12 Channel DIN Relay Voltage Leak

Hi Guys,<br>
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I'm hoping the wealth of talent and intelligence I've seen throughout these forums may guide me in the right direction with a problem I've just discovered.<br>
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I purchased my house early last year which came fitted with C-BUS2 for all lighting and exhaust fan management. I have 4x 8 channel dimmers, 1x L5512RVFP 12ch relay module, B&amp;W screen, 6x PIR's (int. and ext.) and Neo switches everywhere. Commissioned Dec 2004. <br>
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Exhaust fan in laundry parked up a few weeks back, went to replace it and decided to check with meter first. Fan verified 100% dead, which I can live with but meter results are leaving me perplexed. With fan circuit on, 245 - 248VAC, circuit off 95 - 97VAC. I've checked this directly across the terminal screws on the relay module as well. <img src="images/smilies/confused.gif" alt="" title="Confused" smilieid="10" class="inlineimg" border="0"> <br>
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Getting these results on only 1 of the 12 channels. Install is just over 2.5 years old now and to be honest, I wouldn't have thought I'd see a hardware failure in this timeframe. The one thing I have not tried yet is to reboot the house <img src="images/smilies/rolleyes.gif" alt="" title="Roll Eyes (Sarcastic)" smilieid="7" class="inlineimg" border="0"> in the hope of discharging the circuits completely. I'm not a sparky but with my background in Industrial Mechanical design and maint. and Computing, I couldn't rule out the possibility of a left wing idea actually working.<br>
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It took me a while to find out the Warranty details on this product and as Murphy would have it, the 2 years was up 7 months ago and as the second owner of the installation, warranty does not carry forward anyway. <br>
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I'd appreciate your thoughts and opinions.<br>
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Cheers,<br>
<br>
Damo.<br>
<br><i><font size="1">
There are 10 kinds of people in the World, those that can read Binary and those that cant!</font></i>

 

It's not broken, that's how dimmers work, they are not a switch.

To fully isolate the output, you must (and should anyway) turn off the input.

Or better still, call an electrician, they know about this sort of stuff.

Cheers

Rohan

 

Ah... Rohan,

He said it's connected to a Relay, not a Dimmer... (As an exhaust fan should be...)

 

Yep, miss read that

BTW I have exhaust fans on dimmers, nothing wrong with that.

Cheers

Rohan

 

Induced voltage?

Is it possible that the reading that you are getting is not leaking through the relay but is induced voltage from other circuits in close proximity. One way to rule this out is to use an anologue voltmeter or alternatively place a load across the terminals such as your series test lamps then measure again with your digital multi-meter. If the lamps light or you still get a reading you do have a fault, but if the lamps dont light and you dont get a reading on the DMM then this indicates that your original reading was from induced voltage.

Regards,

Peter.

 

as pbelectrical points out volt meters ideally have infinite (very high) input resistance/impedance, so they do not change the aspects of the electrical circuit under test. (1st year electronics) so just because there is a potential (voltage read) on the "open" terminals does not mean there is actually any bitey power there. As mentioned load the cct and recheck the voltage. Unless you were referring to a dimmer channel, the voltages you stated are strange for a relay fault...

 

I get enough leakage across the 3 way lighting cable to get 200ish on a DVM in the batten holder, whereas an analog meter wont move at all.

Putting cheap CFL lights in however, well, they must have a capacitor in them that slowly charges, because about ever 10 mins they will let out a little flash.

Really should turn things off. Also, I guess the outputs that measured 0 volts when off had a load across them?