BW Touch Screen turning on Groups and a C-gate foul of errors

In a more than 15 years old project I was called to solve some problems they had. Usually the touch screen, a Mark 2 BW showed a message like "Lost of Communication" or then a button on NEO switches was press started to blink without sending the command. Also when I tried to connect on Toolkit some units were not responding, not always the same ones.
I though that a unit with power supply was creating noise, so I tried to find it by unplugging units or panels (3 level home with 90 units and via bridge on more level with 50units) without any success. As soon as I installed 2 power supplies, 5500PS, the problems stopped for couple of months.
Now, problems returned. Some times I cant even connect. some times the system works for days.
I run diagnostics and had several errors mainly on clock sync.

Then I left my PC connected to toolkit in order to check Application Log. It seems that the touch screen is turning on group addresses that are not used in the Piced project. Also it turns off group addresses that do not exist.
I turned off clock from the touch screen however it keeps sending time to the network. I will unplug it on Monday in order to find out if I just have a faulty touch screen.
I check also C-gate log. I get all of kind of errors:
- Unit unavailable: Not responding
- Restarting stuck transmitter
- Orphaned command reply for unit ...
- Network sync exceeded unit error threshold of 3

I will disconnect the touch screen first thing on Monday, however I was wondering if something more serious is happening here... Any ideas?

 

Any cbus unit can cause these sort of symptoms. I have a Fan Controller and Thermostat in my junk box that as soon as I connect to the bus gives these sorts of symptoms. Basically it's just corrupting the data on the bus. Even a poor/dirty connection somewhere could be the culprit. The fact that the network fails to scan makes things a lot easier to find. Just start disconnecting segments until it works, then add them back one at a time. Tedious, but success is guaranteed.

 

unfortunately I don't have direct access to the site at this point.
having so many errors in clock sync, I decided to disable clock from the touch screen since it was responsible for sending time.
Now, although the TC still sending time (according to application log) although clock is not enabled, the C gate reports "C-Bus Clock failure. Enabling gateway clock and waiting one second"
Any ideas?

 

I think you may be confusing the Cbus clock with the real time clock. The cbus clock (enabled via the global tab in Toolkit) provides a continuous pulse train to the cbus network so transmitting units can synchronize their access. Generally up to 3 units should have their cbus clock enabled and they will negotiate between them which one is active. This gives redundancy in case one unit fails or is removed. This clock has nothing to do with the real time clock or the time keeping application. The Touch screen can provide both a cbus clock and time keeping clock. So turning off the Touch Screen cbus clock will not affect the real time clock which is why you still see time keeping messages coming from it.

If you are seeing lots of clock sync errors this means either a clock generator is faulty, or more likely there is a fault on the bus that is corrupting the clock. This could be the touch screen or any other device as I indicated above. Remote diagnosis of this will be challenging.

 

You were soooo right....
After months I realized that a Neo switch was corrupting the network. My fault. I should run over and over again diagnostics by disconnecting parts of the network in order to find it sooner. I should read more carefully your posts... Thanks Ashley