Power

josefino

Morning, I got a call from the VP of finance, and he is asking how much power does a CV5 touch panel consumes in a hour. I called AMX and they could not help me with that question. Does any body has an idea?

•Constant current draw: 650 mA @ 12 VDC
•Startup current draw: 1.3 A @ 12 VDC

Andrew G Welker

To start with, the panel at rest draws 7.8 watts (650 mA * 12 VDC). This is equal to 7.8 watt-hours, or .0078 kWh. KWh is what the power company uses to determine how much to charge. Hope that helps.

Hedberg

Andrew G Welker wrote: »

To start with, the panel at rest draws 7.8 watts (650 mA * 12 VDC). This is equal to 7.8 watt-hours, or .0078 kWh. KWh is what the power company uses to determine how much to charge. Hope that helps.

But you have to add the loss in the power supply that provides the 12 VDC so you're probably talking 10 to 15 watts depending on the efficiency of the PS.

I know, this is pretty trivial.

John Nagy

If you are getting to that level, you also will want to consider if the backlight is on or off. Clearly it uses more power in the ON condition.

Calculations based on manufacturer's published current draw specifications are probably not worth your time. Many tech tool suppliers have a power meter you can plug things into and get actual readings that will be much more than the totally theoretical info above. But the theoretical info may suffice in your case where it sounds like a non-tech wants assurance that these don't use as much power as the air conditioning or pool heater.

Which begs more questions... there's a heat output from both the power supply and the panel that could/should be calculated into the environmental control costs... just gets so fractional....

Thomas Hayes

LOL, I think the VP needs a holiday if he is worried about the consumption of power for 1 CV5. When I installed my hot tub my hydro went up $5 a month, the CV5 would be much less than that. Seriously however the power consumption will vary depending if the panel is off or on, the eff. of the power supply which will vary depending on the input voltage (the AC power stability), the number of pushes the panel has, length of cable from the PS to the panel etc.

josefino

panel

Thanks for the replys, so far we have 25 touch panels that stayed on since they got installed back in March 2009 untill I went for the installer certification in Las vegas and Ken show us how to modify the touch panels, is were I set them to turn off after 60 minutes and turn on when motion is detected. At the begining the VP did not want to pay for the certification, then when I came back from the training I showed the my suppervisors what I learned and that hows all if this started, and since the University is trying to cut on cost that is why the VP wants to know. So far the University wants to install AMX controllers and Touch Panels though all compus, is about 100 more units, so they want to pressent this info to the president of TAMIU to get approval.

Thomas Hayes

I program for our whole campus. We have over 200+ rooms on AMX as of now and about another 150 rooms I need to add. "green" is the catch phrase of the month now for all Universities. One step we have added is a switched set of AC plugs that shut down all none vitual components in our podiums: IE- DVD players, DA's etc. This not only saves power but cuts down on heat which in turns lowers HVAC work load, extends the life of the electronics etc.

Joe Hebert

josefino wrote: »

At the begining the VP did not want to pay for the certification, then when I came back from the training I showed the my suppervisors what I learned and that hows all if this started, and since the University is trying to cut on cost that is why the VP wants to know.

Moral of the story: Training is bad, ignorance is bliss.

true

I went in for training after 2+ years of already programming AMX systems without training. It was required for my new job.

The trainer was passing on both bad habits and blatantly incorrect information.

Not saying people can't learn useful information, but trying to shove something as sophisticated as programming in a few days of instruction and having a hard-headed, know-it-all instructor tends not to work so well.

Joe Hebert

true wrote: »

having a hard-headed, know-it-all instructor tends not to work so well.

Same can be said for hard-headed know-it-all students I suppose, tends not to work so well.

I don’t think I’ve ever been to any kind of training where I didn’t take away at least one nugget of useful information.

true

Joe Hebert wrote: »

Same can be said for hard-headed know-it-all students I suppose, tends not to work so well.

Thanks for the implication. I'm flattered.

But hey, feel free to listen to interesting instructions like "compile your includes" because they WON'T include unless you compile them first. Make sure you do it in sCAPSLOCK too. It's cool if you don't want to understand what you're doing and how things work - we're just paid to MAKE things work, not to understand them, aren't we?

Hedberg

true wrote: »

Thanks for the implication. I'm flattered.

But hey, feel free to listen to interesting instructions like "compile your includes" because they WON'T include unless you compile them first. Make sure you do it in sCAPSLOCK too. It's cool if you don't want to understand what you're doing and how things work - we're just paid to MAKE things work, not to understand them, aren't we?

The three instructors that I have had (Dallas) understood Netlinx programming very well and all three taught good courses. I had some contact with an instructor in Atlanta when my continuing education practical for 2009 was graded and my impression is that he had a good and thorough understanding of Netlinx programming too. I suppose it's possible that there are AMX instructors who don't know what #include does, but I've not encountered them. As for sCAPSLOCK, I don't know what that is. There is a character in some John Sanford novels named Del Capslock, but I suspect that's something different.

Oh, I've had some experience with a support guy in Dallas and he always knows exactly what I'm talking about. Clearly the guy doesn't sit around picking his nose waiting for calls to come in. I'm sure that there are many here who know who I'm talking about and also greatly value his expertise and experience.

You've had a bad experience with an AMX instructor -- it's not the norm.

true

To further the OT, re: instructors, the stuff they teach is clearly wrong to begin with, all compacted into too short of a time period. That's an issue on its own, and not related to what I brought up. I wrote down my nitpicks about my experience and may relay them here at some point.

Re: support, they seem to know what they're doing and have generally been helpful, although I've certainly received some unexpected responses at times. Sadly, I've had to call them too many times. (I've only had to call the competition support once, but to be fair, the guy was completely wrong about what to do...but he DID lead me to where I screwed up - indirect help I guess...)

Thomas Hayes

I have been pretty lucky with instructors and AMX support. The instructor I had for programmer 1 was great because he had real world experience and used some of the things he saw to help teach with. I will agree that 1 week to learn how to advance program is pushing the limits. Rather than 30 days to do my final I would rather have 1 year to hand in 3 pieces of code that covers A-Z of what I have learned. (Mainly because I am too busy to set aside 30 days for any project)

P.S. wasan't this post about 'power consumption' ?