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High failure rate of MSD-701
jhoughton
Posts: 2
Hello All,
Wondering if anyone else out there in AMX-land has been seeing a high failure rate of the new 7" touch panels? We have had approx 30 installed and are up to 5 cracked at this point. One thing that makes it kind of hard to determine is our company did not do the physical install, we sold these as part of a package and the local installers did the work. However each site used professional A/C contractors, one site particular integrator verifed panels were not cracked at time of install but shortly after system came on line three panels become cracked. All three of thees also seem to originate from the lower left corner and our TP file doesn't have any buttons there either?? Have asked this question to the service dept and haven't received a response yet in two days.... Appreciate any help any one has for me.
Wondering if anyone else out there in AMX-land has been seeing a high failure rate of the new 7" touch panels? We have had approx 30 installed and are up to 5 cracked at this point. One thing that makes it kind of hard to determine is our company did not do the physical install, we sold these as part of a package and the local installers did the work. However each site used professional A/C contractors, one site particular integrator verifed panels were not cracked at time of install but shortly after system came on line three panels become cracked. All three of thees also seem to originate from the lower left corner and our TP file doesn't have any buttons there either?? Have asked this question to the service dept and haven't received a response yet in two days.... Appreciate any help any one has for me.
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I was talking to an old rep the other day that handled AMX resi in the northeast and he said they couldn't break away from AMX fast enough because of their mentality. That's probably why the northeast has been through 6? rep firms since I've been dealing AMX products. The current rep firm seems to cares nothing about AMX or their AMX dealers and if you think about it why should they, dealers are becoming fewer, AMX resi sales are low and no one I know is striving to become an AMX dealer. It's no longer "the" product that AV dealers wish they could sell or wish they had the skills to sell, program and install.
Commercial seems to be doing well though and everyone I've ever talked to says that's all they care about so the resi guys get left out consideration during the decision making processes but maybe that's just the way it appears to us lowly resi guys.
In fairness, think the same basic thing can be said for Resi in general. I honestly don't see it as exclusively an AMX thing. It's just the typical race to the bottom we see in many other ver tickle spaces that rely on technology. It ironic that I run into Savant dealers lamenting how Control 4 has eaten some of their market share. Bear in mind, I'm not defending the behaviors you mention. But, I do think the decline in the market overall carries a lot if the blame.
Meanwhile the commercial side seems pretty robust. That's what I've seen anyway.
I agree that this attitude in part is the reason AMX et al are effectively abandoning the resi market. Who will buy a control system and an R4 when a Harmony appears to do the same thing?
The physical body of the G5 panel is the same as the Modero X G4 - there were no changes to the design or manufacturing process. As a result, the glass design is not new. The only change between a G4 and a G5 is the processor located on a small daughter board within the housing.
As for the glass breakage, I cannot speak to that without the specifics of the installation. It is plausible that pressure from the back side of the glass could cause this. I can envision a scenario where significant excess cable was stuffed in the back box housing creating pressure once the glass front was installed. Is there conduit running to the same side of the box as the crack? The consistency of the break point location is what I find most interesting. Did you ever go to the job site to inspect these locations for yourself? It would be nice to know if the same person installed all or some of the panels - if it was only some, was it all of the ones that broke?
Because someone else installed them, we may not be able to get all of the details we would like to better understand the nature of the problem.
Is the glass on the S series the same as G4/G5? This thread is about the S 701.
I will inquire about this to the product manager for further details.
The other troubleshooting questions still apply. Do you have any more information about the installation?
That would be my first guess as well. I remember getting to a job with the old DMS-MIO keypads. All five had sticking buttons, intermittent button presses, generally flaky operation, and one had a cracked screen. I was mad at AMX for building such a poorly designed product, until I pulled one out of the wall. The installer, not wanting to have any parts left over, had installed them all with both the pre-drywall and post-drywall hardware, and somehow managed to still squeeze the thing into the wall. The unit was so squished the buttons were sticking, the circuit board was warped, and one screen had cracked. I had him reinstall them all with only the post-drywall hardware, and then they all worked fine and still do to this day. I was impressed that AMX could build a product that could withstand that type of abuse, and then work fine for years.
Paul