" modules are the result of a LED driver, but I am not saying that. I only post this level of detail because people keep going about "led drivers".

     

    BTW in the context of this relay an "inductive load" is something with a large, iron core, like a motor or a (old) transformer. Those LED drivers do contain specoal magnetics but that is not the kind of "inductive load" we are talking about. They do not cause overvoltage but their capacitor + bridge rectifier can cause high inrush current.

     

    No, not all LED drivers are created equal and some LED lamps do not contain "magnetics" at all... I have a 30 W "driverless" COB for example.

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    Here is an example of "Dimmer 2" reporting over-current on a load that might seem "in spec" but actually inrush current exceeds capabilities of the device.

     

    In this case... You know you have a difficult load. The solution is not to buy another dimmer, but to add in inrush current limiter or in this particular case, as the OP himself mentions, buy a 12 or 24 V power supply and use an RGBW module

     

    Example of such a limiter is the "ESB1" available eg from Reichelt

     

    Please login or register to see this link.

     

    This is not a buying advice, I don't use it myself, but a few users posted about this product and it made them happy...

     

    It think those posts will keep you busy reading for a while...

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