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5200 Power Cycle

So someone was playing with our office 5200i and has left it on my desk - completely locked up. No button pushes, no entering setup, nothing.

When this happened on a 7500 or 8400 it was a pull the battery and charger solution for a hard reboot, nothing that easy with this panel.

The manual suggests a hard power cycle, but to access the battery means removing 5 screws - 3 of these are behind a stick on label that will never go back cleanly... Try explaining that to a client over the phone!

My design suggestion would be to hide a pin-hole hard reset button somewhere on the back case...

Comments

  • DHawthorneDHawthorne Posts: 4,584
    Urg - this is bad news. Lockups like that are rare, but happen often enough that I don't want to have to make a service call every time it happens. Especially to a customer that is several hours' drive away. I haven't seen the product yet and didn't realize the battery wasn't user-removable.

    I suspect this lockup issue hasn't been on the radar simply because it is so easy to resolve in the MVP line. This will certainly have to escalate it. Because, after all, the proper way to fix it is to prevent the need to hard-reset, not provide a better way to hard-reset.
  • jjamesjjames Posts: 2,908
    I thought the center button of the external buttons was a reset button - that's what I was told.
  • Jimweir192Jimweir192 Posts: 502
    Centre button gets you to setup then to calibrate, but it appears when the panel needs a hard reboot, this button is not- effective!

    A major pain!!
  • jjamesjjames Posts: 2,908
    Jimweir192 wrote: »
    Centre button gets you to setup then to calibrate, but it appears when the panel needs a hard reboot, this button is not- effective!

    A major pain!!

    Interesting . . . I was told by a reliable source that it was a reboot button (at least that's my recollection of the conversation.) You have called tech support right?

    Please keep us updated.
  • Jimweir192Jimweir192 Posts: 502
    Yes it's been refered to TS, but frankly I held that button (and every combo of the wheel) for as long as I could before I reached for the screwdrivers!

    The manual describes what you mention, but it sounds very much like a software controlled shutdown - this is no use if the OS has hung.
    If the MVP-5200i needs to be shut down or reset for any reason, press and hold down the wheel center
    button until the popup stating “panel shutting down” appears or the screen goes dark. To turn it back on,
    press any of the wheel’s compass points and hold until the AMX splash screen appears on the
    touchscreen.

    Shut down the panel by holding the wheel center button only if the Setup pages are
    otherwise inaccessible. Regularly shutting down the device by this method can
    corrupt the Flash memory.

    As Dave says, it needs looking at promptly, but fundamentally, there will always be occasions when a physical reboot is needed - there are currently 2 options, a screwdriver or waiting for a drained battery!!
  • shr00m-dewshr00m-dew Posts: 394
    I too remember our rep showing us a reboot button (under the kick-stand?) But this was back in September at Cedia on a prototype. I'll have to check the one at the office later.

    Kevin D.
  • viningvining Posts: 4,368
    I've been asking for a pinhole some where on the MVPs for a years now so that with a simple pen or pin you could manually open the power circuitry. Remove the pin, powers restored and you get a hard reboot. This would cost next to nothing to include. To me that was a major design flaw in the 8400's and now it appears to be worse on the 5200's.

    The center button does indeed act like a soft reboot.
  • a_riot42a_riot42 Posts: 1,624
    According to tech support the center button turns off power to the 5200 if held for 30 seconds. Holding a left/right/up/down button will turn it back on. Is this not the case?
    Paul
  • Jimweir192Jimweir192 Posts: 502
    The centre button does a power-down, but via software. Thats fine if the panel OS is running ok. I'm talking about being able to perform a hard reboot with power disconnect, when the panel has hung - that is not possible without removing the back panel & pulling the battery connector.

    There is no reboot button behind the kickstand or anywhere else I can see
  • You do not need to remove the back cover and unplug the battery to hard power cycle the unit.

    Holding the center button down performs a hardware power cycle. The electrical circuitry of the 5200 is designed to provide the SW time to shut the unit down gracefully if possible, but a HW shutdown will ultimately occur.
  • viningvining Posts: 4,368
    VEllis wrote:
    Holding the center button down performs a hardware power cycle. The electrical circuitry of the 5200 is designed to provide the SW time to shut the unit down gracefully if possible, but a HW shutdown will ultimately occur.
    How did you come upon this knowledge? This is very cool if it is indeed the case and would warrant two thumbs up to the boys in the design and engineering department for listening!
  • Jimweir192Jimweir192 Posts: 502
    If VEllis is correct thenI think there are 2 things here:

    1) The documentation of the centre button operation is very poor, and should be improved.

    2) There is a specific situation where the centre button will not reboot the panel, even after being held for over 1 min... I'll continue to attempt to recreate the fault.
  • Hi Jim,
    Continuously holding the center button down will sequence the panel through the following steps
    1) Setup Pages
    2) Calibration
    3) FW shutdown
    4) Hardware shutdown.

    1-3 will work if FW is responding. Step 4 is the removal of power by HW in case step 3 is not functioning. Pressing one of the direction arrows on the wheel until the AMX logo appears will power the unit back up.

    If you had a 5200 that did not shut down when the button was pressed for 1 minute (it should occur well before that - see the earlier post re the tech support comment), that unit may have a HW problem.

    We'll see if we can get the documentation clarified in the next release.


    VAV,
    I worked with the development team and my information is correct.
  • viningvining Posts: 4,368
    VEllis wrote:
    I worked with the development team and my information is correct.
    Well thanks for the info and welcome to the forum.
  • Hi VAV,

    Thanks, and I hope the 5200 works well for you and your business.
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